Expert answer:Effects of News Media
Solved by verified expert:Effects of News Media Assignment Options ** Reminder – the late period in this class is only 2 days ** ** Note – Use of “research” from outside of this course – particularly web searches – does not fulfill the “course materials” requirement. Use our materials and cite them properly. ** Review the Week 4 readings and videos. Select and complete one of the following assignment options: Option A Write a 1,050-1400-word essay in which you discuss how the information and news media have affected American culture. Answer the following questions: Does the information media have social responsibility? If yes, in what ways? If not, why not? Draw upon and cite course material. (25 points) What is the role of the information and news media in the shaping of political opinions? Draw upon and cite course material. (25 points) How have electronic media and their convergence transformed journalism and news consumption? Draw upon and cite course material. (25 points) Illustrate your responses with specific examples. Option B Research the events surrounding the airing and aftermath of the investigative news story “For the Record,” produced by CBS news and Dan Rather in 2004. Based on your research of what actually unfolded, write a 1050- to 1400-word summary of the events and your opinion as to whether or not CBS news should have aired the program. Defend your position based on your understanding of the social responsibilities of journalists. Include the following in your summary: Summary of the events and your opinion as to whether or not CBS news should have aired the program. (15 points) An assessment regarding how information media affect American values. Draw upon and cite course material. (25 points) A description of the role of the news media in politics Draw upon and cite course material. (25 points) An evaluation of the effect of electronic media on this story. (10 points) For either option, Incorporate these guidelines: You must separate the topics in your paper with at least first-level headings, and second-level headings where appropriate. See the APA sample paper in the library for details. Be sure to fully address each of the bullet points indicated above. The purpose of your paper is to demonstrate the application of the knowledge you have gained in this week’s materials by applying that knowledge to a real-world example. As such, your paper should engage heavily with course theory, materials, and language. Cite them where you use them. Your paper should include an appropriate introduction which offers background to the topic, previews your main points, and includes a clear central idea. Your paper should include an appropriate conclusion that reviews the major points and flows logically from the content of the body. Your main points should be clear, logical, and well-supported. Your paper should be well written, including appropriate transitions, tone, and flow. Your paper should have proper mechanics including spelling, grammar, and appropriate use of APA citation style and references. Special note on spelling: EACH error that a spellchecker would have caught will cost you an EXTRA 1% off of your possible points on the paper. PROOFREAD AND SPELLCHECK. Your paper should be entirely your own original work, except where specifically indicated otherwise by the use of citations.***Reading Material attached***
richardson__j._h.__2015_2016_._billionaires__unleashed._esquire__162_168..pdf
ted__2010._tedtalks__will_potter___the_shocking_move_to_criminalize_nonviolent_protest__video_file._films_on_demand.pdf
ted__2012._tedtalks__markham_nolan___how_to_separate_fact_and_fiction_online__video_file._films_on_demand.pdf
terilli__jr.__s._a.__2008_._government_playing_at_journalism__not_government_paying_journalists__is_the_real_problem._journal_of_mass_media_ethics__23_2___167_169.pdf
bill_moyers___2012_._audience_driven_journalism___video_file._films_on_demand.pdf
media_and_culture__ch_8.pdf
media_and_culture__ch_14.pdf
naureckas__j.__2015_._sanders__trump_both_surged____only_one_fascinated_media._extra___28_8___1..pdf
richardson__j._h.__2015_2016_._billionaires__unleashed._esquire__162_168..pdf
terilli__jr.__s._a.__2008_._government_playing_at_journalism__not_government_paying_journalists__is_the_real_problem._journal_of_mass_media_ethics__23_2___167_169.pdf
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2016
THE GREAT
Billionaires,
Unleashed
The
p r o g r e s s i v e s a n d T ru sT b u sT e r s o f a c e n T u ry ag o
r o s e u p aga i n sT c o n c e n T r aT e d p ow e r as a
m o rTa l T h r e aT To d e m o c r acy i T s e l f .
we,
o n T h e oT h e r h a n d ,
h av e u n c o n d i T i o n a l ly s u r r e n d e r e d .
