Glenn Greenwald's Limiting Democracy

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In the article “Limiting Democracy: The American Media’s World View and Ours,” Glenn Greenwald describes how American political media outlets actively hide critical information from their audiences; however, American audiences are also at fault because they do not take the necessary steps to acquire accurate information. In the past, Americans could access news coverage from only a few major media corporations that communicated important world news. Over the years, these corporations have built trust with their viewers, and Americans do not question whether these corporations are withholding information from them due to this trust. This provides Americans with a small scope of knowledge, which they assume is correct, despite the vast range of information now available via the internet. Americans’ limited perspective “[causes Americans to believe] that the set of information [they] are getting is all [they] need to know, which in turn reinforces…show more content…
media’s unbalanced coverage by providing specific examples surrounding 9/11 and the War on Terror. Because the media’s mistakes surrounding the war in Iraq are now obvious to many viewers, Greenwald suggests that many journalists would argue that their incorrect information came from the government, which was their only source. Greenwald believes the media could have done much better by researching their own material and portraying that to Americans. Greenwald finds that a lot of information criticizing the government or reporting on American mistreatment of Muslims was hidden on the web, while Muslims’ mistreatment of Americans was put on every front page. This double-sided coverage causes the world views of Americans to be vastly different than those of other countries, especially Muslim ones. Greenwald admits that although an American would not have to agree with the motives presented by terrorist Muslims, it is still the media’s duty to report on all information around the

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