Blog 2: media

http://www.outfoxed.org/

This is the website for the book and movie "Out Foxed: Rupert Murdoch's war on journalism." The whole movie can't be watched but there are clips that can, and should, be viewed. The goal of Out Foxed is to spread awareness about some of the things done at Fox news that are from a journalistic, and on many levels a cultural point of view, very unethical. The problem with all this is that the news is something that people trust and consider the only truthful thing on television. It has been shown in the past that a lot of people can be controlled, or at the least manipulated, by things the see or hear in the news. The most obvious example of this is propaganda, which according to Webster’s dictionary is; Ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect. Â  Propaganda can be found in every culture on Earth, the only differences being the messages and the intensity. Some can be harmless, such as an advertisement for gum on a billboard, while others can be very powerful, such as the massive "Mission Accomplished" banner in red, white, and blue on the aircraft carrier where President Bush gave his victory speech back in 2003 on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. Last I checked we were still at war, so frankly I don’t know what mission he was referring to. But it got the point across, or at least the idea. With the massive sign, the rows of planes and the broadcasting on every news channel in the nation, the President really made it seem like we had won the day. Propaganda can also be very extreme. Nazi propaganda was able to convince officers in its military that the Jewish population was sub-human and needed to be eradicated. Another example is Iraq’s Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the minister of information, who announced as U.S. tanks were rumbling by in the background of his video address that, “The infidels are committing mass suicide by the hundreds at the gates of Baghdad. God is grilling their stomachs in hell." There’s no evidence that people believed him but the fact that he would address the country like that shows that either, it was just an act of desperation, or it actually works. The idea of propaganda and its implications are chilling and, at least in my mind, conjure up images of George Orwell’s 1984 where the government completely controls the thoughts and actions of its people. George Bush and his cabinet along with Fox news are no where near the totalitarians of fiction writings, but it is a scary thought when you think about the power they have to influence people and their decisions. (464)