"If bias does exist - and at a certain point, bias must be called 'propaganda' - by making ourselves aware of it, we increase our ability to accurately interpret events, and to respond appropriately to a complex world."
-Valerie Gremillion
Modern Media:
Impact and Responsibility
Media -papers and broadcasters, networks and channels - play a pivotal role in the exercise of democracy. By informing us of 'news', by pointing us to information that impacts the world and our lives, media helps shape our perception of events. By directing our attention to certain topics or understandings, or even in not directing us toward them, the media of today provide context to events, in large part determining not only our interpretation of them, but our views of who we are and what we do.
While this is true of all media, due to their huge scope, the mass media - broadcast TV and radio, mainstream newspapers and magazines - exert the largest effect on our attention. By choosing certain angles to illumine aspects of a story, by focusing on specific viewpoints and magnifying them through their widespread broadcasting, the mass media today exert great power over our ability to perceive, and thus to choose actions and responses.
With this great power comes responsibility. In the past, the code of the 'respectable' media has required maintaining an 'objective' viewpoint, an attempt to present 'both sides' of any issue. Yet there are few laws which enforce this, little to prevent bias which might occur, or even manipulation by an unscrupulous few.
Because of this, as 'consumers' of daily, almost constant, media, we must be alert to bias that could influence not only our perception of the news, but our perception of the world. If we don't, we lose the ability to choose our direction based on reality, rather than the perceptions of others.
This page is our eye on the media, and the directions it chooses to take us, as well as those it may not be showing us. If bias does exist - and at a certain degree, bias must be called 'propaganda' - by making ourselves aware of it, we increase our ability to accurately interpret events, and to respond appropriately to a complex world.
©2001 Valerie Gremillion, All rights reserved.
RESOURCES
Propaganda and Psychological Warfare Studies
"As modern technology provides
humankind with capabilities never even imagined by many of us a
decade ago, we can be sure that the global battlefield of the 21st
century will be over information
Propaganda Analysis Home Page
12 Goose Steps to Propaganda: A Primer
"Knowledge is not just power, it is the only power that exists."
Propaganda techniques - In Advertising, Media, Politics & Warfare, for K-12 Teachers & Students "
LINKS
TomPaine.com
FAIR's terrorism section
A compilation of useful and insightful articles on media handling of the crisis.