Monday, July 14, 2014

"The Press: Watchdog with a Blind Eye"


In this article the author makes a case against the general negligence of the press in not reporting the entirety of the facts about a story. The example she uses is of the Tellico Dam controversy in eastern Tennessee. She points out that the press reported the issue with regards to an endangered fish that might be led extinct if the dam were to be completed, whereas the main reason for the controversy was the Cherokee people and their stewardship of the lands in question. She contends that their was a collective silencing of the Cherokee people and their outcries against the injustices they had to endure by watching their sacred lands being destroyed by the dam. She believes that this level of censorship demonstrated by the press is detrimental to its supposed purpose and compromises the integrity of the institution.
I also believe that the press should be held responsible for their actions, they have a duty to report the facts and not bias them with special interests. The press in this country is a business, with no duty other than profit. We cannot reasonably assume then that most of the news outlets are actually reporting the facts. Without proper dissemination of information, a society cannot defend itself against abuses of power such as the Tellico Dam controversy for example. 

1 comment:

  1. Tyler,
    I agree with you that it is very hard to trust the media when they don't give us all the facts or try and distract us from the larger evils by blinding us with smaller issues. I am not really sure what we can do to stop such things from happening because by nature people have agendas. If the situation had been reversed and the Cherokee's were in charge of the media the Tellico dam would have never been an issue because we would have only seen the negatives. Truthfully we need unbiased media and I am not sure that is possible. The next best alternative method I can think of is having media that has completely opposing views so we at least get the best and the worst of situations.

    I have an interesting theory about the reason they used the fish as the problem. It seems to me that the fish isn't all together very cute and people in general like cute and cuddly things. If you can donate money to save an ugly looking fish or a cute fuzzy panda the panda is usually going to win. People fight a lot less hard to save things that they don't find appealing. If Tellico had said that by putting up the dam they would wipe out all the cute fuzzy bunnies people would have been up in arms, but people don't care as much about a slimy fish as they would about a bunny. People see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. Yes the media is biased, but so are most of the people who listen to the media.

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