Influence The Influence..........

This was a paper I wrote for my English 122 class. It's my take on the various media influences on society. Warning, this is quite long.

Ever since it was referred to as the “Forth Estate” during the French Revolution, the media is all of its forms, has been a huge influence on society in various ways by acting as an unofficial member of the “checks and balances” system that has helped the three branches of government run the U.S for centuries. The media has been credited over time for lifting the veil and exposing some the biggest scandals not just in the U.S but all around the world as well, one of the most infamous being the breaking of the Watergate scandal by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The media has also been accused of on numerous occasions of using nefarious tactics of yellow journalism like sensationalism and scandal-making in addition to having a bias in order to sway popular opinion towards the opinion that they (the media) want you to have.

Television, movies, music, video games and the web have influenced the way that society thinks, especially its younger generations. Today’s youth are being blitzed by various forms of stimuli that are sometimes violent, sexual or something else that may be deemed unsuitable.

Using various sources, this paper is going to show that the media at large does have an influence on society, both good and bad. This I will prove by explaining the different forms of media then by using various sources, show examples of both good and bad influences that the various form of media has had on society. I will also show that even the negative aspect of the media’s influence on the public can turned in a positive by using the negativity as a stimulus for the public to resist negative things to which they are exposed.

When you are talking about the media and its various influences on society, you first have to show the vastness of the world’s oldest form of media, journalism. It’s common knowledge that the biggest impact on media and society as a whole was the first use of movable-type printing by Johannes Gutenberg around 1439, which sped up the process of mass producing literature to heights unimaginable in that day and age. It’s also common knowledge that during the French Revolution, the press served as a “Fourth Estate” or the truest form of checks and balances on the government. However, in the U.S, the advent of journalism, in the form of newspapers, first occurred in Boston in the year 1690 in a publication called “Domestic,” which only lastly for one issue before the colonial government at the time put the kibosh on it.

The two most impactful events that helped build American journalism were the 1st Amendment to the Constitution in 1791, which guaranteed the right of “free speech” and the invention of the steam-driven printing press by Jonas Booth in 1823 which not only took the production that Gutenberg’s press has and topped it but it also made printing en masse much cheaper then it was at the time. With the advent of those two items plus the first daily newspaper publication, the “New York Sun”, coming out in 1833, American journalism leapt forward into new heights not foreseen.

However, with all of these positive moves made by American journalists, there was something bound to happen that would leave a sour taste in most American’s mouths. This particular event is what John Therkelsen covers in his article “Joseph Pulitzer and his Prize.” In the article he talks about how in 1895 a battle was in full effect between the aforementioned Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Hearst and Pulitzer had been battling over readerships, reporters and whatever else was worth fighting over when they both decided that to get readers that they would give the more eye-popping stories the front page treatment while making the headlines bigger, bolder and more appealing to the public at large that they were striving for.

Both Hearst and Pulitzer kept going down this path of teasing the public, until one day their sensationalist ways, nowadays dubbed “yellow journalism” by historians due to a comic called the “Yellow Kid” which first ran in Hearst’s paper but was bought out by Pulitzer, overrode the sense of journalistic integrity that should be at the forefront of every publisher’s mind. When the USS Maine was blown to smithereens in a Cuban harbor on February 15, 1898, the vast majority of the newspapers in New York City took an approach of not jumping to conclusions. However, Pulitzer and Hearst jumped all into the jingoistic aspect of this like sharks smelling blood. Both Pulitzer’s paper, the “World” and Hearst’s paper, the “Journal”, ran with the story of a supposed “suppressed” cable message, which said that the tragedy of the USS Maine was not an accident but an attack by the Spanish. This message was proven to not exist but the two publishers got the public reaction that it desired, which was the public to become downright bloodthirsty in their demands for then-President William McKinley to declare war on the Spanish. Sadly, the negative tones and styling of the two publishers’ sensationalistic brand of “journalism” can be seen on a daily basis. Just look at the front covers of the New York Post and the New York Daily News.

