http://matthewthomas5.wix.com/massmedia

Matthew Thomas

Dr. Shutkin

FYS Digital Story Proposal

December 3, 2014

The intention of this project is for you to define a personal philosophy of social justice and digital media.

Digital media allows for harmful and hateful language to be expressed in a much more prolific manner.  To me, digital media is simply a tool.  Like any tool, there are people who use it appropriately: those who seek to improve the world we live in through the unparalleled access digital media gives us to the general populous.  However, tools can be misused, and the threat represented by media is often overlooked, or rather under-appreciated.  The biggest threat posed by digital media is also one of the greatest utilities it offers: broad, constant access to millions of viewers. 

Consider Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN: your basic powerhouse, 24-hour news conglomerates.  These organizations have real power, and their power is not just represented through their financial worth (though that certainly helps).  Their power stems from their audience.  It comes from their ability to sway public opinion in a way that is frighteningly effective.  From MSNBC providing no positive coverage of Mitt Romney and no negative coverage of President Obama in the 2012 presidential campaign (businessinsider.com), to CNN arguably, and sometimes quite obviously, pressing liberal agendas harder than conservative ones (newsbusters.org), to Fox News’ generally appalling smear campaigns ran on President Obama and pretty much anyone with a dissenting opinion (Google “Fox News bias” and take your pick, there’s plenty of material to choose from).

To appease those who would wish that I included sources for this last statement regarding Fox News: don’t worry; there are plenty to come.  The idea for my digital story is simple: present the most radical right and left wing agendas endorsed by television anchors with an enormous bias towards sensationalism in the eyes of the uninformed, typically undereducated public and evaluate the threat their propaganda poses to this country as a whole.  My main focus will be on Fox News.  These are people who slander the President of the United States by unfoundedly declaring him a Muslim, and, worse yet, these are people who believe that declaring him a Muslim is a way to slander him.  These are the people who vilify a man in California on national television for taking advantage of the food stamp system to obtain extra food for himself, but celebrate corporations that open or purchase a subsidiary company in a foreign country and legally move their headquarters to that subsidiary as a means to increase profit through this somehow legal method of “tax inversion”.  Both the man in California and these companies are accomplishing the same thing: self gain by taking advantage of a flaw in the system.  But it is the man that is selfish and lazy, and the company that is clever and resourceful enough to rig the system in their favor.  They dutifully ignore that by rigging the system one of these two is obtaining groceries, and the other is essentially stealing trillions of dollars from the federal government (Schoen), for their own financial and political gain. 

It is examples like these that make cable news networks so dangerous, and while Fox News is right in this case that food stamps are not a right and should be used only as a last resort, Fox News anchors actually have the power to convince people that it is morally outrageous that a man could steal groceries while encouraging companies to do the same on a scale a trillion times larger.  They do this on live, national television, and they get away with it.  Worse yet people emphatically believe them.  That’s power.  That’s why their influence must be reduced, and only informing the public of their hypocrisy and completely biased agendas can control them.

I have chosen Microsoft PowerPoint as the multimedia resource to be used to relay this information.  I am already familiar with PowerPoint, as are most people.  I believe that this familiarity will help my audience feel comfortable in the face of the unique perspective towards digital media that this project asserts.

Annotated Bibliography

"Fox Cheerleads U.S. Companies Moving Overseas - Because Obama." RSS. Web. 3

            Dec. 2014. <http://crooksandliars.com/2014/07/fox-cheerleads-us-companies-

            moving>.

            This article does an excellent job of displaying the bias and malicious intent behind the hypocrisy of some Fox News talking heads.  Of special importance is its claim that Fox News can stomach trillions of dollars of lost tax revenue as long as they can continue slandering President Obama for the sake of propaganda.

"Fox News Follows California Beach Bum Living Off Food Stamps For Years."

YouTube. Ed. Michael Savage. YouTube, 9 Aug. 2013. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.   <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP_izYhdehY>.

This is the video of Fox News having the California man unfairly living off food stamps onto their program.  This video is important because while it serves to show Fox News bias and political corruption through juxtaposition of this man and corporate tax evaders, it also shows the enormous benefits that network news can have.  The points brought up in this video are significant ones and should absolutely be displayed to the public eye.

Hadro, Matt. "Non-Partisan? Not a Chance! The Worst of CNN's Election Bias."

NewsBusters. 19 Nov. 2012. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.

<http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2012/11/19/non-partisan-not-chance-

worst-cnns-election-bias>.

            This article lists the many instances where CNN is thought to be covering the 2012 election in a partisan manner.  This article will be helpful for the final project, though it was not cited in the proposal.

LoGiurato, Brett. "MSNBC's Bias Against Mitt Romney Was Astonishing." Business

Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 19 Nov. 2012. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.

<http://www.businessinsider.com/msnbc-bias-romney-obama-liberal-news-

media-2012-11>.

This article displays the depth of the bias in MSNBC’s coverage of the 2012 elections.  This article has an embedded graph to outline the grossly partisan thinking that went into their coverage during the election period

Schoen, John. "How Does a Corporate 'Tax Inversion' Work?" NBC News. Web. 3 Dec.

2014. <http://www.nbcnews.com/business/taxes/how-does-corporate-tax-

inversion-work-n209701>.

This citation is a detailed article describing corporate tax inversion. It is of particular importance because it explains the effect tax inversion has on the country financially through loss of tax revenue.