Noah Rothman's Essay 'Taking Sides In Ferguson'

Malcolm X famously said, “The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power, because they control the minds of the masses”. Although the modern media is powerful, it is always changing not only technologically, but in the way journalists report and act. Commentary over the last several years has centered on the negative changes of the media that journalists are unethical, stories are approval driven, and opinion is included in the news. Many Americans as well as journalists are concerned in the apparent decline in moral of the media. One journalist, Noah Rothman illustrates this claim in his article “Taking Sides in Ferguson” when he states that “On multiple occasions in the week that followed , police requested that he media separate themselves from

Rothman scolds the media for physically participating in the riots. It proposes that the media themselves are lawless criminals, and invalidates many stories. Similarly James Fallows accuses the media of defying ethics in his article “Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media” with the statement, “Gawker posted the pictures and headline, “I Had a One Night Stand with Christine O’Donnell” (36). The headline from Gawker illustrates the lengths that journalists will go to get a story. The headline suggests that the media destroys people’s livelihood in order to sell a story, even if there is no basis for the story or accusation. Stories are no longer respectable and virtuous as they were at modern journalism’s beginning. Thus, by journalists Fallows and Rothman have named the media as unethical. Another way that modern journalists have transformed today’s media is that the media now relies on the popularity of its stories and articles. Journalist Jack Shafer uses his article, “The Rise and the Fall of the Obama Media Romance” as an example of popular opinion reflecting