The Media Factor

1. Comprehension Check

1. What is one huge problem with the media, as the author sees it?

2. How are the media involved into your personal life?

3. Why are traditional TV and radio broadcasters panicking?

4. Should you ever put your trust in one news source?

5. Why did the competition for airtime range from ferocious to vicious when the author covered breaking news for ABC News?

6. Why was O’Reilly’s adrenaline pumping when he got a panicked call from the New York assignment desk?

7. Why are we not informed by the best and brightest?

8. Why will there be no more sweetheart deals between political power brokers and media titans?

2. Discriminate true statements from the false one. Justify your choices by relevant information from the section.

1. There is no point in freedom of speech if we see eye to eye with each other.

2. You can easily identify the media barons’ control over you.

3. The good news is that the huge increase in competing media outlets has already caused standards to soak.

4. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who earned the credit for toppling an administration, still looked like newshounds, not rich celebrities.

5. Bill Clinton and most of the Clintonites have always shied away from the press because the President began his political career in the pre-Watergate era.

6. Too many of the lapdogs have become watchdogs.

7. Sometimes you might want to hear more information because it is your job as a citizen to face up to it.

8. “Eyes Wide Shut”, the famous final movie of the great director Stanley Kubrick, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman was beyond any comparison.

9. Radio is doing much better than TV.

3. Fill in the gaps.

1. All political experts, even if they piously --------- otherwise on interview shows, believe that so-called --------- advertising works in a campaign.

2. The media can be used by powerful people to ----------- and persuade you and often lie to you. That’s dishonest , sometimes downright ------------.

3. We wanted to be like them. We wanted to right -----------, ----------- corruption and -------------- democracy.

4. Now idealism is in ----------. I’m trying my best to be a good reporter though it is a full-time, ----------- job.

5. But we are not ----------- to the new realities.

6. I get away with my ----------- attacks on government corruption and political ---------.

7. The media moguls have lost millions in audience share to --------- and the Internet.

They have to ---------- and they don’t like it. they claim that the flood of start-up news outlets is --------- reportorial ------------. But now your news is no longer --------- by a few powerful, ----------, sometimes corrupt broadcast executives.

8. Many people in Washington knew about Kennedy’s reckless ----------, but the editors were ---------- by the brash young president.

9. If I’m -------- about news competition, I’m bored ---------- by the entertainment competition.

10. It’s not easy for the talk show hosts to get ------------ every day.

4. Discussion Points

1. How can we protect ourselves from getting hurt by the media?

2. Why is conformity good for running Xerox or Microsoft but it is death to truth-telling?

3. Do you agree with Daniel Schorr who thinks that journalism “may have become a tail on a big kite – the media industry”.

4. What do you think about censorship?

5. Will electronic information outlets ever replace traditional sources of information?

6. What kind of personality and skills do you need to be a good reporter?

7. Do newspapers invade people’s privacy in our country?

8. Do you think that such programs as Vox populi on former Channel 4 can help to shape people’s opinion and later manipulate them?

9. Does a correspondent tend to give a biased version of the events.