Can the media change the way I view myself and others?
By Julia Gorman
The media is both necessary and harmful. Without the media, many people would be completely oblivious to the events and debates going on in the world. Consider however, what damage the media can do when it incorrectly stereotypes viewpoints. Human nature appears naturally disposed to stereotype others based on their looks, and the way they act or speak. We often look at ourselves with an unnecessarily critical eye and immediately find some fault. The media, whether television, newspaper, radio, or magazines, simply takes the natural human inclination to stereotype and inflates it to make stereotypes more readily accessible
Stereotypes can be extremely helpful. Stereotypes allow us to look at someone and base rather complex decisions on relatively little information. If stereotypes did not exist, innumerable problems would arise. For example, humans might not be able to quickly judge by appearances and would not have an ingrained sense of danger, or any idea of whom to associate with or stay away from. Movie producers would have a more difficult time casting roles if stereotypes did not exist. Marketing plans such as Best Buy’s Geek Squad would not be nearly as effective if the stereotype of geeks did not exist. By using the term “geek” a large amount of information is transmitted about what their job is and it will stick in people’s mind when they need assistance. These reasons encourage stereotypes. Where some of the media goes wrong is in its stereotyping of people and concepts based on the ideas of the people who control the subject-matter of a certain medium.
Three everyday examples are the treatment of global warming, pharmaceutical companies, and cars. Global warming is presented as a life-threatening event caused by people. The media frequently promotes the results of scientific computer models to link humans to global warming. It ignores the science that disagrees. When Al Gore made a movie about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, it was uncritically applauded by many news outlets. On www.usatoday.com, the Associated Press had a video clip about Al Gore’s documentary. The last line of the AP clip was, “Hundreds of thousands of people have signed a message urging Congress to move quickly to solve the climate crisis.” This film is being shown to school children as fact, and is caring young children into sincerely believing the world is coming to an end. Another stereotype which media uses is the fiction of “good” cars and “bad” cars. The Honda Prius is good. It is said to be environmentally friendly. SUV’s are bad. They are gas guzzlers that pollute heavily. People who drive the Prius or another hybrid car are routinely portrayed as good people who care about our environment even though their car requires more resources to manufacture and needs batteries that are hazardous materials. The internal combustion engine is routinely portrayed as a bad thing, but without the modern-day car our businesses and our country would have a very hard time running normally. The media rarely seems to report on the economic consequences of its campaign to alter the world to its vision.
Pharmaceutical companies are usually displayed as evil entities concerned only about profit. In any given form of media, about 80% of the pharmaceutical companies mentioned never were allowed a spokesperson, or the time or space to share their views, according to an article that can be found on www.businessandmedia.org. Also, it costs around $1 billion to bring a new drug to market. This fact rarely makes it on the news. Instead the focus is on how costly the drug is to consumers. So many times on the news some new drug is being reported as causing sickness and doing damage. The people it helped are ignored. The way pharmaceutical companies are presented caused people to shy away from their products and to try alternative medicines that may be more dangerous alternatives.
Stereotypes affect the way we took at ourselves and the society around us and are largely formed by what we watch, read, and hear everyday. The media are large part of our lives, and have the ability to form opinions and stereotypes. This power should not be abused, but it is abused when it is used to promote a certain belief or idea. Stereotyping has most likely always been a large part of our existence. Again, many business and television shows would not survive without them. Humans by human nature stereotype people and care about their self image. The media can choose to use stereotypes for good or for evil.
