WEEK 5: Antiwar Websites

 

  Mainstream Media and Anti-War News

The mainstream media have a lot of power when it comes to informing the public about current news. However, their content does not seem to cover a lot of Anti-war and conservative viewpoints. Why is this the case?

The historical reason as to why the media does not publish anti-war content originated in the Espionage Act of 1917 which states that any employee who posted negatively towards the war will be punished. 

As discussed in class, we talked about the mainstream media and how they have a "different agenda" than those running their own personal blog. Though both the mainstream media and personal bloggers have the same rights, the question is what makes their agendas different than the personal bloggers?

In a Pew Research study conducted in 2004, took a national survey of 547 local reporters, national reporters, editors, and executives. They found that 34% of the national press identified as Liberal, whereas 7% of the national press identified as Conservative. The largest category filtered in most of the remaining participants as neither party or "moderate" (Wemple). 

I watched a Joe Rogan podcast earlier this year with Joe Rogan interviewing Naval Ravikant. This interview still resonates with me because they talk about an interesting topic about web editors and how they have more power than most people in the government. They have control over what we see, how long we look at something, what our viewpoint is, and beyond. There is so much that these editors do behind the scenes that we don't know about, as a result, the content they want us to know is upfront and the facts are fairly skewed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/01/27/dear-mainstream-media-why-so-liberal/