What makes mainstream media mainstream reviews

The mainstream media is a collective journalistic entity that provides news and information to a large audience. This is in contrast with the alternative media , which reaches a much smaller and often more specific audience. This is how most people around the world get the bulk of their news. Mass communications have been around for a long time, as ample murals, statues, and carvings from Ancient Egypt, China, Greece, Mesoamerica, and Rome would indicate.

The mainstream media really began to come into its own when more communication options opened up, however; the development of the printing press, for example, allowed newspapers to thrive, while the radio opened the airwaves to broadcasting.

A lot of people were impressed by these achievements. One person impressed, and this had some implications for the future, was Hitler. If you read Mein Kampf , he concludes, with some justification, that Germany lost the first World War because it lost the propaganda battle…. More important for us, the American business community was also very impressed with the propaganda effort.

They had a problem at that time. The country was becoming formally more democratic. A lot more people were able to vote and that sort of thing. The country was becoming wealthier and more people could participate and a lot of new immigrants were coming in, and so on.

So what do you do? Therefore, obviously, you have to control what people think. This huge public relations industry, which is a U. The leading figures were people in the Creel Commission. In fact, the main one, Edward Bernays, comes right out of the Creel Commission.

He had a book that came out right afterwards called Propaganda. It was during the second World War that the term became taboo because it was connected with Germany. But in this period, the term propaganda just meant information or something like that. In Propaganda around , Bernays starts off by saying he is applying the lessons of the first World War. We can do it now because we have these new techniques. This is the main manual of the public relations industry.

Bernays is kind of the guru. He also engineered the public relations effort behind the U. His major coup, the one that really propelled him into fame in the late s, was getting women to smoke. He got enormous praise for that. So he became a leading figure of the industry, and his book was the manual. Another member of the Creel Commission was Walter Lippmann, the most respected figure in American journalism for about half a century I mean serious American journalism, serious think pieces.

Lippmann also wrote what are called progressive essays on democracy, regarded as progressive back in the s. He was, again, applying the lessons of the work on propaganda very explicitly.

He says there is a new art in democracy called manufacture of consent. That is his phrase. Edward Herman and I borrowed it for our book, but it comes from Lippmann. We can make it irrelevant because we can manufacture consent and make sure that their choices and attitudes will be structured in such a way that they will always do what we tell them, even if they have a formal way to participate.

Academic social science and political science comes out of the same thing. His main achievement was a book, a Study Of Propaganda. He says, very frankly, the things I was quoting before—those things about not succumbing to democratic dogmatism, that comes from academic political science Lasswell and others. Again, drawing the lessons from the war time experience, political parties drew the same lessons, especially the conservative party in England.

Their early documents, just being released, show they also recognized the achievements of the British Ministry of Information. It strengthens the predictions about the way the thing should work. And the predictions are well confirmed.

But these conclusions, also, are not allowed to be discussed. This is all now part of mainstream literature, but it is only for people on the inside. This is the founding of the constitutional system, so nobody studies it. That is roughly the picture, as I see it, of the way the system is institutionally, the doctrines that lie behind it, the way it comes out. That is mainly using diversion of one kind or another. From that, I think, you can predict what you would expect to find. Before advertising became prominent, the price of a newspaper had to cover the costs of doing business.

With the growth of advertising, papers that attracted ads could afford a copy price well below production costs.

This put papers lacking in advertising at a serious disadvantage: their prices would tend to be higher, curtailing sales, and they would have less surplus to invest in improving the salability of the paper features, attractive format, promotion, etc.

For this reason, an advertising-based system will tend to drive out of existence or into marginality the media companies and types that depend on revenue from sales alone.

With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The ad-based media receive an advertising subsidy that gives them a price-marketing-quality edge, which allows them to encroach on and further weaken their ad-free or ad-disadvantaged rivals. In fact, advertising has played a potent role in increasing concentration even among rivals that focus with equal energy on seeking advertising revenue.

A market share and advertising edge on the part of one paper or television station will give it additional revenue to compete more effectively—promote more aggressively, buy more salable features and programs—and the disadvantaged rival must add expenses it cannot afford to try to stem the cumulative process of dwindling market and revenue share.

The crunch is often fatal, and it helps explain the death of many large-circulation papers and magazines and the attrition in the number of newspapers. From the time of the introduction of press advertising, therefore, working-class and radical papers have been at a serious disadvantage. Their readers have tended to be of modest means, a factor that has always affected advertiser interest. The mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest.

The media need a steady, reliable flow of the raw material of news. They have daily news demands and imperative news schedules that they must meet…. These mainstream media companies have newspapers and TV stations in hundreds of markets, which may also stifle local competition. Alternative media is generally defined as independently owned news and information websites, publications, magazines, and digital media that cover the news from a specific point of view, whether that viewpoint is from a political minority, an ethnic group, or another independent community.

