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Questions or comments? Please contact the editor, Denise Shanks
This exercise relates to Chapter 7’s Policy debate on media ownership. Your textbook points out that American media has become more concentrated in recent years and that there is a push to allow further consolidation of ownership. An argument made by opponents of media concentration is that media quality will decrease if there are fewer owners. This exercise uses media coverage of the War in Iraq to focus on that aspect of the debate.
1. Read this article http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/IraqMedia_Oct03/IraqMedia_Oct03_pr.pdf and list the 3 misperceptions that Americans had regarding the invasion of Iraq.
2. How do you think this reflects the textbook’s point that broadcast media “offers more headlines than analysis?”
3. How do these misperceptions affect support for the war?
4. Go to http://www.journalism.org/node/243 and explain the results of a survey on media ownership and local news quality.
5.Go to http://www.pbs.org/cgi-bin/fredfriendly/spot3_show.cgi and read the transcripts and take the short survey. What argument does this site make for explaining the lessening of media quality?
6. Do you think the concentration of the media affects media quality or is the race for ratings a more significant impact on media quality?
