Text-Based Assignment 3

The definition of journalism is “the the profession of reporting or photographing or editing news stories for one of the media” (Wordnetweb.princeton.edu). The way the news and the media treat a story, can help determine what is being taken from the story. The media has the ability to frame the story to how they see the story or how they want the story to be told. The media is able to alter the view by framing the issue through their lens. In my opinion, this is extremely common today.

Todd Gitlin points out this very suggestion in his writing of “The Media in the Unmaking of the New Left” (Gitlin, 2009, p. 333). Gitlin points out that there are early framing policies the media partakes in such as “trivialization…polarization…emphasis on internal dissension…marginalization…disparagement by numbers…[and] disparagement of the movements effectiveness” (Gitlin, 2009, p. 333). Through these framing policies, the observer has the capacity to alter the position of the observed. According to Gitlin, “The media [is] far from mirrors passively reflecting facts found in the real world” (p. 334) and is in fact, “the media reflection [is] more active (p. 334).

In reality, since  the observed knows the observer is watching and reporting on their actions, the observed may also wish to alter what they are displaying to the observer. People often act different when they know they are being watched. The microphone and video camera both have power.

We look to the news for truth, but are we really getting the truth or a warped vision of what the reporter and the editor wants us to hear or watch? It is an ugly thought.

Today, news establishments such as Fox News, The New York Times, CNN, and MNBC often slant the way they cover a story. The story may be about health care, but each individual station will most likely produce a spin to the story, or frame the story, to their stations or papers political point of view. I am a Fox News watcher and listener, and it is no secret that this media station is going to highlight any movement which is against universal healthcare. Additionally, Fox News is going to report from a Republican lens, possibly a conservative lens, and talk about how universal health goes against limited government and a move towards socialism.

This brings me to the Civil Rights movement as I answer the question, “Which of the protests that we have looked at thus far in the semester do you think has been most affected by the presence of media coverage, and how have the tactics utilized by that social movement been impacted by such coverage?” Well, as I ponder over this question, I am immediately brought back to such events as the Freedom Riders of 1961 that we read about. What was really going on during that time? If the masses of media were white (possibly some being Klansmen) and the masses of people were in favor of  segregation, how were the stories being filtered as they were being told? If all the reporters, writers, editors, and the majority of the readers were in favor of segregation and Jim Crow laws, just imagine how the news and social movements were being filtered by the media before being delivered. I wonder how the history that we have read and learned about all these years has been altered through non-passive, but active journalism. Or, are we comfortable enough to believe that the media was not that sly quite yet and that true reporting was actually taking place? If we are to believe Gitlin, and the theory presented about the earliest framing strategies, then we should not be so naive.

The Civil Rights movement must be one of the biggest and most significant forms of protests that the media played a role in, and this form of media really happened through television; in my opinion. By 1955, 92% of all households had a television and slots of airtime needed filled (Everet). Since there was no shortage of Civil Rights protests going on, both violent and non-violent, television captured a wide real of protests. Examples of protests captured were Martin Luther King Jr.’s walk across the Alabama Bridge, the “1957-angry white mobs of segregationists squaring-off against black students escorted by a phalanx of Federal Troops in front of Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi,” to the constant broadcastings and reminders of all the death and murders that had taken place (Everet). Such broadcasts have been said to have been a motivating factor for white people to realize that action needed to be taken in favor of the Civil Rights movement; for the sake of everybody (Everet). Through television, the Civil Rights movement succeeded. Television gave a loud voice to the movement, and protest utilized it to its fullest advantage.  

Everet, A. (n.d.). The Civil Rights Movement and Television. Retrieved from http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=civilrights

Gitlin, T. (2009). The Media in the Unmaking of the New Left. In J. Goodwin  and J. Jasper (Eds.), The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts. Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.