Depending on the publication or news site, alternative viewpoints can range from standard news coverage and analyses of current events to editorial commentary and the occasional conspiracy theory. In the era of the internet and social media, citizen journalism has flourished. The ability to reach an audience on any device or platform; push news to readers, viewers, and listeners; and make use of citizen voices is invaluable.

Traditional forms of alternative media are alternative newspapers in urban markets that focus on culture, arts, and entertainment while also covering local news. They usually have nontraditional advertising as well. Other alternative media examples are news sites that appeal to specific political schools of thought.

For example, The Daily Kos liberal and Breitbart News conservative are aimed at very different audiences and put a spin on current events according to their philosophies. While radio news outlets are often seen as mainstream media, some specific radio programs, along with podcasts, can be categorized as alternative media. Alex Jones and the late Rush Limbaugh are well-known examples of conservative radio commentary. Both branches of news media serve important purposes, and both are necessary to a strong democracy and informed citizenry.

Diverse voices and viewpoints provide greater context to events, as does choosing which story to tell and how to tell it.

Nowadays, mainstream media has the largest audience, the largest advertising revenues, and the most resources. Critics say that mainstream media is biased toward the left and lacks objectivity. Another criticism is that corporate media ownership stifles independent voices and viewpoints.

In contrast, alternative media outlets try to stand out in the crowded media landscape by providing a different viewpoint on the news. Alternative media will make no bones about their political views and aim themselves at news consumers who are looking for that specific point of view.

They may not have a news team but provide commentary or news aggregation. Even corporate-owned conservative news outlets claim the mantle of alternative media.

However, Fox is owned by a large corporation and considered to be part of the mainstream media by most Americans, according to Pew Research Center. When comparing the two, mainstream media vs. The thinking goes that corporate ownership will subvert editorial independence, while alternative media, by serving its smaller audience, has more freedom to report the news that the mainstream media has no interest in.

Alternative media outlets have broken stories that were later picked up by mainstream outlets, such as in , when ProPublica reported on children separated from their parents at the U. While modern news organizations strive for objectivity, that was not always the case.

Colonial-era publishers and pamphleteers were highly partisan and not afraid to show it. Colonial newspapers were instrumental in raising outrage against the Stamp Act in , when the British levied a tax on paper documents. The outcry led to the American Revolution. To this day, newspapers have an editorial point of view, although in traditional news organizations, the divisions between news, editorial, and advertising sales are supposed to be hard lines.

Anyone interested in mainstream media vs. That was one change, but there were other changes. The first World War was the first time there was highly organized state propaganda. The British had a Ministry of Information, and they really needed it because they had to get the U. They were targeting American intellectuals on the reasonable assumption that these are the people who are most gullible and most likely to believe propaganda.

They are also the ones that disseminate it through their own system. So it was mostly geared to American intellectuals and it worked very well. The British Ministry of Information documents a lot have been released show their goal was, as they put it, to control the thought of the entire world, a minor goal, but mainly the U. This Ministry of Information was extremely successful in deluding hot shot American intellectuals into accepting British propaganda fabrications.

They were very proud of that. Properly so, it saved their lives. They would have lost the first World War otherwise.

In the U. Woodrow Wilson was elected in on an anti-war platform. It has always been. The country was very much opposed to the first World War and Wilson was, in fact, elected on an anti-war position. But he was intending to go to war. So the question was, how do you get the pacifist population to become raving anti-German lunatics so they want to go kill all the Germans?

That requires propaganda. So they set up the first and really only major state propaganda agency in U. The guy who ran it was named Creel. The task of this commission was to propagandize the population into a jingoist hysteria.

It worked incredibly well. Within a few months there was a raving war hysteria and the U. A lot of people were impressed by these achievements. One person impressed, and this had some implications for the future, was Hitler. If you read Mein Kampf , he concludes, with some justification, that Germany lost the first World War because it lost the propaganda battle.

They could not begin to compete with British and American propaganda which absolutely overwhelmed them. More important for us, the American business community was also very impressed with the propaganda effort. They had a problem at that time. The country was becoming formally more democratic.

A lot more people were able to vote and that sort of thing. The country was becoming wealthier and more people could participate and a lot of new immigrants were coming in, and so on.

So what do you do? Therefore, obviously, you have to control what people think. There had been public relation specialists but there was never a public relations industry.

But this huge public relations industry, which is a U. The leading figures were people in the Creel Commission. In fact, the main one, Edward Bernays, comes right out of the Creel Commission. He has a book that came out right afterwards called Propaganda. It was during the second World War that the term became taboo because it was connected with Germany, and all those bad things.

But in this period, the term propaganda just meant information or something like that. So he wrote a book called Propaganda around , and it starts off by saying he is applying the lessons of the first World War. We can do it now because we have these new techniques.

This is the main manual of the public relations industry. Bernays is kind of the guru. He also engineered the public relations effort behind the U. His major coup, the one that really propelled him into fame in the late s, was getting women to smoke.