A more modern example of this is exposed in Charles Davis’ article “Exposure Beats Hatemongering.” Davis’ article exposes how, during the health care debate that raged this past summer, the various cable news networks, Fox News and CNBC most notably, focused on the louder and more vocal people that said the particular political views that the networks show. In the case of the more right-leaning networks, they took a very jingoistic approach by preying on the still ruminating racial feelings of their mostly Southern viewer base.

Specifically, Davis points out how statements made by Fox News commentators like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity used racially-toned statements to stir up sentiment against President Obama’s public opinion. Beck has openly stated that he feels that Obama has what Beck feels is a “deep-seated hatred” for white people. Beck’s statements, while obviously race-baiting, pale in comparison to conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, who uses the words “Obama” and “Hitler” in the same sentence as often as Terrell Owens throws quarterbacks under the bus. The race baiting that these commentators did lead to people at town hall across the nations taking a more racially-tinged negative stance when it came to President Obama’s plan for a public option. The best example that Davis gives on this is that at one of these town hall meetings in Maryland, a man held up a sign stating the following; "Death To Obama, Death To Michelle And Her Two Stupid Kids.”

It wasn’t just the conservative media that used unsavory tactics when it came to the public option. CNBC is just as guilty of rabble-rousing but not as race-baiting as Fox News was. In his article, Davis points on that a blog called Talking Points Memo received an e-mail stating that CNBC used to go up to various Tea Party activists searching for the more vocal and uproarious Tea Party rallies, because they would make for good television (Davis n.pag.). Davis also points another e-mail that the blog received in which the following was sent to a Tea Party Google group by Tea Party Patriot national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin: "We have a media request for an event this week that will have lots of energy and lots of anger. This is for CNBC."

The overall negative tactics of “yellow journalism” or “tabloid journalism” are actually a good influence on society. The unsavory tactics that these networks have used and continue to use has forced some people to find more alternative and independent forms of getting news. In their article "Tabloid Journalism and the Public Sphere: a Historical Perspective on Tabloid Journalism", Anna Maria Jonsson and Henrik Ornebring talk about this:“This type of structural elitism in the mainstream mediated public sphere in turn creates a need for one or several alternative public spheres, where different people debate different issues in different ways.”

What Jonson and Ornebring are saying is that the people who report the have an air of being know-it-alls and that they are the only authority on current events. The effeteness of the anchors turns off some people enough that they hunt for way to get their news that not only lets them get news from outside of the selective few stories that the mainstream media shows but also gives them differing opinions that aren’t interrupted from the word go. Therefore, people are allowed to form their own opinion as opposed to being told what their opinion is.

Another positive influence that journalism has on society is that, with the advent of the Internet age, news is more accessible, instantaneous and inquisitive now more than ever. In his article, “The Changing Role of Journalism in the Internet Era,” Terry Wimmer points out yet another positive aspect of Internet journalism: “The Internet does not erase accessibility issues between journalism producers and journalism consumers, but it does increase the opportunity for feedback and exchange. It is my belief that the future of journalism links indelibly to the exploration and development of interactivity and exchange with on-line customers.”

The most positive influence that Internet journalism has on society is that it influences society to become journalists themselves. The advent of YouTube and social networking site like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have opened up new doorways for everyday people to break a potential news story just by posting a 140-character blurb on their Twitter feed or uploading a picture from your cell phone onto your Facebook page. The Internet allows people to report the news themselves, instead of the news being reported to them.

The media’s influence on society isn’t limited to just journalism. Television’s influence, more specifically advertising on television, on society is vast and ever-changing. The Pittsburgh punk band Anti-Flag extols on the negative effects of both in the song “This Is The End (For You My Friend)” off their 2006 album “For Blood and Empire” and the video for the song as well. The song is about how the media blitzes society with ads featuring images of unattainable and borderline unreasonable stereotypes that are what the masses should fall in to.

The video for the song is of the band performing in a small basement-like venue with different facts intertwined in to the video like “The average weight of a model is 23% lower than that of an average woman.”, “Approximately one million men and boys suffer from anorexia.”, “Americans spend approximately $12.4 billion on cosmetic procedures per year,” and “By age 21, the average person will have watched 1,000,000 commercials.”

