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Media Criticism Reading Response 3

Ryan Laurie

Julie Frechette

Worcester State University

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Media in the United States have undergone a great deal of growth and change in the past

two centuries. Some of these changes include technological advancements that have given

communities more affordable access to news, entertainment, and other media. The ability to

create strong narratives have improved dramatically with time and innovation. The portrayal of

different ethnicities and ideologies have also changed and improved with time and advocacy,

although proven difficult with resistance from the hegemonic elite. This essay will discuss how

the way entertainment and popular culture have been defined in the days of Shakespeare are

different than the way they are defined today in the Internet era. Representations in the media

will also be discussed in terms of how gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality have been

portrayed in the media. The everyday challenges women face in the media as well as the struggle

for equality will be discussed in depth. The way African Americans have been stereotyped in

media over the years and how their perspectives are narrowed in journalism will looked at as

well. The queer community and their long struggle for visibility and a voice in the media will be

analyzed too. Lastly, the evolution and regression of news journalism in the 21st century, as well

as the rise of fake news in the digital age will be discussed.

Art and entertainment communities share changes from generation to generation.

However, the two have often been separated into “high” and “low” culture, with art being

complex, highly regarded, and primarily for the elite and educated, whereas entertainment has

often been seen as being provocative, cheap, and easily digested by the masses. The wealthy and

elite have tried very hard to keep themselves separate from the poor and less fortunate, but the

rise of democratization, capitalism, and technological innovation especially during the 1950s

have blurred the lines between the two and created what is called “mass society”(Campbell,

Jensen, Gomery, Fabos, & Frechette, 2014, p. 201). For example, Vince Van Gogh’s “Starry
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Night” was a valuable piece of artwork for its time and only the wealthy could afford to go view

it on display, but now anybody can buy a cheap version of it on a poster or on a phone case; this

lowers the value of the art piece. Instead of dividing society between high and low culture based

on art and entertainment, it is more accurate to say that “our taste” or interest in these two

categories “is a form of identification”, and it “tells us who we are, and more crucially, who we

are not” (Campbell et al., p. 206). Although commercialism has made a lot of popular media

formulaic, with similar television shows and music popping up, everyone likes different forms of

media. People tend to “group themselves” around different kinds of “cultural forms”, known as

“taste publics”, and these taste publics can be described as groups of people who “share ideas,

values, beliefs, language, and meaning”, called “interpretive communities” (Campbell et al., p.

209). People should be willing to explore new interests without being objective to different ideas

and values, as “multiple perspectives” allow democracy to thrive, called “cultural pluralism”

(Campbell et al., p. 215). Peoples’ interests and ideas on art and entertainment were especially

shared when the Internet gave the masses an opportunity to find one another through forums and

social media. While social media gave everybody access to creating and sharing ideas with one

another on a virtual platform, it also made them vulnerable to advertisements. In the

documentary Generation Like, it describes how social media platforms like Facebook has made

users addicted by seeking attention for the ideas, links, images, and videos they share with the

world (Rushkoff, 2014). When one user gets noticed by enough people, either through “Likes”

on Facebook or “Tweets” on Twitter for example, corporations begin to notice and seek the user

out to advertise their brand. These social websites make money off users sharing their creativity

and interests with the world, and this causes an “endless feedback loop” of these users, or

consumers, marketing their own content back to themselves (Rushkoff, 2014). Now that the
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changes in art and entertainment over the years have been discussed, let’s look at how

representations in media have changed as well.

Representations in the media are an important part of diversity and have been changing

since medias’ beginning. People, places, and things are all represented in the media in narratives

created from individuals or small businesses looking to share a story to corporations wanting to

make a profit. Growing up, who we are and how we think comes from the “social interactions”

we have every day as well as our “experience with mass media” (Campbell et al., p. 221).

