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  • Essay / Analysis of Manipulation in News Media

    Language is a powerful tool, especially when used consciously and deliberately. It can be used in different ways to reinforce and manipulate a message. News media is a linguistic medium and one of the most important vehicles for the exchange of ideas. At the same time, news publishing is considered an “industry and a business like any other business that should be profitable.” It is therefore important to be aware of the fact that news media production is linked “to the need to make a profit; maintain external relations with other industries, with financial institutions and with official agencies”. All of these factors will have an effect on the news published and the representation of that news. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay Most news agencies are owned by people or companies that are commercial enterprises, meaning that news media information may be influenced by the owner or by advertisers. in its depiction of events, thereby potentially compromising its freedom of expression. Not knowing the true intent of the news industry, we often think that news tells us about world events. Journalists are often described as “the eyes and ears of the public.” Journalists themselves see their job as seeking the truth, putting it into perspective, and publishing it so that people can competently carry out their daily activities. In fact, sociologists of information have long established that this is rarely what news actually does, due to complex context. a series of factors, linked to supply, to the pressures of filling the media space, to the need to make events “newsworthy”. Rather, information is a very particular social construction of reality. However, one question that is constantly raised by media critics is who is monitoring the watchdogs? Therefore, what is important here is to be aware of how discursive choices can be used to signify, for example, specific identities and values ​​associated with a particular person or event without fully expressing them . This means that these discourses can be manipulated precisely in order to align identities and values ​​with certain behaviors. Furthermore, we need to ask questions about the form and function of the messages conveyed by journalism, as well as the discursive process by which these messages are transmitted. produced and consumed. Most of us can identify the meaning of a news story or what the reporter is trying to make us think. But pinpointing exactly how this happens is a bit more difficult. When it comes to the issue of bias, most of us think we can identify bias in the news, or instances where the journalist appears to have an agenda that they are pushing. It's much more difficult to be able to identify why you come to that conclusion, why you think a particular article is biased. It is enough to cover the "what" of the message communicated by newspapers - for example, what journalists write about the working class. , what journalists write about the war or about Muslims ─ is also important in addressing the “how” of newspaper communication. In other words, how is journalistic discourse produced; how the texts workjournalistic; how arguments are convincingly presented and supported; and how newspaper texts can be implicated in the production and reproduction of social inequalities are of great importance. However, knowing that the language of information is not neutral and that it is used for purposes of persuasion or manipulation, a social practice of abuse of power by which the manipulator exercises control over other people , especially against their will or against their best interest, and violates social norms, one might think twice before accepting a piece of news as unbiased truth. The negative consequence of manipulative speech usually occurs when the recipients, in our case the trans-publishers of information, are unable to understand the real intentions or see the full consequences of the manipulator's beliefs or actions. This may be the case when recipients do not have specific knowledge that could be used to resist manipulation. For one person to be able to manipulate many others through text and speech, one must have access to some form of public discourse, such as news, opinion pieces, scientific articles, novels, television shows , Internet, etc. We can therefore say that media discourse is a means of reproducing power. Considering that the discursive practices of Western news agencies are mostly in the interest of the West and against the interests of the recipients (in our case, the Iranian people), we can characterize them as illegitimate because they violate the rights of our people, although it is not always easy to articulate the exact norms or values ​​that are being violated. Therefore, on the one hand we have the Western news media which, with great skill and wisdom, They manipulate with considerable subtlety the information according to their own interests using appropriate ideological discourse strategies in a manner so that their audience does not even doubt their credibility and honesty. On the other hand, there are other news organizations that have lost credibility over time due to the ease with which they revealed their ideological biases. When our press translators are confronted with the ideologically charged, and at the same time seemingly impartial, language of foreign news agencies they should be able to identify any ideological biases implicitly present before trans-editing them and avoiding being manipulated. Van Dijk says: “From a cognitive point of view, manipulation is nothing special; it uses very general properties of discourse processing. He continues that it could be as simple as drawing attention to information A rather than B. Based on Van Dijk's ideas on manipulation; it can be inferred that news media editors have an explicit plan to harm or bias their audiences' understanding of their news. This is something news organizations need to do, provided they want to stay in the competition. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Our news editors, however, generally do not have adequate knowledge of ideological discourse strategies. As a result, they sometimes translate information from other sources in the same way, in terms of structure and lexicon. They use different structures, in some cases, simply to create variety without fully understanding the implications. Works Cited: American Psychological Association. (2021)..