Do the media play a big role in ideology? The answer to that question goes to the root of ongoing debates over whether or not the media as a whole institution reflect social reality truthfully. The matter of truth in my view links in with this argument because the media again influences people’s thinking and attitude toward society.
For example, some political economists argue that media power is being restricted to even a small number of hands. They also argue that mass media institutions whether publicly or privately owned have a corporate priority of maximizing profit, which in turn is leading to superficial news formats. By this I mean the content of the news and other media sources such as newspapers becomes even more “untruthful” and therefore relevant and informative news has no space. This is my view is damaging the media because such inappropriate goals by the media (profit maximizing) are reshaping society views about news worthiness, and attracting a large amount of oppositional voices. Such oppositional parties such as trade unions, feminists, anti-racists, environmentalists, and other groups committed to social change are representing a threat to the interests of media organisations. The implications of reducing news to just a commodity form are surprising to say the least, particularly when these types of organisations are struggling to have there voices heard.
Even at a glance at the front pages of different national newspapers on any given day, or the national news broadcasts on rival networks reveals a broad similarity in the stores being covered. This bias of relatively the same stories bring covered in the dominant media and news organisations shows how these media company’s favour one side of an argument to an other, thus showing and revealing close ties between the media and there political and corporate counterparts. An example of this is Rupert Murdock ownership of BSKYB and most of the media organisation within the UK and a well know keen supporter of the labour government. He also owns a large extent of media organisations within the USA. The USA and the UK were the two main dominate countries whose leaders stood shoulder to shoulder (Tony Blair the leader of the labour government and President George Bush) front lined the war in Iraq
In particular I want to briefly concentrate on a satellite news channel called Sky News. Sky news coverage of the war in Iraq, in my view portrayed a one sided argument from this news channel. It justified the war in Iraq yet it other news channels portrayed a two sided argument something that Sky News didn’t do to a large extent, thus influencing the British society in their views and arguments about such a controversial discussion such as the war in Iraq. These views were clearly evident when sky news for example asked the viewers to send in there views about the war in Iraq via e-mails and text messages.
This propaganda briefly mapped out useful highlights and a range of important issues, which I would argue that in my view it is a necessary to convey the argument that news media organisations are in the interest of ruling class domination. The partnership of news and propaganda is, in my view, unsuitable. The propagandist unlike the journalist is set out with the deliberate intention of deceiving the public and concealing the truth he of any story not just the war in Iraq, such stories such as the death of Princess Diana and Dodi Fiad, and to this day many people do not know the exact truth to what happened that day for example how come it took more than three hours to get Princess Diana to the hospital. So does ideology play a part in the media? Yes it does.
