Welcome

We'll take a close look at how the major U.S. television news media present some of the big issues of our time like the environment, AIDS, racism, and terrorism.I hope that you'll discover some answers to the question expressed by the course title.

Bias by Bernard Goldberg is available in the bookstore. Goldberg was a senior reporter with CBS News. He wrote this book, which became a bestseller, five years ago. It's an insider's view of how the major television news media often slant important stories. Because of this book, most of his friends in the media dumped him and claimed that he is just angry with CBS, his former employer.

You'll write summaries of each chapter week by week, so buy the book now. This course will involve a fair bit of reading and a lot of discussion, both posting your opinion on this website and talking in class.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

W2 C1 What do the Global Warming and AIDS stories have in common?

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15 comments:

Anonymous said...

We can see that both of these topics are getting a lot of media attention. They are getting a lot of funding but we are not seeing scientific or facts about both global warming and AIDS. We only hear that if don't do anything about it now... it may cost our life's in the future.

September 10, 2008 at 6:59 PM
Anonymous said...

The most common things are
1. Scary stories are presented by MAIN Stream Media.
2.Group of activists,interested directly or indirectly in the issues working in cooperation with media to influence public opinion and creating pressure on legislation authorities for their own benefits.
3.Only half of the truth is presented (BIAS in MSM)
4.Very little balanced discussion with facts and figures from common platform.
4.One party of the arguments along with media is benefited.

September 11, 2008 at 12:37 PM
Anonymous said...

As we can observe both Global Warming and AIDS have been bombarding the media with very few facts about the situations. I feel that they have done this due to the fact that they want to raise awareness of the issues, but have focused very little on others more important such as leading diseases heart & stroke. Yes, global warming and AIDS are an issue but I don't think that the majority of our money should be spent on less likely-happening causes over others; however, they have been successful at doing this by having the msm presenting people with one-sided information. Rather than bombarding our society with information on one or two very uncommon issues maybe they should concentrate on others that are leading causes within our society TODAY!

September 11, 2008 at 1:49 PM
ywei said...

both of those issues are what MSM called "money making machine". Government spent large amount of founding because MSM have been over exaggerated the outcome of the problem in order to attract more audiences. Global Warming and AIDS Stories have been presented biased, only one side of the argument been told.

September 11, 2008 at 3:10 PM
Anonymous said...

1. Define 'gay activist or lobbyist'. Used 18 times in Ch. 6

Activist is a group of people who brings the extreme ideas try to influence the society, and make people to follow them. Some are the extremely positive, and some others are extremely negative. Here the gay activist, they try to take actions to fight for gay rights for better treatment. Basically gay activist and lobbyist have in common, which is trying to persuade people to believe in them through all kinds of action, like media.
2. Define 'political correctness'. Used on p's 85/86/88/89 in Ch. 6.
Political correctness means the idea or opinion is acceptable by the most of the public. But I think in this article, the so called “ political correctness” and “ political incorrectness” is depend on the media. It is political correct when the ideas in favor of the media’s thoughts.
3. Michael Fumento published his book "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS" in 1990. AIDS peaked in Canada in 1993. In 2005, 272 people contracted HIV, and 5 died of full blown AIDS. Yet AIDS continues to receive 15 to 20 times more research money than 17 other much more serious diseases. Why?
I believe there are several factors influence the people invests more money on the AIDS. First of all, unlike the other diseases, AIDS can hardly be cured, although AIDS are rare. Once you catch the AIDS, the chances you are living are very small. Then second of all, the uncured diseases AIDS brought people the fear. People can not be logical when comes to fear. They don’t think carefully, so some media make use of people’s fear. Media is the third reason. They are easily to be influenced by outsider, besides, they have emotion when they public these. Some of them also maybe the activist . they try to use this to persuade people. That is the factors influence the people invest more than other disease.

September 11, 2008 at 4:22 PM
Anonymous said...

Sorry I post the wrong one. and this is the right one for this question.
The global warming and AIDS stories have so much in common, like people are becoming more and more serious about them. In fact, they are disaster to the human beings. If we can not deal well with that, one day all the human beings may be dying for that. Besides, the MSM are using these two stories to scare the public, and they mislead public by hiding the truth. A group of activist and lobbyist are persuading people to believe in them by using these two stories.