In addition to the facts presented in the video, the band, known for putting in essays in their liner notes for each song, placed an essay from Jean Kilbourne which said the following: "Advertising is an over $250 billion a year industry. We are exposed to over 3000 ads a day and will spend two years of our lives watching television commercials. Yet, remarkably, most of us believe we are not influenced by advertising. Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love, and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us who we should be ... Sometimes they sell addictions. Hollywood and the fashion, cosmetics and diet industries work hard to make each of us believe that our bodies are unacceptable and need constant improvement. Print ads and television commercials reduce us to body parts (lips, legs, breasts) airbrushed and touched up to meet impossible standards. TV shows tell women and teenage girls that cosmetic surgery is good for self-esteem. Is it any wonder that more than 80% of fourth grade girls have been on some sort of fad diet?"

For the most part, advertisers make the vast majority of their money off of self-hatred and greed. In the past few years, that has been such a backlash against these ads that advertisers have been making a more concerned attempt to wash away these stereotypes. So once again, something that has a negative influence turns to be a positive influence by making people fight against what unrealistic images are being portrayed to them.

Taking a much more positive outlook than Anti-Flag are Kyla M Day, Marina Epstein, and Monique L Ward. In their article, “Uncommonly Good: Exploring How Mass Media May Be a Positive Influence on Young Women's Sexual Health and Development,” the three authors state that all of the various sexually-tinged images throw at young women through the TV screen are actually quite esteem-building and allows for young women to find the proper ways to express themselves, therefore finding themselves.
Day, Epstein and Ward make four main points in their article. The first point they make is that nowadays there are magazines like Seventeen and Teen that are specifically for girls who are dealing with becoming a woman. Day, Epstein and Ward’s article points out that in 1996, 51 percent of girls who are 12-18 saw magazines as important when it came to finding answers to questions they may have about anything that has to do with sex. The second point that Day, Epstein and Ward make in their article is that through different types of television characters that have different types of personalities ranging from the iconic Lucy Ricardo to more modern-day female television characters like Daria, Carrie Bradshaw or Phoebe from “Friends,” it gives girls who are looking for someone, whether real or fictional, that feels the same way about life that they do. The third point that Day, Epstein and Ward make is that through the plethora of dramas that have been on television the past few years, young women has seen every plausible (and a couple of implausible) dating scenarios and therefore can expect what will or will not happen when it comes to intimate relationships with the opposite sex.

The final point that the authors brings up is the advent of something called “Girl-zines” a.k.a “grrrl zines.” These “Girl-zines” are independently-published and are read in small circles, much like the tiny zines that were published during the first wave of punk rock in the latter 1970s. The authors of these “Girl-zines” tackle many of the same issues that the television writers do. However, unlike the TV writers, the “Girl-zine” creators go over these issues with a “Riot-grrl”-like perspective, allowing girls who don’t feel that they fit in with the multiple “traditional” portrayals that they see on television these days. Alluding back to the similarity with the first wave of punk, the D.I.Y, for girls-by girls ethos of these “Girl-zines” allows the girls who read them to further the influence of the “Girl-zines” by starting one themselves. By doing that, they become one of the ones with the solution, instead of being one of the ones with the problem.

Another way that television is a positive influence on society is through educational programming. Daniel R. Anderson, a psychology professor at UMass, wrote about the many positive aspects of educational programming in his article “TV Can Be Positive Influence”. In this article, Anderson talks how when he and some of his colleagues interviewed and looked the high school transcripts of teenagers that they first interviewed when the now-high schoolers were attending preschool back in the late 1980s. What Anderson and his associates discovered was that the students who watched educational programming like “Sesame Street”, “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” and “Captain Kangaroo” had higher grades in math, English and science. Another fact that Anderson pointed out in his article was how Bob Keeshan, the creator and portrayer of the “Captain Kangaroo” character, lobbied heavily for the Children’s Television Act, passed in 1996, which mandated that broadcasters must show a minimum three hours of children’s programming a week (Anderson n. pag.). This act paved the way for show such as “Barney & Friends”, “Blue’s Clues” and “Yo Gabba Gabba!” becoming the hit shows they are to this day and sending the little ones of today a very positive message.

