Description
Length: 7 pages (1-inch margins, page numbers, name and title on page 1.)
News Coverage of Similar Events (Election Interference)
In Manufacturing Consent (2002) Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky (H&C) claim that “…the Media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them.”
In the spirit of the Enlightenment, let’s critically examine that claim. Let’s neither blindly accept it nor blindly reject it. Rather, let’s collect facts and apply logic and draw our own conclusions. Does a methodologically rigorous analysis of the facts support the claim of media bias i.e. of “shadows on the cave wall”?
In this paper you will apply Herman and Chomsky’s paired case study method to two (alleged) events:
1. US interference in the Russian election of 1996
2. Russian interference in the US election of 2016.
In your paper you should first summarize the Propaganda Model and the paired case study method. This summary may be up to a third of your paper. Then you should perform both quantitative and qualitative analysis on the articles, as illustrated in H&C Chapters 2 and 3 (esp. Table 2.1.)
Note that there is too much news coverage to read each article in detail. So you must use some methods to reduce the data. Here are a few suggestions:
• Read all headlines
• Read most opening paragraphs
• For the most promising articles, read the full body
• Identify key terms and use the search function to count those terms
Tell the reader whether the data 1) strongly supports or 2) strongly refutes or 3) weakly supports or 4) weakly refutes or 5) allows no conclusion for the Propaganda Model. You might conclude the paper by relating this particular research to larger questions of illusion and freedom, false consciousness, or “The Matrix”.
LINKS Below
How US Helped Yeltsin to Win Election - Time Magazine.pdf
Explanation & Answer
Attached.
Running head: NEWS COVERAGE OF SIMILAR EVENTS
News Coverage of Similar Events
Institution Affiliation
Date
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NEWS COVERAGE OF SIMILAR EVENTS
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Introduction
The media is a key aspect of the growth of a society since it is the major method of
acquiring and conveying data within the community. The media's role in society cannot be
ignored as it manifests its ways in the day to day progress of an individual or social group. Media
serves a purpose of giving information to citizens, conveying their feedback on given
information, airing their views on different matters and connecting them to each other no matter
the geographical difference. It is, undoubtedly, a very important tool in the day to day running of
a society. Time and again the media have been said to create controversies in the societies
whereby, unconfirmed or even untrue information have been shared hence creating a division
among the people. The media have also been said to create peace among the people through
reconciliatory talks and intergroup debates. Also, the media is also said to be controlled by some
powerful and influential people who directs what should be reported. In this regards, there have
been serious claims that the media has time and again favored those that control them as an
outcome of financial support. This is by providing information that is biased or misleading to the
general public in a way that favors these sponsors.
The Propaganda Model
The propaganda model is a model based on various concepts that target to impart
knowledge on how propaganda and biased behavior in systems are incorporated into the normal
routines in mass media which can be very hard to realize. The model brings the perception of
privately owned media being business oriented instead of serving the purpose of information
through technology to the rest of the community at large (Sutko, 2014). This makes the owners
of the media transact business and receive payments from different stakeholders in order to
report some events. This is not good because some events which the general public needs to
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know go unreported or may be reported in a biased manner. This leads to misinformation and
causes divisions and confusion among the people. According to Herman and Chomsky, there are
five general categories that have the ability to determine the kind of news presented to the
general public in a society. These categories include who in specific owns the medium, where
the medium gets its financial support from, the sourcing of its information, flack towards its
presentations and the fear of already existing ideologies (Sutko, 2014).
The owner of an organization determines what goes on in the organization in order to
satisfy their personal needs first before moving on to other needs. The case is no different from
the media. Information of news media is limited in accordance with the interests of those who
own it (Sutko, 2014). Any piece of information that can put the owner of a...
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