Q1
Tony Hovater story's publication was a mistake in the first place since the public would have viewed it as an attempt at normalizing fascism and the spread of hatred among races in the US. As expected, the people reacted, and their sentiments were the fact that the article attempted to normalize characters that the public had been trying hard to fight against (Fausset, 2017b). The report spread a perspective of the biasness of the contemporary media in the US. Specifically, a reader of the article could easily be influenced into buying the rightist political ideologies since it repeatedly describes the passion that Hovater has towards Republicans (Fausset, 2017a). The Influencing Machine supports the idea that contemporary media is biased in its approaches to political issues such as the war times and related matters (Jay, 2012). From this perspective, therefore, the story in the Times should not have been published.
The response of the national editor of the Times to the criticism that the article received was timely, yet it might not have been useful. While the reaction explained the rationale of the article and apologized to the public for the damage it had done, the editor seemed to be justifying the stand of the Times that such stories as the one their journalist, Richard Fausset, had written (Lacey, 2017). The editor’s tone in the response is a direct normalization of the fascist ideologies that some people in the US hold. The editor’s assertion that the Times picked their best journalist for the story appears to indicate that they found no offense in the article, and that the public’s reaction was unreasonable to some extent.
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Q2
The New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) case is critical in the development of the understanding of the public concerning the role of the press since it defined what the media has the freedom to write and what it should not. Specifically, the case indicated a significant change to the Make No Law clause of the First Amendment to the US constitution that granted the media and individuals the freedom of speech or the press. Normally, the case of New York Times and the plaintiff would have gone in favor of the media company had the judges not determined the standard of malice in the determination of the case (Lewis, 2011). Today, the case set a standard for the public’s understanding that the First Amendment does not grant the press the freedom to frame anything against them unless such information is accurate. Therefore, the public should be sharp in reporting instances of defamation by the media if they publish false information concerning their conduct. It also means that the media’s role is not to spread propaganda and malice, but to inform the public of issues concerning them.
In a broader sense, the case indicates that the media should not be biased in reporting cases, instead; it should always strive to balance the tone of its reporting of events. The ideas that the judges of the Supreme Court in the case articulated are quite relevant today since the public needs protection from unnecessary harm that could be caused by irresponsible journalism. The media was made aware that it could not publish stories that deform the character of others because it wants to reward another individual would could be a client such as it was the case of The New York Time.
Q3
While Beth could still do well without watching the news, she had better considered doing so because of two reasons. First, watching the news keeps people informed of the current issues both locally and nationally. Beth may be aware of this fact, but still ignores the real value of news watching since she could be feeling that current issues do not matter to her. Nevertheless, she should understand that the current problems concern all spheres of life, social, economic, and political, which means that they could be touching an element of her life. Since the world changes rapidly, reading and watching the news keeps people up-to-date in the world, and it is essential to track the changes since Beth and others share the world. The current affairs, which are aired in the news, are an indicator of the trends in life, which is critical for everyone. Specifically, understanding the present issues both globally and nationally could give one a bearing on the future state of affairs (Tsfati and Cappella, 2003).
Secondly, watching news shows that one cares for others and that they are not selfish in their approach to them. In this line of thought, Beth’s character could be justified by the fact that she does not find anything useful and of direct importance to her. However, the fact that what does not concern her concerns others means that she would be sharing in the joy and afflictions of others when she follows the news. This way, Beth would learn to appreciate others better than should have done otherwise (Tsfati and Cappella, 2003). The real value of news in this argument is not to entertain, but to inform us of what affects others with whom we share a world. Therefore, Beth had better started following news articles alongside the entertainment articles on television and social media.
Q4
Dear Mr. Lerner,
I deeply share my concerns about the levels of trustworthiness of the contemporary news media compared to the 1970s when you were growing. This argument is valid since the news media were among the most trusted institutions in the US during the mid-twentieth century. For example, a study by the American National Election in 1956 established that sixty-six percent of US nations considered that the newspapers were fair while only a smaller fraction, twenty-seven percent of them found them unfair (Ladd, 2014). Such views were bipartisan since approximately sixty-four percent of the Democrats and seventy-eight percent of the Republicans viewed the newspapers as fair. The Roper Organization embarked on two similar types of research in 1964, asking respondents how they rated the trustworthiness of the network news. This report established that sixty-one and seventy-one percent of the public considered the news fair respectively while only seventeen and twelve percent of them regarded such news as unfair (Ladd, 2014). The start of the General Social Survey in 1973 indicated that only fifteen percent of the populace reported that they did not have any confidence levels in the press.
Among the most respected individuals around the nation during this period were prominent journalists. For example, it was established in a great poll undertaken in 1972 that Walter Cronkite of the trusted CBS Evening News was trusted by seventy-two percent of Americans (Ladd, 2014). The investigations of the Watergate scandal by reports Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post were dramatized in a film adaption of their previous publication called, All the President’s Men in 1971 (Webster, 2005). The film, which was commercially productive, depicted the two journalists heroically, and their roles were played by two of the most respected movie actors of the time, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford (Webster, 2005).
However, the place of news media in the modern society has changed. For instance, the General Social Survey of 2008 indicated that the proportion of Americans that do not have confidence in the media had risen to forty-five percent (Webster, 2005). In addition, a Chronicle of Higher Education survey established that only ten percent of the populace expressed high confidence in the news media of the nation. These statistics indicate that the levels of trust in the news media had been experiencing a sharp decline around the country.
The fall in the levels of trust in the media channels that have been experiencing could be related to the fragmentation of the industry. At one time, the landscape of news media comprised only a few news networks at the national levels, newspapers, and local televisions. Most of the journalists in the ear committed styles of objective journalism that came to prominence at the start of the twentieth century (Jay, 2012). For such a reason, only little diversity in the styles of coverage existed. There has been a significant proliferation of the media choices since then. The new options include numerous entertainment-oriented channels, opinion sites and internet news, cable news channels, political talk radio, and others. The existence of such choices gives a great variety of approaches to journalism, including more tabloid-oriented and partisan ones.
References
Fausset, R. (2017a). A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland . Nytimes.com . Retrieved 12 December 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/us/ohio-hovater-white-nationalist.html
Fausset, R. (2017b). I Interviewed a White Nationalist and Fascist. What Was I Left With? . Nytimes.com . Retrieved 12 December 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/insider/white-nationalist-interview-questions.html
Jay, M. (2012). The influencing machine . London: Strange Attractor.
Lacey, M. (2017). Readers Accuse Us of Normalizing a Nazi Sympathizer; We Respond . Nytimes.com . Retrieved 12 December 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/26/reader-center/readers-accuse-us-of-normalizing-a-nazi-sympathizer-we-respond.html
Ladd, J. M. (2014). Why Americans Distrust the News Media and How it Matters . Princeton: Princeton.
Lewis, A. (2011). Make no law: The Sullivan case and the First Amendment . Vintage.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, (1964) U.S. LEXIS 1500, 376 U.S. 967, 84 S. Ct. 1130, 12 L. Ed. 2d 83 (U.S. 1964)
Tsfati, Y., & Cappella, J. N. (2003). Do people watch what they do not trust? Exploring the association between news media skepticism and exposure. Communication Research , 30 (5), 504-529.
Webster, J. G. (2005). Beneath the veneer of fragmentation: Television audience polarization in a multichannel world. Journal of Communication , 55 (2), 366-382.
