Persuasive Argument

The Media

How many of you , honestly, before you came to this country though it was going to be a barren wasteland? Or thought that you would (the most stereotypical one but is still used) ride camels to your school or to your homes? Do any of you actually know what is going on in Palestine ? Or do you make the assumption that its just a feud between Jews and Muslims ? Honestly, this is media manipulation. The media are very influential in shaping the peoples perspective of the world. The way they do this is by selecting and emphasising certain aspects of issues and presenting it to the world, and of course , the people blindly believe anything the media says due to the fact that they think that "the news knows it all". In a 1972 article in Public Opinion Quarterly, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw came up with the term "agenda setting" and demonstrated how media agenda influenced public agenda based on a study of a local election. Every day, we read newspaper to be informed of what is happening. We rely on the news media for all kinds of information. However, there are thousands of things occur daily around the world. It is impossible to cover all the stories so the news media determine which stories are newsworthy enough to be presented. That act of highlighting certain issues is called setting the agenda for the public agenda. From the news media, people acquire information about public affairs and place the importance of a topic based on how much the news media emphasise it. Newspapers place the importance of a certain issue by making it on the front page with large headlines while TV news make that issue the first story to be presented in the newscast and devote longer time talking about it. The public then will believe those stories are very important and should be thought of and discussed with other people. The people that are however most affected by this media manipulation are the uneducated people who depend on the news for knowledge. These people are the ones who are victims of the media. Thinking that all Arabs are Muslims is a big one even though there is a majority of Christians in the Middle East. I mean common Jesus was born in the middd east. People should wake up and not believe anything the media tells them, think for yourselves and you'll find out that a lot of those so called "headlines" or "breaking news" are not worth missing your T.V show for or your football game. Don't be a victim, don't let the media control you.