BY J O H N H . R I C H A R D S O N
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E S Q U I R E • D E C /J A N 2 0 1 5 / 1 6
Blue Whale, the
liberal billionaire, feared to be
mythical, certainly rare
enough to qualify for EPA
protection, has a floor of
offices in downtown San
Francisco in the same old
building where Sam Spade
searched for the Maltese Falcon. This is where the supplicants come: senators,
governors, presidential candidates and their harried
fundraisers. Like actors in a
Shakespearean comedy, they
humiliate themselves with
bowing and scraping, flattery and cajoling and outright
begging and their obvious
desperation to keep up with
the Republicans—the Republicans, damn them, who don’t
have to work nearly as hard
or as grudgingly at the care
and feeding of billionaires.
And after all their pilgrimages, the liberal fundraisers discover that liberal billionaires
are cheap. They prefer the
moral glory of curing malaria in Africa to the nasty grind
of retail politics. They require
more personal visits, more
sweet talk about how important they are and what a big
difference their contribution
will make, and they’re much
more transactional than
the Republicans. They want
to know exactly what their
contribution will get them,
and then, after all that, they
might give you $100,000.
Or nothing at all.
This is life in the world left
I L LU ST R AT I O N BY T H E H E A D S O F STAT E
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by Citizens United, where unlimited new sums of money allowed by the Supreme
Court concentrate power in
a way the robber barons could have only dreamed.
Read it and weep:
A solid majority of Americans accept the scientific consensus that fossil fuels are changing the
climate, and solid majorities support Social Security and Medicare, public education, public spending on health care, higher taxes on the rich, regulations on Wall Street, and even increased regulation
on guns. So why don’t Americans get a government
of the people?
Because it costs money. And billionaires, even the
Great Blue Whales, hate tax increases. As Brookings Institution scholar Darrell M. West points out
in his alarming new book, Billionaires: Reflections on
the Upper Crust, the same is true all over the world.
“Liberal and conservative billionaires often are
united in opposing tax increases, at least for themselves.” So instead we talk about small government.
There are 536 billionaires in America, and The
New York Times recently reported that fully half of the money in the presidential
Hedge-fund billionrace so far has come from just 158 families,
aire Tom Steyer is that
rarest of creatures:
most of them with fortunes in fossil fuels
the liberal billionaire.
and finance, most of them funding RepubHe abhors Citizens
United but believes in
licans. In the 2016 cycle, the Koch brothfighting fire with fire.
ers alone will spend $900 million. Casino
two things: One, this is the law of the United States
magnate Sheldon Adelson spent more than
$100 million in 2012 and will likely spend more. It’s hard to get put down by the Supreme Court of the United States. Those
your mind around how much money this is. Mitt Romney’s su- are the rules of the game. So we do what we can to mitigate the
per PAC raised $12 million four years ago in the same reporting things that we think are the most egregious about it, and we
period that Jeb Bush raised more than $100 million. And this try—and it’s shockingly hard to do—to make sure that we don’t
year’s haul doesn’t even begin to count all the “foundations” have a conflict.”
Steyer has long liberal roots—his mother worked for NBC
and “grassroots groups” and the dark money made legal by the
News and taught in Harlem, his wife has tattoos and a sustainSupreme Court that nobody can track.
Tom Steyer is apologetic about all this. A relaxed but very fo- able farm—but he spent his years quietly working at his hedge
cused man of fifty-eight, dressed in a suit with one of his eight fund and earning a great fortune. He made regular, generous
trademark ugly plaid ties, he’s a liberal billionaire who is some- donations to the Democratic party and that was enough poliwhat famous for flying commercial—in economy, no less—and tics for him.
“Generally, our system works pretty well,” he explains. “If
driving an old hybrid Honda he bought used. He never wanted
to be a Great Blue Whale.
you read the press, you might not think it works pretty well,
“Citizens United was a terrible decision,” he says, “just a ter- but actually, when there’s a big problem in the United States of
rible decision. And we understand the irony that we’re using America we basically go through a kind of Socratic, somewhat
a lot of money in politics, whereas in fact we don’t believe that combative process about what the right way to solve it is, and
that’s the right thing to have happen in general, and I would say then we actually do solve it. Democrats solve it and Republicans
2016
9. Should We Let Billionaires Buy Elections?
For the 2016 cycle, the Koch brothers alone
HAVE VOWED TO
Casino magnate
Sheldon Adelson SPENT MORE THAN $100 MILLION in 2012 and
will likely spend more. THAT’S JUST THREE GUYS. What are they paying for?