However, there are some cases where people think are an expert on something just because they watch a lot of a certain type of show. In the Stanford Law Journal article titled “Investigating the 'CSI effect' effect: Media and Litigation Crisis in Criminal Law”, authors Simon A. Cole and Rachel Dioso-Villa examine the fact that with the ever-rising popularity of procedural dramas, most notably the “C.S.I” series, and movies like “Silence Of The Lambs”, people are becoming more interested into the technical aspects of crime-solving. However, there are those in the legal field who say that the popularity rise in shows like C.S.I and Law & Order influences some people too far and when these people serve jury duty, they feel like they are pseudo-experts and therefore tainting the legal process.

Cole and Dioso-Villa’s article examines six various influences, both positive and negative, that the show “C.S.I” has on society today. The first influence that “C.S.I” has on society, according to Cole and Dioso-Villa, is called the "strong prosecutor's effect”. The “strong prosecutor’s effect”, which is what the authors show as the effect that jurors who watch “C.S.I” have on cases because more and more people are being acquitted because forensic evidence which used to be strong enough to convict a person now also has to pass the muster of people who feel that because they watch shows with Laurence Fishburne and Daivd Caruso in them, they are now D.N.A experts with high standards when it comes to forensic evidence. Cole and Dioso-Villa also point the opposite of this, which they call the “weak prosecutor’s effect”, which is different from the “strong prosecutor’s effect” in the way that some prosecutors ask potential jurors if they watch “C.S.I” or not. These prosecutors also use very animated and flashy forensic evidence, like on show in order to sway these educated jurors.

The next influence that Cole and Dioso-Villa discuss is called the “defendant's effect”, which they state is the unfair lionization of the various prosecutorial witness by the jurors who see these same people being shown on their TV sets as heroes, thereby putting the defense at a disadvantage.

The next two influences that Cole and Dioso-Villa point out are the most positive ones in their article. There are referred to as the “producer's effect” and the "educator's effect”. The “producer's effect” is the term that Cole and Disoso-Villa use to describe the words that the producers of “C.S.I” used to dispel rumors that their show was upsetting the legal process. The producers said that they were using the initials “C.S.I” to educate people, not upset legal proceedings. The other counter-action taken by the producers of “C.S.I” to fend off their detractors is what Cole and Dioso-Villa called the "educator's effect”, which is what the authors’ use to describe the fact that shows like “C.S.I”, “E.R”, “Law & Order” etc. aren’t only educational to the masses but also influence people to choose the same careers that they see their favorite characters have on the TV screen.

The last effect that Cole and Dioso-Villa point out is the most negative one. They term it the “police chief's effect". What Cole and Dioso-Villa mean is that not only does “C.S.I” and other shows in the same vain not only educate regular people, it also educates criminals as well. It gives criminals the necessary info to know how to clean up a crime scene of any and all forensic evidence. To put a positive spin on this, knowing that criminals have more of an idea of how to decontaminate a crime scene now forces the top forensic scientists to come up with new and fool-proof ways to gather the damning forensic evidence that they need to put criminals away.
The media’s influence isn’t just limited to the small screen. Movies have been influencing the people who go to see them since James Dean was racing cars in “Rebel Without A Cause.” Speaking of James Dean, the movie industry has been accused for decades of making things that some people deem unsavory cool. The most glaring of these is smoking.

In their article titled “Do Favorite Movie Stars Influence Adolescent Smoking Initiation?”, authors Janet M. Distefan, John P. Pierce and Elizabeth A. Gilpin examine the possibility that teenagers are influenced by the people that they see on the silver screen. In the article, Distefan, Gilpin and Pierce analyze the data gathered from interviews with various kids to determine if they are in fact influenced by their favorite actors and actresses and present it in three different tables.

