Mass Communication Commons^™

This Machine Kills Fascists: Music, Speech And War, Robert J. Crisler

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

This thesis examines the history and persuasive power of rhetoric through the mass medium of popular music from Woody Guthrie to the modern era. It focuses on the Vietnam War era as a particularly significant and prolific era of topical (“protest”) music. Through interviews with media observers, historians and veterans of the Vietnam war, it seeks to understand the relevance of rhetorical speech in music within an overall mass media context, both within that era and extending to the present day. Through contemporaneous accounts of the intent of the songwriters and artists, an understanding is gained of the intent to …

Social Issues In America, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

One of the more contentious issues in social science at this time is the question of media bias. Both the scholarly and popular literature are thick with writings on this topic, yet for all the interest in it and work devoted to it we are far from a consensus on how media bias can be defined, conceptualized, or researched. Ironically enough, many writings on the subject of media bias do take the position that the news content distributed to the public fails, in one respect or another, to accurately and fairly represent real events, issues, personalities, and situations. Studies differ …

Military Control Over War News: The Implications Of The Persian Gulf, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

News coverage of warfare poses a difficult problem for political systems with a free press, such as ours in the United States. In an era of high-tech weaponry and nearly instantaneous global communications, conflicts are inevitable between the obligation of the press to inform the general public, and the obligation of the military to successfully conduct war. The military’s controls over news-gathering during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War set off a controversy still smoldering during the Haiti occupation of 1994. This paper examines the legal, historical, and technological aspects of this issue.

News Media Objectivity: How Do We Ask The Questions?, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

There is a lively and often public debate in progress concerning the objectivity of the news media, or the lack of it Scholars have approached this topic from three distinct angles: content analysis, values, and the economics of the news industry. Their conclusions have varied markedly, apparently guided by their particular frames of reference.

This article suggests that while we seem to have lost our fix on objectivity as a measurable attribute of news products, the news work routine of objectivity encourages fairness in our public discourse, and deserves attention in scholarly research.