Page 54 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Aud ence Power to Res st |

see also Bias and Objectivity; Government Censorship and Freedom of Speech;
Journalists in Peril; Media and Electoral Campaigns; Media Watch Groups; Pres-
idential Stagecraft and Militainment.

Further reading: Griffith, Thomas. The Waist-High Culture. New York: Harper and Brothers,
1959; Kovach, Bill, and Tom Rosenstiel. The Elements of Journalism. New York: Crown
Publishers, 2001; Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. New York: Free Press Paperbacks,
1997; Manoff, Robert Karl, and Michael Schudson, eds. Reading the News. New York:
Pantheon, 1986; Starr, Paul. The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern
Communications. New York: Basic Books, 2004; Wilson, Joseph. The Politics of Truth:
A Diplomat’s Memoir: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Iden-
tity. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2004.
Tom Goldstein

audienCe Power to resist

Educators, policy makers, and parents worry about the negative effects of the
media. Blaming the media for eating disorders, violence, sexuality, profanity,
war, sexism, racism, homophobia, hedonistic consumerism, and seemingly all
other imaginable ills is a common occurrence. But to what degree can we as
audience members resist the messages that bombard us daily? Surely, not all
who watch a sexist television program, for instance, walk away sexist. In this
battleground issue, many believe the opposite, that audience members are not
so easily influenced and have the power to resist violent, antisocial messages,
and unhealthy persuasion. Is attacking the media a way of avoiding, as some say,
engaging with lack of social and economic equality, and other problems equally
as responsible for the social ills that are too easily blamed on the media?

mEDia EFFECTs

Media messages hold remarkable power to normalize certain behavior, to
render other behavior “deviant” or abnormal, and to lead us toward or away
from certain beliefs and frames of mind with their emotive, narrative, and/or in-
formational allure. Given its scope of coverage, the mass media have unrivalled
abilities to project images and ideas to a vast number of citizens, a talent or curse
that has been praised and feared since the advent of mass media.
At the same time, however, all too often the media become a scapegoat when
deeper social problems afflict a society or individual: thus, for instance, blaming
school shootings and other violent crimes on gory horror films, violent video
games, and countercultural music is much easier than inquiring into the com-
plex social realities that lead to a youth going on a killing rampage. As such, the
allegation of media responsibility can sometimes erase the apparent need for
personal and societal responsibility, with the abstract “media” serving as a catch-
all for societal problems, and a red herring for causational analysis.
Similarly, allegations of media effects risk posing the notion of an unthink-
ing, easily influenced mass of media consumers. Media effects discourse has