SPEND ALMOST $1 BILLION TO INFLUENCE THE OUTCOME.
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E S Q U I R E • D E C /J A N 2 0 1 5 / 1 6
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solve it. We come up with the Clean Air
Act and the Clean Water Act and we invent the EPA and we don’t wait for Chernobyl. So when I started reading about climate along with everybody else, I thought, ‘Fine! Good to go!
We now know there’s a problem.’ ”
His optimism that “the system” would respond as it had in
the past began to falter around 2005. “It started to seem like
Whoa, this one’s not going right. And it’s a big problem.” Still
thinking technology could fix it, he donated a fortune to Stanford University for energy research, making a bet on democracy and innovation. Since Steyer made much of his fortune in
coal, he quit his hedge fund and sold his holdings in coal, even
turned his solar investments over to an arm’s-length foundation.
Then the Supreme Court unleashed the big money and his
faith in democracy began to falter.
how much
speech can you afford? Even if
it’s to support a cause or candidate
you find worthy, SHOULD
AFTER THE SUPREME COURT ruled on Citizens
United in 2010, the right-wing billionaires saw the
implications immediately. “They saw that it was
a way to level the playing field,” says a top Democratic fundraiser. “With changing demographics in the country going against them, the one advantage they have is money.
And they’re willing to pony up a lot more, so we’ve had this tidal wave of money coming in to the other side.”
While the liberals waffled, the right-wing billionaires went to
war. “Our side feels that getting involved in state legislative battles is beneath them,” says another Democratic fundraiser. “So
what happens? The Republican donors, the Koch brothers, invest deeply in state races and flip state legislatures, which control redistricting, which controls who owns Congress.” In Ohio,
for example, despite a dead heat in the electorate, Republicans
now have twelve congressional seats and Democrats have just
four. In North Carolina, a discount-store tycoon named Art
Pope bought himself a docile state legislature that eliminated teacher tenure, passed voter-ID laws, and cut back on early
voting. The same is true all over the country. “They’ve picked
up nine hundred state legislative seats just since 2010,” the
first Democratic fundraiser says. “I think thirty state chambers have been flipped. It’s overwhelming. There’s no way for
Democrats to keep up.”
So control of the states gave the right-wing billionaires control of the 2012 “redistricting” that bunched Democratic votes
into a handful of crazy-quilt congressional districts, which in
turn has given Republicans a near-permanent majority in the
House of Representatives. But they also got power over many
secretaries of state, who are decision makers on state elections—
consider Alabama’s John Merrill, elected with heavy contributions from a group affiliated with the National Association
of Manufacturers, who, after lawmakers toughened up ID requirements for voting, defended the shutting down of driver’slicense offices in eight of the top ten counties with the highest
percentage of black voters.
As West puts it in Billionaires, “Wealthy donors push candidates to the extremes, especially on the Republican side.”
During this critical transitional period, Steyer was getting
his baptism in practical politics. He began in 2010 with a local
fight against Proposition 23 in California. This was an attempt
by the Koch brothers and their fossil-fuel allies to gut California’s rules on air pollution and boost their bottom line. Steyer
joined with George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s former secretary
of state, investing $5 million in the cause. They didn’t want to
turn the battle into Billionaire vs. Billionaires or Environmentalist Against Oil Companies, so they focused on the concerns
of ordinary people. “People care about what’s local and human.
So that means they care a lot about the impact on jobs. And we
could make a very strong and true argument that clean energy was gonna be a job producer in the state of California, and
there would be good-paying jobs,” Steyer says.
Health was another day-to-day concern. California has five
million people with asthma, including almost a million kids,
and dirty air is the kind of issue that gets people off the sofa.
Finally, their opponents were “oil refiners from out of state
trying to benefit by getting rid of pollution laws”—not exactly
sympathetic figures.