Family, friends, and coworkers influence our ways of life no doubt, however the powerful stories

we watch on television or read in a book, for example, shape our thought processes. When social

discourse becomes repetitive in the media, however, they form these “patterns of thought” that

“circulate the dominant ideas of a society” (Campbell et al., p. 223). These ideas passed down

through the narratives of hegemonic power don’t necessarily represent our ideologies, but they

try to reflect the “established mainstream values” and the “dominant social order” (Campbell et

al., p. 223). As such, gender, class, race, and sexuality are narrated in such a way that reflects the

views of the socially dominant groups in society. It is important now that we shift our focus on

the groups that are poorly represented in the media. Note that men, typically Caucasian,

heterosexual, middle-aged, and upper-class, control most of the media and market mainly to men

that are typically Caucasian, heterosexual, ages 18-38, and middle-class. Women have often been

sexualized in the media and poorly portrayed “through magazines, film, television, social

networking sites, newspapers, fashion, and advertising” (Campbell et al., p. 224). For-profit

industries look to construct and transform American culture to boost consumerism and keep

minorities “in their place”. A second group poorly represented in media are African Americans.

Their stories of identity on the news and other media tend to be “reduced to stereotypes” to
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“easily label them” or reduce their complexity as characters in a story (Campbell et al., 228). A

third and final group poorly represented in media are members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,

Transsexual, and Questioning (LGBTQ) community. There has been a great deal of social

progress of the inclusion of queer individuals in media, however they are hardly a marketed

demographic and their appearance in the media happens too quickly and goes away. Let us focus

for now on the issues women face in the media.

Women have been represented in many ways in the media, with only a few of those

depictions showing independence or equality for women. With 64 percent of journalists being

men and 97 percent of media outlets being controlled by men (Bedford, Edelman, Kim, Freeman,

& Davis, 2015), its not a surprise that women were, and still are, portrayed in the media as

innocent, voluptuous mothers that cater to their husband’s every need, prompting what is called

the “male gaze” theory. In the 19th century, Feminism came about to challenge these ideological

notions and is an “advocacy for females’ attainment of political, social, and economic rights”

(Bedford et al., 2015). Narratives about women often come from the point-of-view of men, and

so they are often objectified in music, news coverage, and politics. Even commercials take an

aim at women, such as a Snicker’s commercial in 2014 that appeared to show construction

workers, who happen to all be men, ‘cat-calling’ passing women on the street, however instead

of sexist remarks, they compliment the women. This is fine, however the climax of the

commercial appears with the message “You’re not you when you’re hungry”, sending audiences

the message that men can’t respect women unless their hungry (Wade, 2014). While men

dominate the media landscape and often portray women being lesser than men, there are

successful women. These women are met with resistance however, and sometimes not from the

opposite sex. An example of this is singer Katy Perry’s halftime show performance at a football
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game, where fans thought the songs she sang were throwing shade at another singer, Taylor

Swift. In the media, women are constantly pitted against each other, and the public is often

“feeding into the notion that women can’t revel in each other’s successes” and that they “have to

compete against each other” (Morin, 2015). This competition is socially-driven of course, as

social media fuels rivalry and controversy. The entertainment industry isn’t the only medium

where women are faced with resistance, as the newsroom is no better. Fox News host Bill

O’Reilly and chairmen Roger Ailes were both convicted of sexual assault allegations against

women in the workplace (Frechette, 2017). The hegemonic elite believe harassment keeps

women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community in their place. A major struggle that women

face in the workplace is double-standards, where women are expected to look beautiful and are

constantly judged based on appearance rather than credentials, and men are often placed above

women in a “socio-cultural hierarchy”, often promoting violence against women (Frechette,

2017). There cannot be an individual effort in making change in the workplace, but instead a

unified effort which pushes education, scholarly research, investigative reporting, social media

activism, pressure on advertisers, as well as the enforcement of anti-harassment policies and

discriminatory claims (Frechette, 2017). Women today are having their perspectives and stories

shared more than ever, but they have a long way to go before equality is reached and fully

accepted. The next paragraph will focus on how the African American community has been

represented in media.