September 11, 2008 at 4:23 PM
Anonymous said...

What the global warming story and AIDS have in common are following main things.
1. The ideas presented in the media are completely one sided
2. The ideas presented in the media are not entirely true or scientific
3. They are both supported by celebrities and other t.v personalities who don't know the facts but want to have a positive image
4. They both are supported by activists and lobbyists, who feed information to the media
5. Both are used to get good ratings for news broadcasters
6. Both are presented in a "nightmare scenario" fashion, that is saying that one way or another, you are at danger
7. In both situations its more important to be politically correct than it is to be factually correct
8. Both stories if told truthfully, would not warrant the current panic
9. In both cases, when people find out the truth, the media looses its credibility
10. Neither have been debated publicly

September 11, 2008 at 5:03 PM
Anonymous said...

Easily we can find few close similarities between Global Warming and AIDS stories, such as

1.Mainstream media like TV and journals present one sided and some false information.
2.News media tries to create attention by scary interesting stories.
3.Public couldn’t protest for those topics against news media because topics are huge and not so easy to solve by one person.
4.Now a days news media and activists are making money by showing their compassion and concern in their stories.
5.News media is creating pointless awareness to the public and insisting people to donate and change their lifestyles.

September 11, 2008 at 7:28 PM
Anonymous said...

The global warming and AIDS story have lots of things in common. Firstly, main stream media reported both of them with bias, scaring the public by describing them as tremendous disease in order to attract public’s attention, favor the government and show their compassion. In addition, the public and government spent too much money which they are not deserved on researching those two issues. The last but not the least, these two issue changed many people’s lifestyle because of massive scary reports from main stream media.

September 11, 2008 at 8:05 PM
Anonymous said...

Even though, the specialists were not sure about global warming or AIDS, the mainstream media is making an issue out of this and creating awareness throughout the public. More stories are modified or over exaggerated and presented to the public. The information provided through media is not 100% true but also some false information has been added to some true incidents with the intention of making money.

September 11, 2008 at 9:32 PM
Anonymous said...

First of all G.W. and AIDS are caught lots of attention. People are having panic about those issues, and the msm only revealed one side to public which is not the truth. The governments are putting lots of money on those issues that all those efforts are in vain. And people are still under the scaring situation announced by the msm.

September 11, 2008 at 9:38 PM
Anonymous said...

The msm in my opinion tries to brianwash people into aquriing their point of view. Aids and global warming are examples of this since they told the story in such a way that views toward the issue were push off onto the general public. The msm didn't really give society both sides of the story. People are still being mislead because they aren't searching for the alternative options, instead they believe whatever is shown through the msm.

September 11, 2008 at 10:28 PM
Anonymous said...

The global warming and the AIDS stories are almost exactly the same. It first started out with the activists trying to get public awareness - and who better to turn to than the media. The activists and the media achieved in grabbing the public’s attention by sending off over exaggeration messages. Also, the media scared the public and also to get the public to be aware by making the problem everyone’s problem in both cases. For both stories, the media did it mainly for the rating and money, based on Bias; Mr. Goldberg said and stated how low the management of the media can get. And again, in both cases, the media might have some liberal bias, that is why both cases are very one sided.

September 11, 2008 at 11:50 PM
Anonymous said...

Just like other reports, the media always like to exaggerate on everything that they think will scare the public and make some money. Both activists and the MSM presented misleading information to the public which causes the public to panic and get scared. Nevertheless, it was a great way to make money and it is the two most important aspects. Both have some focuses on our life, Global warming will kill us soon and AIDS, a disease that is non-curable.

The MSN get the attention, the rating, and the money. As Mr. Goldberg said in BIAS, “they will do anything to increase in the rating, anything that they have to do, they will do it.” Nothing holds the MSM back nor will stop them.

September 12, 2008 at 12:11 AM
Unknown said...

The biggest reason should be that media is still offering wrong information to the public and reluctant to say the right thing because of money, political matter and people's attention. Even I had a misleading information about both issues. Why? Nobody said to me the exact information, just read some newspapers and TV.

September 13, 2008 at 1:19 AM

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