Steyer’s strategies worked—Prop 23 was defeated by a 23-point
margin. Meanwhile, the impact of the Supreme Court’s decisions on money and speech was becoming more vivid by the
day. Billionaires were starting to donate vast sums to “nonprofit” 501(c)(4)’s and 501(c)(6)’s, the so-called dark-money vehicles that aren’t required to disclose their donors. Transparency is one of the few remaining checks on the power of money,
as West repeatedly points out in Billionaires, but Republicans
have blocked all efforts by Democrats to pass a “Disclose Act”
to reveal the names behind the “speech.” And now the money
is flowing to even smaller races—local judges, city councils, and
even school superintendents. In California in 2014, billionaires
who favor charter schools poured more than $10 million into a
charter-friendly candidate named Marshall Tuck, making his
the most expensive race in the state. Last year in Colorado, the
Koch brothers put $350,000 into a school board that fought
the teachers’ unions and started a private-school voucher program. Even the cynicism all this money fuels is a fringe benefit
for the billionaires: The less people believe in politics, the less
they participate, and the less they participate, the more likely
the billionaires will get their way.
For all these reasons, the old consolation that money can’t
buy a president simply isn’t true anymore. “If you can control
that many congressional districts, you control turnout operations,” the top Democratic fundraiser points out. “At what
point does the ground game start to affect the White House?
Is there a way forward to fix this system, or are we past the
point of no return?”
2016
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E S Q U I R E • D E C /J A N 2 0 1 5 / 1 6
These days,
WHEN MONEY
HAS BEEN LEGALLY FOUND
TO EQUAL SPEECH,
ANYONE HAVE THAT KIND
OF POWER?
AS IT HAPPENS, 2010 was also the year that “cap
and trade” went down in Congress. This was famously bipartisan, market-friendly climate legislation that had the support of John McCain and Lindsey Graham but became toxic, almost overnight, with the rise
of the Tea Party. Contemplating this from the perspective of his
victory on Prop 23, Steyer was especially struck by an influential study by Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol called
“Naming the Problem: What It Will Take to Counter Extremism and Engage Americans in the Fight Against Global Warming.” Skocpol argued that national climate activists put too much
trust in the political system and failed to grasp the growing radicalization of Republican politicians. “Ever since global warming became prominent on the environmental agenda, an all-out
political fight has been under way, and reformers do themselves
no favor by refusing to clearly understand the scope of the battle
or the degree to which politicians, including almost all Republicans now in office, have been recruited into the opposition.”
Public opinion no longer mattered. Science no longer mattered.
The new game was using “institutional levers” like the filibuster and the senatorial hold “to stymie or undermine governmental measures.”
The short version: Reformers were still living in the America
that existed before big money. The only alternative was giving
up on “elite maneuvers” and finding ways to arouse the public.
“I felt as if it wasn’t something I had thought about before,”
Steyer says now.
So Steyer began his transformation into a Great Blue Whale,
launching himself into the frustrating, thankless, incremental
world of retail politics. But he is still a billionaire in the age of
billionaires, and billionaires care most about their pet issues, so
this transformation had a modern twist—he also began to set up
what amounts to his own political party, a climate party.
He started with a network of business groups in about thirty key states. Cannier than traditional activists and still more
invested in the old idea of America, he insisted on keeping his
groups as bipartisan as possible. “We want fossil-fuel companies, who have great expertise in energy, to be a constructive
part of the solution,” he says. In 2013, he invited Hank Paulson,
the former treasury secretary and head of Goldman Sachs, to
join Mike Bloomberg on a business-analysis project called Risky
Business, and they concluded that within thirty-five years Florida will face $23 billion in property losses alone because of rising
sea levels. He also started spending his money on specific races, fighting oil-and-coal-friendly candidates in Massachusetts
and Virginia in 2013 and in seven more statewide races in 2014,
including the doomed battle to unseat Rick Scott in Florida. He
lost about half of them.
“We definitely were disappointed about Rick Scott,” Steyer says
now. “I thought the governor’s race in Florida was probably the
most important race in the United States in 2014. But there was
a horrible Democratic turnout in 2014.”
