Scandalous Media

Many of the decisions of the world that occur everyday are in the hands of major corporations, but it is the media that decides what we get to see and what we don’t. In Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky discusses that it is the national media who set the agenda for what is seen. They select the topics they feel are important and emphasize them to the public. Often they try to choose the most hard-hitting or shocking stories because that is what the public likes to see. The smaller stories that may be more honorable are often lost in the exciting stories of scandals or corruption. Working for Pipe Dream for the past three years, I have seen how media such as a newspaper can shape the agenda of what news is seen. An example would be the athletics department scandal. Most students had no idea this was going on until the campus media groups investigated and reported on what was going on. It was then that students and faculty finally got up and demanded answers. Another example was when I traveled to different areas of the U.S. and heard what they were saying about the scandal. Out west, it seemed as if the story was blown way out of proportion making Binghamton University sound like a horrible school. This goes back to our discussion of communication and how messages can get misinterpreted as they move along such as in a game of telephone.