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Welcome to our discussion of "The News Media." A recent Gallup poll show that 60% of Americans distrust the news media. They don't
feel like the media reports the news fully, accurately, nor fairly. As we begin our discussion of the news media, I'd like for you to
keep in mind two important facts about the news media- they are key to understanding the news media.
Number one, their survival requires profits; yes, I said, profits:
their survival requires profits. We'd all like to think they are in it for altruistic motivation, but the fact is that they are in business to make
money. Secondly, profits require rating, or viewership, or distributions. So they've got to keep that wheel turning, keep the production
going so they can make the profit, and they have to make the profits, and the profits require a large distribution of their product. We're going
to look at some of the historical developments of the news media. We'll talk about two of the key technologies and innovations that catapulted the
news media, particularly the print media, into a place of prominence in this country. We'll look at the time of yellow journalism, which was soon
replaced by objective journalism, which seems to now being replaced by, once again, yellow journalism. We'll talk about the alliance between
journalism and politics. You know, politics is an important part of our society, and journalists have played an important part in the propogation
of political messages. They've served a number of functions: one being the signaling function; there is also the common carrier function; the
watchdog function, as well as the partisan function. We'll take a look at each of those functions of journalism as it relates to politics.
And then we'll conclude by looking at current news audiences, and the division of those audiences. We'll talk about the partisan divide
as well as the information divide. With that introduction, let's take a look at the news media today.