Strawman News Media: Difference between revisions
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* Type 2: The media are tightly controlled by [[The Government]]. Similar to the above, but often with a more sinister intent. There will be little real "news" on the network, most of its programming being either propaganda praising the government, or [[Lowest Common Denominator]] trash designed to keep the [[Dying Like Animals|"sheeple"]] from thinking.
* Type 3: The media are [[Strawman Political|heavily biased toward one end of the political spectrum]], with only [[Fox News Liberal|token, ineffectual representation]] given to the other side. Which end [[Depending on the Writer|depends on]] [[Author Tract|the political views of the writer]].
** If the media are liberal, then they will be havens of [[Political Correctness Gone Mad]] staffed by elitist [[The Sixties|Sixties]] [[New Age Retro Hippie|radicals]], unable to ask the hard questions due to fear of what they think are the [[Unfortunate Implications]] that they bring up, even though they're staring them in the face so hard a 10 year old can understand them. They [[Les Collaborateurs|will be]] [[The Quisling|actively seeking to undermine America]], especially its military, in which case they cross over with [[Straw Civilian]]. Often will overlap with Type 2 if the government is run by somebody they favor, and [[Hypocrite|ironically]], may also overlap with Type 1 with a corporation that's vested in ''their'' company. [[Suspiciously Specific Denial|Any resemblance to]] ''[[American Newspapers|The New York Times]]'', ''[[British Newspapers|The Guardian]]'', [[MSNBC]], [[CNN]], or
** If they're conservative, then all of the writers, editors and, in the case of [[24-Hour News Networks|cable news]] or [[Radio]], hosts will be [[Expy|expies]] of [[Rush Limbaugh]], [[Glenn Beck]], [[Bill O Reilly]], and Ann Coulter, declaring that the only "true" [insert news agency's nationality here] are [[Heteronormative Crusader|white, heterosexual Christians]] who support the troops (''i.e.'' [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|the defense contractors]]) and [[War for Fun and Profit|everything that they do overseas]]. Often, it will be run by a major corporation that has a vested interest in an aggressive foreign policy and loose business regulations, overlapping with Type 1. [[Suspiciously Specific Denial|Any resemblance to the]] [[Fox News Channel]] is purely coincidental.
* Type 4: The media are vapid, caring more about celebrity hijinks and [[Missing White Woman Syndrome|missing white women]] than about things like wars, poverty and corruption that are affecting far more lives. The news desk will be staffed by [[Hot Scoop|women who look like they came out of a fashion magazine]] (or [[Public Exposure|a men's]] [[Page Three Stunna|magazine]]) rather than broadcasting school. Likely to display a bad case of [[Worst News Judgment Ever]]. Sometimes, this will overlap with Type 1 or 2, with the government or Big Business using these fluff stories in order to [[Bread and Circuses|distract people from their less reputable activities]]. Other times, however, it is simply [[Network Decay|selling out for ratings]]—people don't want to be told that they're living in a [[Crapsack World]], they want to escape from everything.
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* The classic example of Type 2 - [[George Orwell]]'s ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]'', where the government control was so intensive that they had an entire department devoted to altering historical records.
* The entire news media in ''[[World War Z]]'' is portrayed as Type 4. Their quest for ratings is partly responsible for the disaster at Yonkers, which starts the Great Panic. They also cross over with Type 1 when they hype up Phalanx, a vaccine for [[The Virus|the zombie virus]] (which was then believed to be a strain of rabies) which turns out to be little more than a placebo.
* ''The Daily Prophet'' from the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' series is solidly Type 2, especially in ''[[Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (novel)|Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix]]'' and ''[[Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (novel)|Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows]]''. In fact, the newspaper is such a mouthpiece for the Ministry of Magic that it seems quite happy to simply change its views whenever a new Minister comes into power.
* [[Orson Scott Card]]'s novel ''[[Empire]]'' depicts pretty much every media outlet except for [[Fox News]] as a left-wing Type 3.
* ''[[America (The Book)]]'' contains a one-page [[Take That]] at the media for abdicating their responsibilities of fact-checking government processes in favor of ratings, pointing out how, when America was getting ready to invade Iraq, the media was covering the finale of ''[[Friends]]'' and the [[If It Bleeds, It Leads|Kobe Bryant rape case]]. It also mocks political cartoons like ''[[Mallard Fillmore]]'' and ''[[Doonesbury]]'' for letting their politics get in the way of the humor.
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* Type 4 is parodied in the [[JibJab]] video [https://web.archive.org/web/20120118024945/http://sendables.jibjab.com/originals/what_we_call_the_news "What We Call the News"].
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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* One report said another reason for this trope is that a lot of the older journalists are way too cynical, and indifferent to really care about being a hard nosed investigative journalist. While younger reporters/journalists are too scared to speak out or go against the status quo. Which leads to the media being uninformative.
* [[Conspiracy Theorist|Conspiracy theorists]] often label the entire news media with Type 1, Type 2 and especially Type 5. We could go through a whole extra trope page listing examples of conspiracy theorists who have done this.
* Media in totalitarian countries (most notably in [[Soviet Russia, Ukraine, and So On|the former Soviet Union]] and [[Commie Land|its allies]]) is usually Type 2. The actual effect of it, however, was rather different, with many people coming to believe the exact opposite of what was reported.
** A joke that could fit just fine at the top of the page comes from this. Two Soviet papers were called "Pravda" and "Izvestia" which are "Truth" and "News," respectively. The saying goes, "There is no news in the Truth (pravda), and there is no truth in the News (Izvestia)"
* Truth in Television in Japan, where the "Press Clubs" kiss up to politicians to get information. This has gotten to the point where most Japanese will read weekly news magazines. Even though these magazines have touches of tabloid media to them, they contain more truthful, investigative journalism than the papers or television news, and have been responsible for breaking major news stories.
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[[Category:News Tropes]]
[[Category:The War On Straw]]
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