African Americans, as well as other non-Caucasian groups, have been portrayed poorly in

the media like women have. In American history especially, people of color have been oppressed

by the white majority for hundreds of years. Freedom from slavery, gaining equal rights, and the

ability to participate in politics have been major milestone for African Americans. However, the
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way the community has been represented in the media has only been altered, not necessarily for

the better. Television shows like Beulah, The Nat King Cole Show, and Good Times have tried to

an unrealistic depiction of African Americans living like the post-nuclear Caucasian family that

never challenges the “American Dream” (Riggs, 1992). Today’s television shows and cinema

seems to only know how to portray two extremes of African Americans, either as lowly criminals

or wealthy bachelors. Journalism today struggles with understanding how to represent people of

color on the news. The year 2016 seems like it would be a historic year for the African-

American community, after all, Barack Obama became the first black president in American

history. Unfortunately, black Americans were “covered in less than 2 percent of mainstream

media stories” during the “first year of Barack Obama’s presidency” (Muwakkil, 2010).

Whenever African Americans make the news, journalists tend to portray them with narrow

personality types, typically as criminals or struggling lower-class individuals. The news hardly

focuses on the broader issues of black lives, and media bias often creates a narrative of racial

hierarchy and privilege (Muwakkil, 2010). Bias and racial assumptions of African Americans

seep into the United States justice system as well. As of late and with the “Black Lives Matter”

movement, the black community is actively fighting for equality and change in the country, and

more narratives from the community are being shared in the media as well. Next, we will discuss

how the queer population has been represented in the media.

The LGBTQ community, like women and people of color, has had a long struggle for

adequate representation and a voice. In “Queer Representation in Media” by Media Smarts, two

criticisms about queer representation over the years in media are described (Media Smarts, n.d.).

The first is that an early “minority model” of identity politics in media portrayed queer people as

being inferior to heterosexuals, and so tension rose that this community had to be “just like
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everyone else”. This early model focused solely on middle-class gay white males, with an

emphasis on assimilation to acting like heterosexuals (Media Smarts, n.d.). The second criticism

is focuses on the introduction to the word “queer”; identity and sexuality are now seen as having

multiple parts as well as multi-layered. This new model says that all sexualities are points on a

continuum of possibilities (Media Smarts, n.d.), which sounds correct, however media outlets

socially construct how they believe the queer community should be represented to audiences,

which are often simplified for ease of consumption. A couple mediums of queer representation

are film and television. Representation of the queer community over picture shows has been

rocky over the years. At the turn of the twentieth century, queer identity on television and film

was shown to be ridiculed and a form of laughter, often using the word “sissy” or “butch” to

describe such characters (Media Smarts, n.d.) There was more acceptance of homosexuality in

the 1950s, however portrayals were often censored, and homophobia worsened by the 1970s. By

the 1990s, gay rights were much more vocal, and the community became more visible, however

representations in film and television still expected this group to assimilate into a mainstream

heterosexual society. In the documentary Further Off the Straight and Narrow, queer acceptance

in television was discussed to have risen after the airing of shows like The Ellen Show and Will

and Grace, showing homosexual characters as the protagonists rather than having supporting

roles (Sender, 2006). Today, there is a growth in the amount of “queer media”, media produced

by members of the LGBTQ community, and these media forms include not just film and

television but also books, comics, video games, and blogs. These media forms have evolved to

allow members of the queer community to express themselves and find one another. With the rise

of participation in these media forms, however, brings advertisements. Over $233 million is

spent annually on advertising in queer print media alone (Media Smarts, n.d.), allowing the
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community to legitimize themselves through purchasing power. This sounds like a step in the

right direction, however issues like “ghettoization”, marginalization of non-middle-class queer

people, and overshadowing civil rights’ issues are opened up. Today, advertisements continue to

struggle with creating acceptable narratives about the queer community. Stereotypes for

homosexual characters continues to be used, “socially-correct participation” is used to send the

message that only one kind of queer behavior is acceptable, and some advertisers end up hypo-

sexualizing queer characters in ads and this causes more harm than good for that community

