Week 9 Finally Summary

· Total number of articles : 38
Total positive: 20
Total negative: 10
Total neutral: 8
13 editorials and columns vs. 25 news stories

The impact that public relation played in the overall of the my topic over nine week period is that it promoted the idea that the main reason causes eating disorders among young adults is the influence of the media. As we can see that in these days, news and TV entertainment are full of the reports about young, thin Hollywood actresses who might be anorexic or bulimic. Even in TV commercials, bill boards on high way, magazines are promoted the idea of beauty. In editorials, columns and news articles, they show stories, facts and statistics on how media plays very important role in creating eating disorders among young teen girls. I think public relation efforts and key messages had the most influence on how they provided evidences, statistics and stories on how media has an impact on young girls.

I found an interesting experiment, conduct by Cusumano & Thompson, to find the link between media images and personal own images. There were two groups of people. The first group in this experiment watched 10 minute tapes of commercials that emphasize society’s view of beauty. Another group didn’t watch the commercials that emphasize beauty. The result was that the first group that watched beauty ads did not feel great about their bodies, on the other hand, those exposed to other ads felt more satisfied with their bodies. Many young women aspire to have bodies like those models in magazines or TV commercials. I think they may feel less secure with themselves when they are subjected to those beautiful models.

The proponents are more successful in getting their message across because they were more support on how the media impact on the perception of young girls. As we can see from many teen magazines, they all supported the same idea of skinny is beauty. On the other hand, opponents were less successful in getting their messages across because I did not see lot of news articles, columns or editorials that promotes the ideas of genetic, social factors are the main reason of eating disorders. I pretty much found that the main reason that causes eating disorders is media. I think there were not any clear cut cases of reporter bias in any of news stories because news articles present the factual information about the topic, no opinion or conclusion are included. Most of news articles that I found have evidences and statistics to support their messages. As a public relation counselor, I will propose to address an apparent bias that was not my favor by telling that there is a bias and I may provide more information on the other side as well but try to be as neutral as I can.