IDEOLOGY IN NEWS REPORTS

The body of theories that illustrate just how audience members’ mannerism and beliefs are molded by the media is referred to as the media effect (Bryant and Oliver, 2009). There are a multiplicity of laws that protect the right of the media to practically say anything they want, and the clearest example of these laws that are constitutionally cut in stone is the 1st Amendment –this “freedom of speech” law in the United States Constitution provides the media with an autonomy that also counts as the “freedom of the press” (Berns, 1976).  The media in the United States, for instance, “The Telegraph”, an influential newspaper in the country, can under this law put out information to the public without fear of persecution or governmental censorship. It is safe to say that the influence of the media is directly proportional to the freedom of press allowed in the individual country.

Under dictatorships and oppressive regimes, the media rarely if ever enjoy the liberty of speaking out against the government as it is supposed to “toe the line” by remaining conservative and supporting state initiatives (McCombs, 2014). The agenda-setting function theory elaborates that the mass media decide what we worry or think about (McCombs, Shaw and Weaver, 2013). The theory developed by Donald Shaw and Maxwell McCombs found a strong link between issues the media predominantly reported and those that the public thought to be essential. Another theory on media bias and the effects of the media on the audience is the hypodermic theory which suggests that messages are “shot” into the audience’s mind because the audience rarely questions the information presented to it largely because of the limited personal experience with the world and the government (Bineham, 1988, p.

Despite the fact that the minimal effects theory profoundly diminishes the impact newspapers have on the public by suggesting that people ,after receiving information from the media, discussed it and interpreted it amongst themselves (with their friends), thus placing the friend who the listener agrees with as the most influential person in shaping public opinion (Bennet and Iyengar,2008 p. The minimal effects theory supports the idea that the chain of information used by the mass media is usually interrupted and thus denying the media the influence on public opinion it is thought to have (Bennett and Iyengar, 2008, p. On the other hand, framing refers to the creating of a context or narrative for a news report ( Pérez-Sobrino, 2014,p. The essence of frames is for the information put out to the public to have relevance as intended by the mass media.

However, framing has a double effect – framing is vital for the audience to understand the importance of the news, but also ends up influencing the direction in which the audience takes in processing the story (Pérez-Sobrino, 2014,p. Examples of framing include the focus of news on specific details rather on the broader perspective on the topic, while thematic framing is the look at issues from a broader lens rather than through the use of specific details or statistics (Pérez-Sobrino, 2014,p. While thematic framing takes a detached and fact-based look at issues, episodic framing leaves the audience feeling extensively sympathetic on the issue ( Pérez-Sobrino, 2014,p. In the World War II, the winning alliance heavily depended on the media to paint Hitler and the German troops as evil and ill-motivated, and their leader Hitler, as “the evilest man to ever live one earth”.

Public support for the Allies of World War II ( mostly the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and China) against the Axis powers ( Germany, Italy, Japan) and other co-belligerents), was crucial for the win against Hitler (Taylor, 2007,p. While Hitler ran an efficient propaganda machine that painted Germany as invincible, the media was a useful tool for winning the hearts of people all over the world who volunteered and contributed vast resources to fight against the “man who wanted to rule the whole world” with much passion. In contrast, the Vietnam War received little public support and is considered a useless war or lost war especially given the eroding of public support that the media was responsible for. Drawing lessons from the Vietnam experience, the US government, and the Pentagon decided to sell the second Gulf War against Iraq in 1991 more effectively through restricting press freedom-the media were denied resources and access to the war zone (Kull, Ramsay, and Lewis, 2003, p.

The effect on the reader is to direct him or her to share the newspaper’s opinion that the capture of the military’s target is a good thing for the whole nation and that the war was justified (Miller, 2003). • BOMBS HIT IRAQ AS WAR BEGINS (The Star-Ledger) • GOT HIM! Vengeance at last! US nails the bastard (New York Post) • BUSH ORDERS START OF WAR ON IRAQ: MISSILES APPARENTLY MISS HUSSEIN (New York Post) • JETS STRIKE (New York Post) Another front by which to examine the effect of the mass media on power and public opinion is in the influence of the media on governance and campaign (Francia, 2017). Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 US presidential election but lost the race based on a Donald Trump Electoral College win.

After the loss, which was reported to be “largely unexpected” given the fact that Clinton was a career politician and Trump was a celebrity businessman with a knack to “speak his mind”, Clinton wrote a book titled “What Happened” in which she points a finger of blame at the media for her loss. She writes that political journalists “Can’t bear to face their own role in helping to elect Trump” (Harsanyi D. On the other hand, it is important to consider that the media in its reporting is never homogenous. Even though Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding theory suggests that the media pushes the dominant ideology that is almost always supportive of government initiatives, this is barely an assumption because the media does report in a variety of ways especially considering that there are multiple news outlets in existence (Hall, 2001).

Despite the fact that 200 newspapers backed Clinton, and slightly over 15 supported Trump, Trump did win the election because the media did not scrutinize him enough, many experts believe. Media bias in reporting could be seen in the fact that only two of the 100 top newspapers in the United States endorsed Trump (Kellner, 2016). One theory put forward to explain a Trump win despite a Clinton-leaning media was that the media equated Clinton’s server scandal to all of Trump’s weaknesses (Kellner, 2016). The interview is reported to have instantaneously improved the news outlet’s ratings. The media’s obsession with Trump, that is suggested as the cause of his victory can be further illustrated by figures from mediaQuant, a media measurement firm that established that while Clinton only received about $ 3 billion in free media, or earned media, during the election, Trump earned double that amount (Grusin,2017).

Moreover, and analysis of New York Times coverage during the election period reveals that Clinton’s emails ,the scandal that allegedly brought her down, generated the same amount of coverage that policy did in about seven days , in 6 days (Watts and Rothschild,2017). Conclusively, the email scandals that beleaguered Hillary Clinton ,according to a research by Duncan Watts and David Rothschild, constituted more sentences than the total of Donald Trumps’ scandals. According to the researchers, only 10 of the 150 front-page articles by the New York times examined policy or explained the candidates’ policies as a parameter through which to weigh the candidates ,and only 5 out of this number of articles compared Trump’s and Clinton’s policies. How the news media helped to nominate Trump.  Political Communication, 33(4), pp. Bennett, W. L. and Iyengar, S.

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