(Media Smarts, n.d.). Corporate media need to be more accepting of sexual diversity in the

United States and provide positive messages of alternative identities. We as citizens must ask

who is creating narratives portraying queer characters? How is queer identity represented in

media? Are the portrayals of queer identities in the interest of mainstream heterosexual media or

another group’s? These are just a few of many questions we should ask when approaching the

media. We’ve discussed a number of identities in this essay; it is time we analyze a medium that

creates narratives of these identities every day, journalism.

Every day, millions of Americans sit down at their televisions and watch 24-hour news

broadcasts. While the news shares what the weather will be like as well as update citizens on

local politics, their narratives don’t always tell the truth. Inside the newsroom there seems to

always be a corporate power looming above, pulling the strings of so-called expert journalists to

deliver us “breaking news” between segments of advertising. To understand how the news

became this way, we must first look to the past in the days of the penny press. The spread of false

or “fake” news in the United States begins in around the 1800s, in cheap daily newspapers or

“penny presses” with “spawned a shift in American journalism” which took “sensationalism,

commercialism, and tabloidism” to greater levels (Campbell et al., p. 135). A rivalry between
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journalists Pulitzer and Hearst created a competition for promoting some of most outrageous

stories of the time referred to as “yellow journalism”, which were some of the first tabloids

created to boost popularity. Besides tabloids, newspapers aimed at creating “objective” news

with the purpose of being “accepted by such a heterogeneous group” by taking a neutral

approach to every story (Campbell et al., p. 139). In the turn of the 20th century, the introduction

of televised news broadcasts and the 24-hour news cycles gave the public access to visual

narratives in favor of lengthy print-newspapers. However, an emphasis on “talking points rather

than news coverage” began to dominate the newsroom around this time, giving away the notion

that “journalism, instead, is a storytelling business” (Campbell et al., p. 140). As more news

outlets shifted their focus to television, printed newspapers became increasingly obsolete and the

way news outlets made money changed as well. Having to rely on advertisements in the form of

segmented commercials, businesses in journalism have been forced to fire many of their

qualified journalists in favor of cheaper “news pundits” who give their opinions in the form of

“partisan news” (Campbell et al., p. 142). News that continues all day long meant formulaic

stories about crime and celebrity gossip that are two-sided, which divides the public. Today’s

news media treats their audience more like “consumers instead of engaged citizens”, often

spreading ethnocentric ideas and individualistic values (Campbell et al., p. 149). Its important to

understand that most news media outlets are controlled by the hegemonic elite corporations. This

ownership prompts news outlets to create selective narratives coming from privileged “official

sources”, which “avoids contextualization” and reflects “corporate bias” (McChesney, n.d.).

Nonetheless it is important that consumers of news media choose their source of news carefully.

Judging journalists’ work by the type, quality of their stories, and the issues they present are

important factors in deciding which source of news is best. News needs to focus on real world
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issues such as poverty and healthcare, as well as promote unity among communities, not focus

on individuals’ achievements. We discussed how journalism has evolved from the age of print

media; it is time to discuss the digital age and the rise of fake news.

The 21st century has brought a great many technological changes to the United States.

The rise of the internet and the increased reliance on its plethora of functions has completely

changed the way people live. Any person who has access to a smartphone, tablet, computer, or

many other digital devices can easily search any desired information on the world wide web.

