Problems in the news media essay

Polls by USA Today found only 36 percent of Americans believe that news organizations get the facts straight. A surprising stat at quick glance, but turn on the evening news and ponder that stat again.

It’s not just the news; it’s the news media in general. Whether it’s political agenda, greed, or for the pure sake of entertainment: the news media isn’t doing their job. The United States media is becoming like the rest of TV, purely entertaining, only focused on ratings the news media isn’t doing their job of informing the public with truthful information; they are a huge reason for the political hostility in the U. S. and changes must be applied: new management, laws on falsified news, maybe even the total gut of the news media but something must be done. The media isn’t doing their job, plain and simple.

Whether it’s fake news, skewed news, or even not reporting a story period the news is letting down the people it was created to inform. A study found that 73 percent of adults in America have become more skeptical about the accuracy of their news. (DailySource).

73 percent! When almost ? of America believes their news may be false that is a major problem. Its like the boy who cried wolf, after so many times of reporting inaccurate news the public loses trust and that’s a big problem for Americans who should know what’s really going on in their country, not what the news media wants them to think is going on. 48 percent of the public sees misleading headlines in their paper more than once a week. (DailySource) Its not just cable news providing falsities, its just about every type of news media source. Newspapers are on the brink of extinction because of this reason, when false news is put out the public notices after a while and just starts getting their news from other sources such as the Internet. In October 2007, Reporters Sans Frontiers published their 2007 worldwide press freedom index, the U. S. ranked 48th.

(Global Issues) This is the “ greatest” country in the world we are talking about, ranked 48th? The land of the free needs press that is reliable, not in the middle of the pack in freedom of press. I find this stat a little disturbing and eye opening. Just like must everything else in America the news media runs off money and greed. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 59 percent of Americans say newspapers are concerned with making profits rather then serving the public interest. (DailySource) Money talks, newspapers would rather sell 500 copies full of lies then 100 with the facts. Newspapers make their money by advertisements and advertisers don’t pay to get their ads in newspapers that tell the truth but don’t get their papers off the newsstands. They pay to get into successful newspapers and those newspapers know their market wants to be entertained. media giants dominate the U.

S. Media (Mother Jones. ) This is a big issue because this means less diversity and quality of journalism. With 8 corporations running the whole show for one they are going to be more focused on making money and also the competition is less, so there is less motivation to get better. It’s a monopoly in a way because they control the info being received, knowing the options for news are scarce. Disney (market value: $72. 8 billion), AOL-Time Warner (market value: $90. 7 billion), Viacom (market value: $53.

9 billion), General Electric (owner of NBC, market value: $390. billion), News Corporation (market value: $56. 7 billion), Yahoo! (market value: $40. 1 billion), Microsoft (market value: $306. 8 billion), and Google (market value: $154. 6 billion).

(Mother Jones) These companies own close to 100% of the news media and just about everything seen on TV. As seen this also shows why greed plays such a huge factor in the news media, look how much these corporations are worth! Plus these companies are merging all the time shrinking the variety more and more. Greed is only one of the reason for the problems in the current media another big one is the role of political parties. Political Parties have been around since our founding fathers sprung the Constitution into action but I’d guess they’d be scratching their heads at the current state of these parties. On papers of at least 50, 000 circulations, 65 percent of the staffs are Liberal/Democrat or leaning that way, and 12 percent are Conservative/Republican or leaning that way (ASNE). That’s why there are Republican and Democratic news stations because that political party either owns the news station or is pumping x amount of money into it. The Liberals have more pull in news media like NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, and Newsweek; while Conservative pull is in stations like FOX NEWS and CBS. Turn the TV to these channels and see what I’m talking about.

Turn on the Liberal stations and they will be slurping Obama and talking about how health care is the greatest idea ever. Then turn on the Conservative stations, especially Fox News, they will be talking about how horrible Obama is and how the country is going to collapse if Obama keeps spending all this money. There is definitely a huge contrast between the viewpoints of these stations. The money advantage goes to the Democrats who received $1, 020, 816, 000 in donations while the Republicans only received $142, 863, 000 in 2008 (Washington Examiner); this proves why 4 out of the 6 major news stations have a more Liberal view.

This also shows why 65% of journalist says they lean more liberal; they work for a more left side network/ organization. Technology isn’t doing the news media any favors though The world has drastically changed over the years when it comes to technology. In the old days all news came from the TV, Radio, and newspapers and it wasn’t streaming 24/7. Newspapers saw ad revenue fall 26% during the year, which brings the total loss over the last three years to 43%. (PEW Research). Newspapers are in trouble because of the innovation of Internet. There isn’t a point to waiting for the news every morning when there is a laptop and a 3G-phone sitting close by.

This is why newspapers are becoming so inaccurate and entertainment occupied, they need ads for money and their papers are getting of the newsstands. Local television ad revenue fell 22% in 2009; triple the decline the year before. Radio also was off 22%. Magazine ad revenue dropped 17%, network TV 8% (and news alone probably more). Online ad revenue overall fell about 5%, and revenue to news sites most likely also fared much worse. (PEW) These stats alone show why the media is so worried about entreating their audience, they are losing money left and right.

The effect of technology is enormous, ad companies are switching from advertising on news sources, like they did in the past, to social networking sites and websites. Advertising companies realize that America is changing and the public isn’t into the news media anymore. They see their news on Twitter and Facebook; this is why the state of the media is so bad and corrupt.

The state of the news media isn’t that bad Justin, I still watch the news every once in a while and I certainly don’t get my news from Facebook. Well that may be true but think about 20 years ago when there wasn’t internet. The greatest spot to advertise was the nightly news and the newspaper because that’s what everyone got their news from. The family would gather around the TV every night and see what was going on in the world and they were telling the truth because people were watching and reading. Now a days things are entirely different and the news media doesn’t thing they can afford to tell the truth because that doesn’t grab the attention of the entertainment obsessed public. I’m not saying there wasn’t political influence back In the day and skewed information being told to the American public because I’m sure there was.

But compared to today’s state of the news media it looks like an 10 in a room of 5’s. I have a few ideas on how I think the News Media needs to be fixed. This is a very complicated problem, its not something that can be fixed in a short period of time. My first idea would be the government enforcing the accuracy of the press. This wont get done though unless the public shows the news media they are fed up! Which brings me the my second idea, boycotting the news media so they begin to understand the public is sick of their manipulation and corruption. My last idea is getting rid of the major corporations that own the majority of the news media.

With more corporations competing against one another I believe the accuracy will increase and the overall quality will increase. Competition is a crazy thing that will motivate the news media to start getting it right. It’s up to the public to create the change because the greedy, corrupt news media is loving the way things are and they wont make a change until the public says otherwise. The news media in America is a joke and the problem needs to be addressed. From their greed, political agenda, to the impact of technology the news media isn’t doing their job.

They were created to inform the public of what is going on, not mislead them. Its up to the citizens of America to make the change, take back the news media and bring it back to what it used to be, reliable.