Table one shows the different actors and actresses that the kids name and the various movies that they were in and had scenes in which they were seen smoking. The most popular names mentioned were Brad Pitt, who smoked in “Legends of the Fall” and “Sleepers” and Drew Barrymore who smoked in four movies, including “Batman Forever” and Sharon Stone who was seen smoking in five movies, including “Casino” and “The Quick And The Dead”. It also showed the number of kids who tried smoking after they saw their favorite actors smoking. The number ranges from 3.6 percent of adolescent boys that were influenced to smoke by Sharon Stone to 15.1 percent of adolescent girls who said that Brad Pitt influenced then to try cigarettes.

Table two shows the discrepancy between boys and girls when it comes to if their favorite actor/actress influencing them to be open to tobacco-related advertising. The table shows that girls were much more likely to susceptible to advertising much more than boys were. Table three shows the various feeling that both adolescent boys and girls feel about smoking in general, the exposure they have to smoking and how their favorite movie stars influence them. What Distefan, Gilpin and Pierce discover is that movies, to a small extent, do influence kids to smoke but not on the level that detractors say they are.

Nowadays, the movie industry has been known to push people towards a positive lifestyle, and they use very interesting ways to do it, most notably the Jason Reitman-directed film “Thank You For Smoking”, starring Aaron Eckhart as Nick Naylor, a lobbyist for “Big Tobacco”. In the movie, Naylor suggests to his boss that they should convince the movie industry to make smoking “sexy” again by have more actors smoke on film. Naylor is subquently kidnapped and covered in nicotine patches, from which he nearly is killed do to nicotine poisioning. When he wakes up in the hospital he’s told that he can never smoke again do to hypersensitivity for nicotine that resulted from the attack.

After an article written by his then-girlfriend Heather Holloway, played by Katie Holmes, in which she exposes every secret that Naylor told her about the lobbyist community, tarnishing his legacy and leaving his jobless right before he’s to testify before the Senate in regards to a bill being brought up to vote that would put a picture of a skull and crossbones on every pack of smokes. Naylor still shows up to testify and in probably the most honest thing ever said in a movie, Naylor says that it’s not the Senate’s job to warn people of various hazards that the world has. Naylor went on to say that the real problem is that parents need to educate their children so that they can make will-informed decisions on their own. Naylor also tells the senator from Michigan that all Fords should comes with warning labels showing the risk of driving cars.

“Thank You For Smoking” was the perfect way for the movie industry to sway the public toward choosing not smoking. The director showed Nick Naylor as an anti-hero who cut through the pompous overbearing actions of Senator Ortolan Finisterre, played by William H. Macy, who was a good metaphor for all of the various organizations that want to tell other people how to raise their kids and told the public that it’s up to parents to show their kids the facts and let them make the decision. The movie was a very positive influence as it forced people to realize that their life choices aren’t made by other people, it’s made by them.

As influential as television and movies are, there’s probably no form of media more influencitial than music. In his book, “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century”, author Alex Ross examines the various influences that music has had over the past century.

One aspect that Ross brings up is the fact that black musicians of the early 1900’s like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker were allowed to perform in hallowed places like Carnegie Hall due to the color of their skin, therefore they heading out to the various clubs and bars and developed American jazz in the revered art form that it is today. For without American jazz, there would be no Motown, no hip-hop and no Chuck Berry.

Another point that Ross bring up in the book is how music shaped the moods in Russia, America and Germany during World War II. Ross’ book points how in October of 1932, Stalin commissioned various Soviet composers, in addition to other artists of the time, to created various works that would glorify the ideals of communism and its ideal goal of a social utopia, that would keep the mood of the Soviet Union positive. Hitler, unlike Stalin, was a fan of music and felt that political ideology had no place in music and that people should appreciate the work of German master like Wagner and Strauss. In the United States, the music world was turned on its ear by all of the exiles escaping from being handcuffed creatively in both Nazi-occupied Europe and the Soviet Union. Some these exiles include Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. These European exiles forced American-born composers like Aaron Copeland to further expand on their talents, therefore making American music becoming more and more influential by the day.

