Communication & Media Essay Samples
[...] Considering the expected effect of the new act, which was supposed to drastically change the way we live, work, study, and simply interact with each other, it turns out as no surprise that the legislative process was surrounded by many governmental and telecom business issues and speculations. A Global media giant Viacom Inc. remarked Telecommunication Act's "procompetitive and deregulatory nature is good for the telecommunications industry, since it will allow cable, broadcast and telephone companies to enter into new markets with greater certainty and less government constraints". The new bill has left the major players of the market virtually unarmed against newcomers and start-ups. The previously successful method of dealing with impudent intruders to this profitable place by the means of mergers and acquisitions has suddenly become useless.
It must be noted that in spite of many years of preparation of the Act the Congress passed it with outstanding promptness and dispatch contrary to the "tradition" of overextended congressional decision-making over major issues. The Telecom Act became an indicator of what can be done when Democrats and Republicans work together in a matter of genuine cooperation to bring forth the interests of the society and lead us all to a brighter future. [...]
[...] For example, let's say we have the situation with the business proposal refusal. If the writer states his refusal in the first sentences of the letter, his reader might never bother to go on to the reasons or might be in the wrong frame of mind to consider them. By putting the explanation before the refusal, a good writer focuses attention on the reasons. The indirect plan of message organization should appear neither manipulative nor unethical. As long as you can be honest and reasonably brief, you're better off to open a bad-news message with a neutral point and put the negative information after the explanation. Then if you can close with something fairly positive, you're likely to leave the audience feeling okay-not great but not hostile either. [...]
[...] The speed of economic change dictates the corresponding changes in culture industries. The mass media of today appear to be very alike to the conveyer devised by Ford. Analogous to the car, the newspaper, the first true mass medium, is the complex product. Every worker in the process of creating it does a strictly specialized task (i.e. writes a specific column, edits certain pages, prepares images, etc.). At the end of the process there is "faceless" product, a collective effort of many single contributors.
As one can imagine, with increased competitive pressure, this process is bound only to intensify. The workers in the culture industries, akin to the workers in other industries as well, may feel detached from their work. In the news room the speed at which the new information is processed does not allow much time for critical evaluation. Work becomes an automated process and workers become robots overloaded with information that may not even remember what they did during the day after it ends. [...]