Assignment 3: Facts About Cirino

Thinking about Cirino
The media has always been an important aspect in people’s lives. Everyone always wants to know the latest news and what’s going on in the world. A few decades ago, the main forms of communication were newspapers and radio. Now days, people have plenty of options to receive news whether from radio, cable networks, or online. This has opened doors to many media outlets, which has created news to be more biased. In a society where information used to be interpreted by few to many, this has now changed shifts to where information has become much more inclusive and more people have the chance to get their voices heard making the media much more biased than ever before.
Starting off, since Cirino’s article in 1977, the
media environment and its toll on news bias has taken off completely. Other than cable news and rise the of talk radio, the Internet has been a place where people have access to many sites to receive news and information. With these websites, news bias has increased with more people giving their insights and comments on news. Blogs have become increasing popular with people creating their own news stories making topics of relevant news more aware including discussions where people are obligated to criticize people in the media. Author Brice Thornton gives an example of this in his article “A Brief History of Media Bias” when he explains how CBS news icon Dan Rather gave a report on documents that criticized President George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service that “within hours Internet bloggers had exposed the documents as forgeries.” Dan Rathers’ career on CBS soon came to end regarding the situation. Even now with the rise of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, people are sharing news like no other allowing more areas of criticism and news to be biased. People are also accessing the Internet more than ever for their main source of news as a result of mobile phones.
Moving on, the news coverage of International news in America is at a low.
According to the Article, “America’s biased view regarding international news” the article suggests that American news has been “delinquent in international news coverage and in other areas of news as well.” It mentions that during the US war against Iraq, the US news withheld a lot of information that was going on during the war. One incident involved 12 American soldiers being captured and killed on tape in which the American networks were forced not to show the tapes due to requests from the Pentagon. The article suggests that American news broadcasts choose not to show a lot of relevant information and instead choose to air only what the government wanted them to reveal such as things like adding “more emphasis in broadcasting images of soldiers giving children candy [and] Iraqi soldiers happily surrendering to their family.” The article also suggests that the majority of America’s news coverage has been focused on news that mainly American’s want to hear. I can believe this because today mainly all you hear about is news regarding celebrities and news that seems to be to entertaining to the people only. Cirino makes a great point about this in his article when he says how ABC, CBS and NBC chose to show live coverage of the royal wedding and the space launch over more important events that took place during the same time like the Kissinger Trip, the Watergate hearings and the Food and Agricultural Organizational meeting because an event like the royal wedding was considered more entertaining. Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, in her discussion in the video “The news about the news,” says the reason why we don’t hear about international news is because “networks have reduced the number of their foreign bureaus by half,” many of which these places are home to more than two billion people. She also found that local news being the main news source for people only accounts
for twelve percent of international news. Even more interesting in a study found by Miller she revealed, “Today’s college graduates as well as less educated Americans know less about the world than their counterparts did twenty years ago.” So as one can see it is clear that international news in American is at a decline.
Moving forward, Cirino’s vision of a variety of coexisting, openly- biased news voices representing opposing politics and viewpoints have not come any closer to reality. The majority of the news that we see today is the same coverage as every other new source. Mostly all journalists are approaching the news the same way and there is no real diversity. Like Lisa Miller said in her video mostly all news sources cover the same news stories and most of the stories are recycled.

All in all, with the many outlets that are available today for news, one can’t help but to expect news bias to keep increasing. At a rate that the US is going with the government controlling what can be revealed in American news and what can’t, International news is going to become les and less available across the US. It is clear that what the US needs is more diversity in news coverage other than the same news being repeated and being similar to one another. It’s going to take a while for the media system to get to a point that people would like it to be but first the right steps have to be taken in order to advance.

Works Cited
Grabowicz, Paul. "The Transition to Digital Journalism." Print Editions Decline. N.p., 2 July 2013. Web. 1 July 2013.
Miller, Alisa. "Alisa Miller: The News about the News." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 July 2013.
Smith, Jessica T. "AMERICA 'S BIASED VIEW REGARDING INTERNATIONAL NEWS: IRAQ." AMERICA 'S BIASED VIEW REGARDING INTERNATIONAL NEWS: IRAQ. Marist News Watch, n.d. Web. 1 July 2013.
Thornton, Buce. "A Brief History of Media Bias." Defining Ideas (n.d.): n. pag. 12 June 2013. Web. 2 July 2013.