Flak from the powerful can be either direct or indirect. The direct could include the following hypothetical scenarios:
1.Letters or phone calls
2.Inquiries from the FCC to major television networks requesting documents used to plan and assemble a program
3.Messages from irate executives representing advertising agencies or corporate sponsors to media officials threatening retaliation if not granted on-air reply time
24、媒體偏見
Media bias is a term used to describe a real or perceived bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media, in the selection of which events will be reported and how they are covered. The term “media bias” usually refers to a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed, since its causes are both practical and theoretical.
Practical limitations to media neutrality include the inability of journalists to report all available stories and facts, and the requirement that selected facts be linked into a coherent narrative. Since it is impossible to report everything, some bias is inevitable. Government influence, including overt and covert censorship, biases the media in some countries. Market forces that can result in a biased presentation include the ownership of the news source, the selection of staff, the preferences of an intended audience, or pressure from advertisers. Political affiliations arise from ideological positions of media owners and journalists. The space or air time available for reports, as well as deadlines needed to be met, can lead to incomplete and apparently biased stories.
25、媒體偏見：婦女
As for women, a report which analyzed media coverage of women, found that the white male, as reported by the media, is the subtle norm by which all else is gauged. For example, when the subject is a white male, reference to his race and gender is rarely noted, whereas descriptive phrases, such as black leader or female candidate are often employed in addition to that person’s name and title. Images and beliefs concerning women are far more prominent in our society than those of men. Women are always the ones cooking, cleaning, doing household tasks or taking care of children. They are portrayed as being emotionally and physically inferior and submissive to men. Women are visualized as weak creatures. They tend to be confined to a life dictated by family and personal relationships. Men always dominate television programs. Figures show that in television drama women are outnumbered by men 3:1 or 4:1;in cartoons women are outnumbered 10:1;and in soap operas women are outnumbered 7:3.In daily shows such as soap operas, women are usually hysterical, crying and emotionally out of control. This personifies women as being the inferior sex, which leads to many false stereotypes. Women as sex objects are the most common stereotype of women on television.
26、媒體偏見：少數族群
Minorities are unfairly misrepresented in the media in a stereotyped way. In an article from USA Today magazine, it illustrated that if you have watched, listened to, and read media all your life, you probably have filed these images into your thinking process: African-Americans are mostly rap stars, professional athletes, drug addicts, welfare mothers, criminals and/or murderers; Latinos are illegal aliens, ignorant immigrants who take, but give little back to the country and can’t even speak the language, or drug-crazed thugs who have no respect for law or order; Asian-Americans are either weak, model citizens or inscrutable, manipulative, or uncaring invaders of business, especially in the United States; Native Americans are illiterate, drunken Indians who hate all Caucasians and sleep away their lives. If you are like most middle-class Americans, most of what you know about members of other races or religions comes from what you read in the paper, hear on radio, or see on television. It is easy to see that racial and ethnic stereotypes still dominate much of reporting today. In today’s media, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans either are treated as invisible or the source of a particular problem:crime, immigration, or the economy.
27、媒體偏見：語言的作用
Mass media, despite its ability to project worldwide, is limited in its cross-ethnic compatibility by one simple attribute—language. Ethnicity, being largely developed by a divergence in geography, language, culture, genes and similarly, point of view, has the potential to be countered by a common source of information. Therefore, language, in the absence of translation, comprises a barrier to a worldwide community of debate and opinion, although it is also true that media within any given society may be split along class, political or regional lines. Furthermore, if the language is translated, the translator has room to shift a bias by choosing weighed words for translation.
