Assigned readings

1. Izzy Snow, Susan Rahman, C. Ayala, S. Conaway, P. Kindel, O. Page, J. Palacios, Leslie Rivera, E. Valencia and S. Werba. 2020. Capitalism, celebrity, and consuming Corona: Junk food news in 2019-20. Pp 151-72  in Huff and Roth (eds). State of the Free Press, 2021. NY: Seven Stories Press (if it doesn’t load, look for the download symbol on top right). Scan this one to get a feel for what ‘junk food’ news and news ‘abuse’ are. If junk food is bad for our bodies, what does junk food news do to our brains? Also, you can rotate the screen–menu’s up top.
2. Alison Rose Levy. 2019. The incredible belief that corporate ownership does not influence media content. Sept 17, CommonDreams. Yes, and it doesn’t matter if someone’s neighbor is a suspected psychopath . . . 
3. William Turvill. 2020. The News 50: Tech giants dwarf Rupert Murdoch to become the biggest news media companies in the English-speaking world. Dec 3, Press Gazette. At least until the next round of corporate concentration. Big Tech didn’t used to be so newsy.
4. Elizabeth Kolbert. 2019. Why facts don’t change our minds. Feb 27, New Yorker Magazine. Lots of humans only choose facts that confirm their biases.

Optional: 

• Eli Pariser. 2012. The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web is changing what we read and what we think. NY: Penguin (‘The race for relevance’).

Online lecture pages

• Are news media biased?  (left vs right stereotypes: comparisons)
• Individual vs structural explanations of bias
• How is news ‘filtered?’
• Social problem here?
• Outline (videos: from a previous in-person class, but they follow the outline bias; filtering)

Video

• From Manufacturing Consent (Noam Chomsky on ownership filtering)
• From the documentary The Corporation (‘unsettling accounts‘–excellent example of advertising and ownership filters)
• Source filtering and the ‘General’s revolt‘ (using ‘message force multipliers’ and source filtering). You may need to follow instructions for updating Flash Player to view this–email with questions or ask in the thread).
• Flak filter (these commercials (second) commissioned by the Competitive Enterprise Institute aired immediately after the release of Al Gore’s film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ on behalf of some of their corporate sponsors);
• From the documentary Manufacturing Consent (example of anti-communist filter)