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| Chapter 7: The Media |
| You Decide |
| This exercise relates to Chapter 7’s Policy Debate on media ownership. Your textbook points out that American media have 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 Iraq war to focus on that aspect of the debate. |
| 1. Read the article located here and list the three misperceptions that Americans had regarding the invasion of Iraq. |
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| 2. How do you think this reflects the textbook’s point that broadcast media “offers more headlines than analysis”? |
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| 3. How have these misperceptions affected support for the war? |
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4. Go to one of PBS’s Fred Friendly Seminars titled “Disconnected: Politics, the Press, and the Public” and read the transcripts and take the short survey.
What argument does this site make for explaining the lessening of media quality? |
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| 5. What factors do you think affect media quality? |
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