"Breaking the News"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, in his book "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy", James Fallows criticizes the modern American media for being out of touch with the people it claims to serve and asserts that the media often has a harmful effect on the American political process by creating an undertone of sensationalism and cynicism and by not informing readers of the substance of issues. The author points out that Fallows sees increasing laziness in journalists as a dangerous trend; recent technological breakthroughs, such as internet database Nexis, allow journalists to access a great deal of background information on any subject without having to leave their desk. The paper concludes that overall the book presents a good argument but, because some of the main points of the book were not sufficiently backed by concrete facts, the book falls short of its intended goal.

From the Paper:

"Fallows struggles with this vagueness throughout the book. Often, he uses terms such as "almost never," "barely," and the above "more often," are bandied about with no reference citations to numbers behind them. This is perhaps an inherent flaw in the book. It is hard to be specific in an argument that there is a lack of something. Fallows asserts that most political reporting focuses on power struggles above substantive studies of issues. However, he does not give a percentage as to how much one type of story occurs more than the other. This issue is one of the main points of his book, yet he offers no references that could be used to bolster his claim. Thus, one of his main arguments is severely weakened."

More papers on "Breaking the News":

• Essay # 34012 : "Teenagers and the News"
• Term Paper # 148846 : "The Kennedy Assassination and the Television industry"
• Research Paper # 118869 : "Bio-Psycho-Social Perspectives of Breast Cancer"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: