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Nicholas Czarnecki

Mr. Campbell

UWRT 1104

29 September 2017

Topic Proposal: Censorship in the Media

Introduction:

The topic that interests me is censorship in the media, more specifically how political

bias can affect the news cycle. This is a very relevant topic in todays society, which is one of the

main reasons why I am so interested in it. This is important to talk about because what people

see in the media is often what tends to influence their opinions on issues that society faces.

People get their information on things like climate change, foreign affairs, and the economy from

mainstream media companies such as CNN, FOX, ABC, etc. The problem with this each one of

those companies tends to have their own agenda when they report the news. I believe this is a

major problem in the world today because if the news is always being reported based on what is

going to help push an agenda forward that is not okay. By using an agenda to report news this

can influence how people vote, which in turn influences the future for our country.

In the United States news networks control the media, and they control what the public

sees, but in other foreign countries that is not the case. In an article written by Philip Bennett and

Moises Naim they say, In countries such as Hungary, Ecuador, Turkey, and Kenya, officials are

mimicking autocracies like Russia, Iran, or China by redacting critical news and building state
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media brands.. There are almost 1.4 billion people that live in China, and they can only see the

news that their government wants them to see.

In an article written by NPR there is a comparison between two articles that cover the

same story. One of the stories was written by NBC and the other was written by FOX, the only

problem was that they had two very different spins on the story. The article was about jobs added

in the month of July, NBC article was titled US economy's job engine revved up in July. while

the FOX article was titled "Wrong-Way Growth: Jobless Jumps In July as New Hiring Remains

Slow." These two titles are quite different, but they really are just talking about the same story,

which just raises the question why are they so different? It seems to all be based around politics

and the agendas that these news networks work so hard to push forward. Some more background

on this story, the story was written in July of 2012, right in the middle of the presidential election

between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. FOX news has historically been known as a new

outlet that supports Republican ideas and policies. So, for them to write an article, in the middle

of a presidential election, that based on the title makes it sound like the job market is not doing

well under a Democratic president, is a great example of political bias influencing the media.

FOX wrote that article to try and build momentum for the Republican candidate, by spinning the

story to make it look like the Democratic administration was failing to fix the issues with the job

market and the economy. Just by reading the title you can tell what the writer wants you to

believe the real challenge is trying to figure out which part of the article is the truth and which

part of the article was spun to try and support the writers or companies agenda and beliefs.

Initial Inquiry Questions:

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What effects can censorship have on society? Why does the censorship of news and

media exist? How does political bias affect the news? What are the pros and cons for censoring

media from the public?

My Interest in this topic:

I am interested in this topic because it is something very prominent in the world today.

With everything happening in the world such as the tension between the United States and North

Korea, to the sloppy and confusing presidential race that just happened and all the fallout that is

continuing to come up about it. I just feel that it is something that people should be talking about

more than they are. When I think about the fact that the news that I see on television every day,

may not be the whole truth I become curious. I wonder how many different takes there can be on

one story.

Next Steps:

Some next steps are to continue to do more research into what and why censorship exists.

I plan to use the UNCC library search databases to look for more articles and books that talk

about censorship in the news. I know when I searched the database previously there was a book

written on this topic, so I want to look into obtaining that and reading some it. I may even look

into trying to get in contact with a local news station to try and talk to them about this topic, I

feel that could be very useful information.