The Press: Watchdog with a Blind Eye

In "The Press: Watchdog with a Blind Eye," the author talks about how the press can basically manipulate any situation and control the outcome based on the issues they find important and worth reporting. One of the statements in the article that really stood out to me was when the author touched on the press being “blind to a domestic issue” for such a long time and tying that to the current situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The wars in the Middle East have been something of intense debate over the last decade and the thought of the press being able to mold the minds of the people based on how or what they report is something I found a little disturbing. To me, the author makes it sound like the press is something that cannot be trusted which is the opposite of the way I would like to think of the press.

Specifically in the article, the author touches on how the press reported the Tellico Dam controversy as being an issue of a fish versus progress being made. Progress in this situation was the dam being built. The real issue was the horrible injustices being done against the native Cherokee people as a result of the dam being built. The author did also touch on how the environment was affected by the dam being built. One result of the dam was the deeper levels of water becoming stagnant, which resulted in the plants and animals of the water having difficulty to survive. In this case, I found the rulings of the court as well as the way the press reported the issue, to be completely against what American was founded on and the way it should be run. The way the Cherokee people were completely ignored and basically found to be irrelevant was sad and heartbreaking.Overall, I think there are many lessons that can come from reading this article. One of which is that we, as a society, must become more educated on issues before taking a stance on them and that we cannot substitute short-term gains for the long-term betterment of all people.