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The Illusion of Objectivity in Media Reporting: Challenges and Corporate Influence

This article explores the concept of objectivity in media, questioning if true neutrality is achievable. It discusses how major news corporations, consolidated into fewer entities, prioritize profit over unbiased reporting. The influence of powerful interests on media narratives and agenda-setting is scrutinized, highlighting how social issues are often constructed and sensationalized. Real data, such as that presented in Newsweek's "Coke Plague" article, exemplifies how media can distort facts, leading to misrepresentation of substance use and associated social problems.

victoria-cooley
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The Illusion of Objectivity in Media Reporting: Challenges and Corporate Influence

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  1. Objective Model • Reported as facts without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, interpretations • Neutrality (factual v. interpretive claims) • Balance • Reliability

  2. Is Objectivity Possible?Major Lessons of Chapter 1 • Major news media are owned/controlled by major corporations. • Mainstream media outlets have been consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, each of which is part of the corporate system. • Inner-ring or upper tier media outlets have grown larger and more influential through horizontal and vertical integration. • Agenda setting media serve in numerous ways with other corporations including interlocking directorates. • Media are mainly concerned with profit/advertising dollars. • Media rely heavily on information provided by government sources. • The powerful have greater ability to produce “flak” in order to influence media coverage. • Perspectives that threaten the status quo are least likely to appear in the media.

  3. Social Construction • Social problems are “constructed” (i.e., created), often through the media • Reporting of real problem • Blown out of proportion • Typification (frames/narratives) • Linkage • Policy created

  4. http://www.pscj.appstate.edu/media/moralpanics.html

  5. Newsweek’s “Coke Plague” Story(March 17, 1986) Shocking Numbers and Graphic Accounts: Quantified Images of Drug Problems in the Print Media James D. Orcutt & J. Blake Turner Social Problems, Vol. 40, No. 2. (May, 1993), pp. 190-206.

  6. Panel A – actual data (depicts “lifetime” use not “current” use) Newsweek’s “Coke Plague” Story(March 17, 1986)

  7. Panel B – editorial deletions Cut out large increases in late 1970s Cut out foundation or “context” of data Newsweek’s “Coke Plague” Story(March 17, 1986)

  8. Panel C – tinkering with figure Made a “finer” Y scale (makes increase look larger) Newsweek’s “Coke Plague” Story(March 17, 1986)

  9. Panel D – more tinkering with figure Added depth (3-D) to make look larger Called it a “plague” Newsweek’s “Coke Plague” Story(March 17, 1986)

  10. ACTUAL Cocaine Use(MTF, 12th graders) % Current Users

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