We spoke in class about media having an agenda (not necessarily negative) and this allows them to decide what is newsworthy and which news is more front page-worthy. Laurel Leff in her book, Buried by the Times, writes about a time when a certain catastrophic event failed to make headlines in the New York Times - The Holocaust.The NYT, despite being owned by German Jews, did print Holocaust news stories, but failed to emphasize their importance. Small articles often ended up on the 4th page. Out of 2,400 front-page news articles during the war, only 26 of them were Holocaust articles. Yes, American involvement in the war must have been the prime source of news at the time, but the NYT was trusted not only as a source of news, but to tell its readers which news was most important, which events most required American attention.
Can anyone think of a more current event that was shadowed by the media and not given as much front-page space as it warranted?
The genocide in Rwanda during the mid-1990's was also not covered well until it was virtually over. Within a matter of weeks half a million people had been killed.
ReplyDelete