A more modern way to show how influential music is, good and bad, is the argument over rap music. Rachel E. Sullivan discusses the impact that rap music has in her article called “Rap and Race: It's Got a Nice Beat, but What About the Message?” The article shows how much rap music does affect youth, both black and white.
For her paper, Sullivan went to a mall in an unnamed town out in the Midwest and had every teenager that she came across fill out a questionnaire about the music that they listened to. Each person who took the survey was asked the following questions: How much they like rap music on a scale from 1(not at all) to 10 (favorite music to listen to)? , How many hours a week do they listen a week? And who are their three favorite rappers?

What Sullivan discovered is that the overall average rating that rap music was given by the survey takers was 7.98 out of 10. The more interesting tidbit that Sullivan discovered was that on a scale of 1 to 5 where one meant strongly disagree and five means strongly agree on the statement, “Rap is a truthful reflection of society”, the average answer given by black kids was 3.3 and the average for white kids was 3.1. showing that that there’s no racial divide when it comes to rap music’s impact on society there for rap music doesn’t have anywhere the influence on society, neither good nor bad, that people say it has.

A more recent way that the media influences people is through video games. In his article titled “Go Ahead, Steal My Car”, Bill Burke takes a very mocking with the various people, including then-Senator Hillary Clinton, who think that the “Grand Theft Auto” video game series is actually harmful to children. He sums up his feelings on the situation with the following:
“You need to be honest with yourself. Go outside and find a locked car -- or go to the back alley where missile launchers hover in a glowing light waiting for you to pick them up, or go drive down that street in your town where all the strippers hang out waiting for you to pick them up -- and see if you're tempted. But not just tempted. Not just amused or excited by the possibility of becoming a dark hero of the criminal underworld. You need to determine if you're actually willing and able to act on those temptations. You need to determine whether it's possible for you to change from whoever you were into someone completely different, someone who no longer recognizes the conditions and regulations of a society that, until you played the video game, were all you knew and believed in. That is, you need to find out just how stupid you really are.”

After reading that quote from Burke, doesn’t the notion of kids reenacting the things they see in “Grand Theft Auto” seem quite silly?

However, the best way to find out if kids are being influenced by video games is to ask them. Ron Leone and Erica Scharrer do this in their article “I Know You Are But What Am I? : Young People’s Perceptions of Varying Types of Video Game Influence”. For their study, Leone and Scharrer interviewed 118 different sixth and seventh graders from various types of schools and also had them fill out a questionnaire asking them about the positive and negative aspect of video games. What Leone and Scharrer discover is that the kids that are interviewed feel that the younger the kid is, the more susceptible to the more violent aspects of video games because they still have trouble drawing the line between video game and reality. The kids, in my view, feel as I do that the only way video games or any other form of media can be a negative influence on you is if you let it.

Nicholas Bowman and Andy Boyan focus on a different positive aspect of video gaming. In their presentation to the 2008 Meeting of the International Communication Association titled “Cognitive Skill as a Predictor of Flow and Presence in Naturally Mapped Video Games", Bowman and Boyan present evidence that realism-based games like “Guitar Hero” and the movement-based Nintendo Wii system not only help their hand-eye coordination but their critical thinking skills as well.

The test they did was having two subjects play the first-person shooter “Call of Duty”, one using the motion-sensitive “Wiimote” and the other using the standard Nintendo GameCube controller. What was discovered after letting them play for ten minutes then testing their reflexes was that the standard-based controller was better-suited for games like “Call Of Duty”, which test your thinking skills, while games that involve more hand-eye coordination are better suited for the Wii. This article shows what is probably the best thing about video gaming, which is the honing of skill that will help you focus better when you are an adult.

Through various sources covering the various aspects of the media from journalism in its many forms to advertising to television shows that teach, this paper shows that the media has a much more positive influence on society than people think. This paper also shows that what little negative influence that the media may have, is only negative in the eyes of people who think that it is. What it comes down to is that people can only be influenced negatively if they allow themselves to be affected by the negative. So in short, influence, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.