While its wonderful that individuals can learn new things through search engines like Google

and seemingly stay in touch with the rest of the world over social media like Facebook, a number

of problems can arise from using the internet. First, it must be noted that print journalism is

dying due to the loss of revenue as well as the cost to publish, and advertisers have shifted their

marketing campaigns to the internet because there they can easily advertise to their target

demographics (Webb, 2017). The shift to bring the news to a digital space has impaired the

quality of journalism, partly due to the fact advertisers have some control over what published

articles are acceptable to be read alongside their advertisements. When a monetized website

gains a great deal of traction from internet users taking notice of their site, that site receives more

money. This has been taken advantage of by not only news sites creating outrageous stories to

attract a broad audience to the site, but celebrities seeking attention as well. Donald Trump is a

celebrity and an attention seeker one may think of as of late in 2019; he often publishes “tweets”

on the social media platform Twitter and many social media users take notice. When news sites

create a trending story such as a “feud” between President Trump and NBC journalist Megyn

Kelly, people take notice of these topics, and in the end the websites become richer from all the

web-traffic (Rutenberg, 2016). It may seem unbelievable how a tweet can turn into a news
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“story” published across several trusted news sites like The New York Times and The Washington

Post. It is also unbelievable how many people believed in the fake news published around the

2016 United States Presidential Election that resulted in Donald Trump becoming President. This

isn’t the first time that lies have been spread to change the tide of an election. In the 2000

Presidential Election, many African American votes in Florida were discarded in the hopes of

giving George W. Bush the victory (Perez et Sekler, 2002). So how does fake news go viral and

influence the opinions of internet users? It often starts out with a misleading news story, either

from the influence of corporate power or other for-profit institution, such as a false need to buy

Christmas presents (Brien, 2013). A social media user reads and believes this published story,

and immediately writes about it on a public social media platform. The issue with this scenario is

that the user never bothered to fact-check the information he read from the story (Maheshwari,

2016). Disasters and crises that happen in the United States are another influencer of the spread

of fake news. Original published news of tragic events often leads users to come up with shared

conspiracies and media propaganda that spreads rapidly across the web; Alex Jones is an

example of a conspiracist who firmly believed the Sandy Hook shooting was faked by the U.S.

Government (Westneat, 2017). It is often recommended that three sources are necessary to

validate information, but this is not necessarily true. In fact, multiple sources may lead back to

the same original article or publication. We’ve discussed the seriousness of fake news, but is it

really an issue? According to an article published on Columbia Journalism Review, the online

audience who looks at fake news or affiliated websites is ten times smaller than the audience

who looks at real news or known trustworthy websites (Nelson, 2017). Oddly enough, the fake

news audience looks at real news websites just as much or greater than fake news sites. The real

issue is that social media is the source of most fake news, and sites like Facebook cater news
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stories based on the users’ interests, creating user biases from a lack of exposure to a variety of

news (Hachman, 2017). Recently, Facebook and Google have made an effort to implement fact-

checking into the publication process on their sites. As users of the internet, we must make a

conscious effort to be critical of the information we are exposed to over the web. Getting news

from trusted news sites, being open to new ideas and information while also taking a critical

approach to them, and supporting alternative media sources are important for a safe internet

environment.

Media in the United States continues to evolve and change. The country has faced and

overcome many challenges, such as what mainstream society and corporations are willing to

accept in books, television, cinema, news, advertisements, and other forms of media. What

society believes is art and entertainment today are different than what they were considered

decades ago. Mainstream society has also shifted their feelings for how women, people of color,

and the LGBTQ community are represented in media. Women are finding greater roles in media

today, while also tackling issues of sexism in the workplace and equality. People of color are

having their personal stories shared more often today, while dealing with issues of racism and

equal opportunities in the community. Queer people are being recognized and present more than

ever in media, while continuing to deal with homophobia and accurate representations in the

media horizon. These groups share growing activism efforts and a voice in the media. Journalism

has grown and undergone many changes over the century. They provide us news on issues and

current events, but many have fallen under the control of corporate power. As the news has gone

digital, so have advertisements and the spread of fake news. We must be considerate of the

interests of others, be aware of the different representations in media and make corporate

America aware of inaccuracies compared to the real world, support local news and alternative
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media over corporate owned and controlled, and finally be critical of information on the web as

there is a pandemic of fake news.

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