- Dilann Yasin
- Ann Arbor, MI
- United States
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Is the mass media telling us how to think?
Depending on which source of news you like best and in which form you prefer it, the news you get can be a little bias. For example, FOX tends to be more conservative than CNN. This can affect the types of stories they present to their viewers and how they present them.
Topics:
mass media
Pascal-Xavier Van de Goor
You can find that out easily by asking somebody who only watches Fox and somebody who watches only CNN the same question.
Dilann Yasin
edward long 100+
Orlando Hawkins 20+
I don't think media tells us what to think. I think what the media does is try to understand what and how people think and do what they can to appeal to their interest or fears.
If you read up anything on Edward Bernay's and Walter Lippmann in regards to propaganda techniques they'll tell you how the media functions.
Just some food for thought, most news sources are controlled by some sort of corporate interest and depending on who's paying the most money to these news corporations, depends on what stories get put out to the public, which is why fox may seem a bit more liberal than CNN at times.
Michelle Reeder
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Maybe telling us what to think
MacDonald Mark
As others have suggested, the best way to combat media bias and corporatism is approach every bit of news you see with a healthy level of skepticism.
William Baldwin
If the media accomplishes anything in the way of thinking skills it reduces the capability to think at all, no matter which media outlet is used. Instead the media molds minds to THEIR way of thinking.
The old saying, "Don't believe everything you read or hear," still holds true.
Therefore, constantly asking, "Why?" will lead someone to thinking on their own, no matter which media outlet they watch. The question, "Why?" will then send them in search of an answer, where ever that may lead.
Luis Marin
"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth."
Not a whole lot can be said after this deadly accurate thought by a true open mind... Mass media is not teaching us how to think, we (the people) are choosing not to think...
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Ken brown 30+
Dilann Yasin
Salim Solaiman 50+
Need toTHINK how propaganda is teaching me to THINK ?
Obey No1kinobe 50+
I also suggest we tend to go to the media that reinforce our views.
But that doesn't mean we are easily convinced by counter arguments or information biases opposing our own.
Fritzie Reisner 100+
My conjecture would be that when we hear and read superficial or simplified versions of stories, and read and hear such a level of thought daily, we may become so used to this that we start thinking less deeply about things and are less likely to recognize that the issues are actually more complex than the accounts we hear.
In school when we work with children on critical thinking and on advancing our understanding of a subject by research, questioning, and discourse, we are trying to suggest a disposition to think carefully, learn to recognize bias, and learn to recognize the distinction between well supported fact or theory and opinion.
Such training can help a person later to recognize when something portrayed in advertsing or in other formats is over-simplified or misleading. But mass media and advertising are definitely a highly influencial counter-force.
Robert Winner 50+
Zdenek Smith 100+
Luckily people have increasing number of choices where they can get their news from. The Internet has huge number of less bias news resources.
Dilann Yasin
Zdenek Smith 100+
What matters is how a certain website or organization are considered to be trust worthy. Trust worthiness is generally established by search engines, well know organizations and people recommending sources of information, popularity and ability to compare different sources of information to see who can be trusted.
Another big advantage of the Internet is the variety of sources one has access to from both organizations and individuals, including people at the middle of an event that use Twitter and blogs to report what exactly is happening around them.
Some of the generally recognized sources of news information is Wikinews: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page
By reading and comparing sites like Economists, BBC, Google News, Haffington Post, Wall Street Journal and others, one can get different views, opinions and wider range of facts.
pat gilbert 50+
Yet on the liberal side we ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS,Cnn, BBC, your right we need to get rid of that one conservative tv station.
I don't think that they realize they are biased (its a Kathryn Schulz thing). But to your question they definitely indoctrinate and polarize making it impossible for people to find out what they don't know as they walk around thinking they know.
Dilann Yasin
Zdenek Smith 100+
I stop watching TV news a long time ago and instead I now read news from Google News feed, Economist, BBC and such.
pat gilbert 50+
That is my point.