It turns out that there’s only so much a single billionaire can
do. But Steyer knew what he was up against.
“Here’s how I think about those races—if we look at what we
did, look at the places where we were and the places where we
weren’t, we could see we really moved people on climate. No
question about that. I’d say something else, too—no one remembers that President Obama ran on ‘clean coal and all of the above’
three years ago. That was his mantra. He was not saying what he’s
saying now. He understood what he’s saying now, but politically
the country had to change. What he said to us is ‘Make it possible for me to do what I want.’ So when I think about 2014, I think
an election is a great way to have a conversation.”
To an outsider, his optimism might seem naive. What about
the impact of those Supreme Court decisions, the nine hundred
state legislative seats and thirty governorships?
“Twenty-nine,” he says. “But who’s counting?”
But how can he even begin to compete? Especially since he
hasn’t been able to convince a single other liberal billionaire to
join him? Where’s Sergey Brin? Where’s Bill Gates?
Steyer grins. “Can I help you with phone numbers?”
STEYER’S GREATEST PASSION is for his version
of the Tea Party, NextGen Climate. Three members
of his political team sit down in a local coffee shop
to detail their strategies. In Iowa, for example, they
have ten paid field directors and another sixty staff and college
students on the payroll. They’re aiming first at “grass tops” efforts to get political activists, small-business owners, and ministers involved. “Validators,” they call them. Second, they’re focusing on younger people in cities and colleges. Already they’ve
signed up more than eleven thousand people, asking each of them
to take some kind of action. “In the last thirty days, we had 558
unique volunteers doing something,” says a political staffer, an
enthusiastic, bearded twenty-six-year-old. “That’s more than
any of the candidates.”
River cleanups? Viral videos? Concert tours? In the face of climate change, these slow-moving grassroots efforts seem downright pitiful. And the Republicans are playing hardball as usual,
putting their money into new political innovations like the recent
fad for “tracking operations,” where propagandists like James
O’Keefe and the Center for Medical Progress stalk groups they
oppose with cameras and use devious editing techniques to turn
innocence into guilt. Or they use the hidden levers of government to get their way, like the “one senator” strategy, whereby a
they earned it, they can spend
it however they want. Continue to allow individuals and corporations
to donate unlimited amounts of money to candidates through super PACs
HERE’S YOUR CHOICE: STATUS QUO—
AND KEEP PRETENDING THOSE SUPER PACS ARE INDEPENDENT OF THE
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS, OR . . .
167
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single U. S. senator can be induced to put a
bill on indefinite hold—Rand Paul, for example, has blocked for years any attempt
to uncover the names of wealthy Americans who are hiding billions in secret Swiss bank accounts. The
beautiful libertarian ideals of small government and personal
freedom, promoted through front groups like the Cato Institute, turn out to be effective ways for big money to set the agenda and suppress the popular will.
So back in Steyer’s offices, even more than before, it’s hard
to avoid the disconcerting idea that America’s fate is being decided by giant stomping creatures who barely notice the delicate bones beneath their feet.
“I totally agree,” Steyer says.
And the rising power of money is a global phenomenon, as
West points out in Billionaires, and the billionaires are almost
completely unified in their determination to shrink the governments that might be able to fight the problem. So how is one
more billionaire’s pet project going to make any difference?
At this, Steyer finally grows a little frustrated. “Our plan to
have 50 percent clean energy by 2030—over half of Republicans
support that. Sixty-nine percent of independents support that.
So the country has moved on this. Millennials are into this more
than anybody else. They know it’s their problem.”
But it still comes down to Billionaire vs. Billionaires. Or One
Billionaire + a Bunch of College Kids vs. the U. S. Superwealthy,
Whose Assets Have Doubled Over the Past Ten Years from
$1 Trillion to $2 Trillion.
“I make two points. The first one is about inequality. Obviously the United States has never had this level of inequality,
certainly not in a really, really long time. And I think it’s really
unhealthy for the country. It’s not good economically; it’s also
not good from the point of view of someone who loves democracy. It’s not right. I’ve looked at the numbers and it’s pretty
shocking. And one of …
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