28、政治與媒體偏見
In a study of 116mainstream US papers （including The New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle）, it is found that the mainstream print press in America operates within a narrow range of liberal beliefs. Those who expressed points of view further to the left were generally ignored, whereas those who expressed moderate or conservative points of view were often actively denigrated or labeled as holding a minority point of view. In short, if a political leader, regardless of party, spoke within the press-supported range of acceptable discourse, he or she would receive positive press coverage. If a politician, again regardless of party, were to speak outside of this range, he or she would receive negative press or be ignored. It is also found that the liberal points of view expressed in editorial and opinion pages were found in hard news coverage of the same issues. Although focusing primarily on the issues of race and homosexuality, the press injected opinion into its news coverage of other issues such as welfare reform, environmental protection, and gun control; in all cases favoring a liberal point of view.
29、媒體的影響：孩子
Communications technology is expanding through the entire global community. Children everywhere are being born into a world of images and messages, which are largely separated from their home, school and spiritual lives. In society today, storytellers are seldom parents, grandparents, teachers or the clergy; instead they are the handful of distant forces with something to sell. What is unique about the media industry is that in global and corporate domination they have become part of our culture as well as our identity. Social scientists and child advocates have been exploring the effects of media for decades, yet it is only recently that the concern has generated a public debate. Historical Disagreements concerning the effect of violence revealed in works of art and entertainment have resonated over the centuries. We must ask ourselves whether or not our versions of entertainment exhibits any more violence than past forms of recreation, for example gladiatorial games or public hangings.
30、電視的影響：親子關係
Since television is frequently used by parents as a babysitting device, there is a lack of interaction between children and parents. On average, between 1960and 1992,children lost ten to twelve hours per week of parental time. Children who are more closely identified with either parent are less aggressive. When a child is given the opportunity to spend quality time with their parents, their level of aggression is reduced.
31、電視的影響：身體
Not only is the mentality of the children affected by TV but also their physical conditions. The basic physical needs of children such as developing healthy hearts and lungs are directly endangered by the number of hours spent in front of the television set. The more time a child spends watching television, the more likely he or she is to be overweight and in poor physical condition.
32、電視暴力的影響
A clear-cut answer would be to eliminate violent programming from television, yet violence sells. From the business prospective violence sells, and more viewers means higher ratings. This is especially the case during prime time, within one hour you can witness 8-12acts of violence. This is not just the case for adult programming. The Annenberg School of Communications found that violence in children’s programming is at an all time high, with 32acts of violence per hour.
A clear-cut casual relationship is beyond the realms of social science: there are too many factors to come to a definite answer, though the abundance of circumstantial evidence points to a damaging relationship. Professor Centerwald of the University of Washington predicted that if television was never invented there would be 10,000fewer homicides, 70,000fewer rapes and 700,000fewer assaults in the U.S.
33、美國心理協會觀點：電視暴力的影響
A 1993report by the American Psychological Association stated:
1.Viewing violence increases fear of becoming a victim of violence, with an increase in self-protective behavior and an increase in mistrust.
2.Viewing violence increases desensitization to violence, resulting in callused attitudes toward violence.
3.Violent programming increases the viewers appetite for becoming involved or exposing themselves to violence.
34、電視暴力的影響：孩子
Exposure to violence is not believed to increase aggression, but being aggressive increases preference for violent television. Children observe what is considered novel aggressive behavior and learn vicariously that aggressive acts are rewarded. The more a child can relate to the characters in the program, the more likely he/she will be to emulate the characters’ actions. Not only do the actions of a child reflect the programs viewed, but watching a violent program causes desensitization. There is a widespread agreement that television habits can be harmful. Psychologically speaking the effects can be devastating.
35、電視暴力對孩子的影響
As technology improves and the amount of violent entertainment increases, images become more graphic and portray of violence has become more realistic. Television viewing affects children of different ages in different ways. While a child may spend many hours in front of a television set at an early age, the programming has little effect. At the age of two a child will imitate the actions of the live model, example a parent more than a model on television. However, by the age of three the child will begin to imitate the TV characters. The attitudes toward television drastically change over a child’s life. When researching the effects of television, various points need to be taken into consideration, certain issues effect people in different ways, for example pornography. However, most parents do not realize that whether aggression is presented in a realistic way or in a cartoon, it makes no difference to a child who has a difficult time differentiating between the two.