Current State of the Media in the U.S

Produced by Kelly Nyks, Peter D. Hutchinson and Jared P. Scott, the documentary Requiem for the American Dream features Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics and American activist widely viewed as the most intellectual of his time. The documentary exposes power, wealth, and corruption that is deeply embedded into the United States government through a comparison of today’s and previous generations in a somewhat obvious but groundbreaking analysis of enterprise and society (Chomsky, 2017). Many citizens in the united states are living in the middle class, so the middle class determines implemented policies. In the film, Chomsky delineates inequalities in wages between the wealthy and poor, then relates it to the middle class. He directs the message to them, for convincing viewers that higher tax rates are important to the economy.

My overall takeaway from the documentary is the 10 principles leading to the concertation of power and wealth. Among these principles include shaping ideology, shifting the burden, redesigning the economy, criticizing harmony, engineering votes, running the regulators, keeping the people in life, developing consent, relegating the populace, and reducing democracy (Chomsky, 2017). All these principles, from a myriad of archival sources and through vivid examples are rendered relatable.

There is a clear connection between the documentary Requiem for the American Dream and the culture of the United States. The documentary shows how the American culture of idealism has been sabotaged. It suggests the destruction of the American culture of idealism is not a natural, inexorable occurrence but it results from choices made for self-enrichment and by individuals operating within specific belief systems. Noam Chomsky is more saddened and intends to find the cause of this destruction. He finds roots in the Requiem from the original set up of the United States (Chomsky, 2017). The United States constitution put power in in hands of wealthy people. It was constructed not top remote and prevent democracy. Concentrations of wealthy people led to concentrations of political power. The course of American cultural history has been defined by the struggles of political power and this wealth against democratization upsurges most notably during the women’s and civil rights movements as well as the 1930s labor movement.

I think the current state of U.S media is not exactly trustworthy and is predictable. According to Farkas & Schou (2018), there was a cataclysmic shift in the role of the media in the U.S starting with the late 1990s with the start-up of Fox news. The press had traditionally tried to report the news in an unbiased way and now with the introduction of Fox News, all efforts to be unbiased were abandoned. Since that time, reporting the news has become more political and more biased. Today people use the term Alternate Universe to describe the reporting of some news outlets compared to other more mainstream outlets.

References

Chomsky, N. (2017). Requiem for the American dream: The 10 principles of concentration of wealth & power. Seven Stories Press.

Farkas, J., & Schou, J. (2018). Fake news as a floating signifier: Hegemony, antagonism and the politics of falsehood. Javnost-The Public, 25(3), 298-314. https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2018.1463047