51. Is there such thing as “the media”? A quick Google search yields plenty of recent examples:
- The media’s positive treatment of gays, rooted in a shameful past (Fox News)
- John Oliver Eviscerates the Media’s Terrible reporting of Transgender Issues (Mic)
- Of course Dylann Roof thinks Asians are racist. The media has been perpetuating that myth for years (Washington Post)
Our world has no shortage of communities, categories and groups, from political parties (“Democrats”) to ethnicities (“white people”) to nations (“the British”) to communities (“New Yorkers”). Is “the media” a group that can similarly be spoken of collectively? Is the media a function that exists in each separate group (like accountants, or mothers), or is it in a way a collective group of its own? In other words, how associated and coordinated are members of the media? And who are its members? Are perceived preferences of the media actually that of its audience?
For example, can the media collectively make mistakes, feel a certain way or favor a certain cause? Examples:
- Did the media rally Americans toward war in Iraq based on faulty information?
- Was the media biased toward Obama in 2007–08, against Clinton and McCain?
- Is the media obsessed with cat videos and gotcha questions?
Is Politico a member of the media? Does criticism of or commentary on the media apply to Politico? Always? Sometimes?
By Asa Briggs, Peter Burke
2010
It was only in the 1920s — according to the Oxford English Dictionary — that people began to speak of ‘the media’ …
Google Books Ngram Viewer — “the media”
When you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books (e.g., “British English”, “English Fiction”, “French”) over the selected years. Here is that graph for mentions of “the media”:
The Press and Public Misperceptions About the Iraq War
By Nieman Reports
June 15, 2004
… following the invasion, large portions of the public of this major power — a democratic one no less — failed to get accurate messages about what had occurred, which raises compelling questions about the role and practice of the press in a democratic society.
Was it simply a function of people seeking out information that confirmed their biases in favor of the war? Or did this represent some failure on the part of the press?
…
There is evidence that in the run-up to, during, and for a period after the invasion of Iraq, many in the press appeared to feel that it was not their role to challenge the administration.
…
When the press are reluctant to challenge what government leaders say, they can simply become a means of transmission for an administration, rather than serve as a critical filter for information.
By Caleb Galoozis (Harvard University Institute of Politics)
…
During President Obama’s 2008 campaign, the overwhelming majority of news media was clearly and unabashedly behind the campaign of hope and change. Time‘s Mark Halperin called it “the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq War. It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.” Los Angeles Times writer Mark Barabak expressed similar sentiments: “I think it’s incumbent upon people in our business to make sure that we’re being fair. The daily output was the most disparate of any campaign I’ve ever covered, by far.”
Their statements were not only backed by traditional analyses of media coverage, but also by a more revealing statistic: the Democratic Party received a total donation of $1,020,816 from 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks in 2008, while the Republican Party received only $142,863 from 193 donors.
U.S. Diplomacy and Yellow Journalism, 1895–1898
U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian
Yellow journalism was a style of newspaper reporting that emphasized sensationalism over facts. During its heyday in the late 19th century it was one of many factors that helped push the United States and Spain into war in Cuba and the Philippines, leading to the acquisition of overseas territory by the United States.
