Essay on Mass Media In America

Free Mass Media In America papers

School Safety
In recent years, tragedies have been visited upon schools across the country. From Kentucky to Oregon to Colorado, the notion of schools as safe havens has been shattered by the sound of gunfire. These acts are not limited to any geographic regions or family backgrounds, nor do they have a single ca

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970. In the Introduction, the author tells how he put together a book of the oral history of the American Indians, based on the government records of council meetings with white officials. In these meetings, all

The media is inescapable. At every checkout counter, there are ten different magazines showing us what the perfect girl looks like, who the sexiest men alive are, and Elvis is really an alien. Most people don’t think they are effected by this explosion of control the media has over us. That is because most people don’t realize that the media is actually controlling us. This is not a new idea, that people are ignorant to the fact they may not be as free as they think they are. The early Greek philosopher, Plato, wrote an allegory explaining how people are chained together and forced to only watch a blank wall with passing shadows. Although people in this day in age think that human kind is extremely civilized with it’s satellite tv and dvd players, media has us chained and controls what we see. The media finds us by radio, newspaper, and television. As Plato’s Allegory of the Cave depicts people as being deep in a cave, staring at illusions on the wall, people today are not so different as they stare at the illusions on the television screen.

Radio. It keeps us company as we sit in rush hour traffic and as we jog around the world on our treadmill. It gives a friendly wake up call in the morning. It is our friend. Or at least, that is what we, the consumer, are supposed to believe. Yet, little do we know, there are subliminal messages being transferred from the speakers to our heads every time we listen to the radio. Imagine you are listening to your favorite radio station and a song you have never heard comes on. You like that song so you wait anxiously at the end f the song for the DJ to announce who just sang that song. After hearing who sang it, we are encouraged to go to the Wherehouse and locate that CD so we can listen to that song whenever we want. After that idea is clicked in our brain, the radio station goes into a commercial break where we are exposed to more “must-have” items. Television is not different in that the programs that we watch so religiously are only there so that we watch the commercials in-between. Even news programs don’t deliver us the “real” news. They go for what we want to see; blood, violence, social disorder. News is also brought to us by way of newspaper. Newspapers are filled to the brim with stories, opinions, advice, comics, movie times, yet most importantly, advertisements. Ads are what keeps the newspaper in business as they keep radio and television shows in business. Companies spend thousands of dollars to make the consumer aware that life would be oh so much better if she wore their brand of lingerie. They control what we believe our needs to be. We need food, water and shelter. Yet, marketers would argue we need a swimming pool because a Santa Ana is coming; we need to buy their brand of cosmetics or else our skin with break out terribly. Advertisers propose problems to...