COMM

1. Respond to the below discussion with thoughtful and thorough commentaries.

Example of Misrepresentation:

One example of media misrepresentation is the case of Dan Rather's report on 60 Minutes II in 2004, which questioned President George W. Bush's military service during the Vietnam War. Rather presented documents that were supposed to support his claims, but the documents were later found to be forgeries. The misrepresentation in this case lies in the use of false documents to support a news story. This is egregious because it involves a major news anchor using fabricated evidence to make a significant accusation against a sitting president, potentially influencing public opinion.

Role of Bias in Misrepresentation:

In this example, bias plays a role in misrepresentation as Dan Rather's report was seen as having a potentially partisan motive. Rather's political leanings were perceived as leaning left, and the report, if accurate, would have been damaging to the Republican president during an election year. The use of false documents, whether intentional or not, gave rise to accusations of bias and an agenda to discredit the president. While not all cases of misrepresentation involve bias, the perception of bias can significantly erode public trust in the media.

As for tracking a relatively current news story and analyzing the presentation by different outlets, I recommend visiting news aggregator websites or conducting a web search for news stories and then comparing the coverage by different outlets. You can choose a topic of interest and explore how various news organizations present it. This will give you insights into how different outlets approach the same story and whether there are variations in their coverage.

2. Respond to the below discussion with thoughtful and thorough commentaries.

Provide an example of some form of misrepresentation in media over the years (such as staging news, re-creations, selective editing, image or text manipulation, information distortion, fiction, selection editing, bias, etc.). Give some background for context and answer:Why, in your opinion, is this an example of misrepresentation? Why is it egregious? How does bias play a role in this example's misrepresentation? Provide the link to the example.

An example of a media misrepresentation was reported in Farhi's (2015) article detailing the mishap Fox News broadcaster Mike Tobin experienced in the riots of 2015 in Baltimore. Tobin reported on Monday, May 4, 2015 that police shot a man in the back as he fled during a protest in the same neighborhood where Freddie Gray died a few weeks prior. Tobin went live from the scene to report a man was running from the police, officers withdrew their weapons, and fired. Tobin also reported seeing a revolver on the ground next to the man and commented that the man was not being aggressive towards the police.

Tobin along with other reporters from many different local and national news stations had been reporting on the events surrounding Freddie Gray and the protests that followed. Freddie Gray died in police custody on April 12, 2015 during an arrest and subsequent van ride to the police station. Six police officers were eventually criminally charged in connection to the death.

As the vents unfolded, it was learned that the police did not shoot the man (Farhi, 2015). The police were alerted to an armed individual and when they attempted to apprehend the individual, he tried to flee, dropped his gun, the gun went off, and he was quickly arrested. The gun was recovered on the scene. Shepard Smith, of Fox News, went on the air later to apologize for the inaccuracy of the report and clarified what happened.

This misrepresentation was very egregious because it had the potential to insight further violence and endangered citizens and the police. It also was detrimental to the attempt to rebuild the relationship between the police and the community.

This misrepresentation occurred, at least because of structural and systemic bias, if not ideological bias. Because it is impossible to uncover Tobin's ideological bias without further investigation, it is my opinion the systemic bias of television and structural bias of journalists are to blame. Cline (2009) advised television places certain demands on content to be considered good television and the chaos and eruption that occurred during Tobin's broadcast falls into this category because it provides dramatic imagery to viewers as to what transpired in real-time. This is what captivates viewers and pushes journalists to publish certain content.

The structural biases of journalists, including commercial, temporal, visual, bad news, narrative, and expediency biases all contributed to misrepresentations in the news (Cline, 2009). Tobin quickly attempted to produce a story that was fresh and would please his bosses because it would attract viewers. He was on scene and able to produce pictures of the aftermath that detailed a dangerous and chaotic scene. Tobin's story also promoted the narrative that filled the news scene in recent days in Baltimore, which was that police are killing the citizens of the neighborhood. Lastly, there were several media outlets on the scene covering the protests and Freddie Gray case. The competition for breaking stories and exclusive content motivated Tobin to quickly report on an unconfirmed incident, regardless of the issues it caused.

References

Cline, A. (2009). Bias. In Eadie, W. (Ed.). 21st century communication: A reference handbook (Vol. 2, pp. 479-488). SAGE Publications, Inc., https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412964005