Perfect Model Essay On Quiz 2

The government has two primary means to exploit the media, namely access and control. In terms of access, the government’s ability to exploit and manipulate the media is based on two facts of life. First, government actions are acutely important to almost every facet of life. Accordingly, people, business, and society have normal interest in knowing what the government, and people in government are saying and thinking. Second, the vast majority of society learns about what the government is thinking and saying from the media. As a consequence, the government can influence the media by providing or denying access to information that the public does not knows about but is in the public’s interest. By providing such access, the government can tailor the information that is released in a way that fits their interests and desires. An example, of this would be the Bush administrations reports on weapons of mass destruction that were used to convince the country that the invasion of Iraq was necessary. In addition, access can be used to make demands on the media. For instance, the government can condition access with a wide range of requirements, such as only writing about one aspect of a story. For example, some media organizations are said to have a conservative, such as FOX; or liberal, such as MSNBC, bias. Conservative and liberals in the government can and have reportedly provided FOX and MSNBC with information that tends to support one side while being critical of the other. FOX and MSNBC, then report that information without revealing the other side to their viewers. Those viewers are then robbed of a balanced neutral reporting of the news. If a viewer does not decide to take in a broad base of different news media and news organizations, the potential effect of such governmental exploitation of the media is the indoctrination of the people along conservative and liberal lines.
Secondly, the government ability to exploit the media is possible by its ability to control a number of circumstances. For example, the government can order limits on the freedom of a journalist to report. This was illustrated in the requirement during the invasion of Iraq that reporters were embedded with soldiers. While the reasoning for such a requirement was safety, the side effect was that reports were not allowed to move freely. Another way that the government can use control to influence the media is through its ability to, for example, take legal action against media corporation or journalist. While the Constitution does provide the media with a number of protections, oftentimes the threat is enough to have a chilling effect of reporting.
Any government, even an oppressive government, ultimately needs to support of its citizens, or at the very least, their acquiescence, in order to stay in power and maintain control. The fundamental way of keeping the people’s support or acquiescence is to provide them with proof that the government is acting in the people’s interest, following the law, protecting the nation, and doing its job. As mentioned, because most people have no independent ability to investigate or examine the government, they must rely on the media to perform this duty for them. Most governments understand this relationship and therefore endeavor to make it work in their interests. In other words, most governments understand that it they can control or influence the media, they can control and influence what the people think about the government. To be sure, the more positive stories about the government, or negative stories about the enemies of the government that a published and disseminated, the more likely it is that the people’s personal beliefs will support the government and oppose the enemies of the government. Conversely, the more reports about the government that show it is not working in the people’s interest or not doing its job, the more likely the people will oppose the government. The logic is simple then. The government wants the people’s support. The media can either help or hinder the people’s support of the government. Therefore, the government needs to influence to media to influence the people to support the government.