Media and Citizenship Answers

With hundreds of millions of Internet sites and twenty-four hour news, citizens can find news at any time of the day on a wide range of topics. This availability makes it easy to stay up-to-date with the latest information, even during times of crisis (like September 11th, 2001). In addition, with the creation of “blogging”, there are millions of opinions and viewpoints available for public access. This allows the average citizen to fine tune their opinions based on the arguments of other informed citizens.

The twenty-four hour news cycle changed American media. With unrelenting news coverage, citizens wishing to stay informed can do so at all hours of the day. Additionally, public response to local, national, and international events is faster, and this requires prompt and appropriate responses from local, national, and international governments before they have a chance to meet and discuss the events. The result is a public that demands action and is quick to label governments as sluggish if action is not taken immediately.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a perfect example of the muckraking abilities of the media. Even though the story was fictional, Upton Sinclair illuminated the corruption and abhorrent conditions of the meat-packing industry. Sinclair’s book changed society; in the years following The Jungle, public outcry was so intense that the Food and Drug Administration was created to monitor the poor working conditions of workers and increase food safety.

Freedom of press is protected by the Constitution for good reason. Freedom of press was a freedom protected and used by our founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams, to champion the movement for independence. It is the job of the media to deliver the facts, even if those facts anger members of the public or the government; therefore, it is critical that the media’s right to print the facts be protected. As Thomas Payne’s Common Sense proved, media has the ability to change thousands (or even millions) of opinions and change society as a result.

For two-hundred years, the newspaper (and other printed media) were the most reliable and up-to-date medium for reliable information. Although the radio became popular in the 1930s, it was not until the television became common in the 1950s and 1960s that the newspaper was dethroned as the king of media. Television changed the game. For the first time, people could see the news, and sometimes it was live. In 1991, CNN and other news outlets provided live coverage from a war zone for the first time in history. Soon, cable news channels began covering events around the world twenty-four hours a day. This increase in media coverage garnered faster public responses, and therefore required quicker government responses to the news. Then, in the late 1990s, the Internet exploded in popularity and became an instantaneous source of many facts, views, and opinions; however, because many Internet sites are not verified for accuracy, much of the information that is found on the Internet cannot be trusted unless all sources and authors are thoroughly checked.