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The director of the British Broadcasting Corporation stated that television news is a form
of entertainment; therefore, action events are more entertaining than other ones. Images of riots,
bombings, earthquakes, massacres and other violent acts get more air time that people helping
each other to prevent or fix the ones mentioned before. This choosing of what to cover is not
necessarily because people on the media are evil but because they are trying to entertain the
audience. However, by trying to entertain they are also influencing the audience towards
thinking that violence or disastrous events are common. When news about illegal immigration is
broadcasted, there will be more audience watching people getting caught while crossing the
border, or when the police are performing raids than if the media show undocumented being
helped by them (Aronson, 1972).
On the illegal immigration issue, media is a powerful tool. Acting in a chain reaction, the
way in which news pieces are presented influences the way policy makers take decisions about
the issue. The direction of the law is going to be mostly managed depending on these policies.
Two methods are used by the news to persuade audiences:
1
. The central route: Elaboration of information using facts and logical arguments to
influence the audience’s thinking.
2
. The peripheral route: superficial triggers influencing thought (i.e. the use of cues).
In addition to the use of any of these two methods a contextualization of the story using
examples is also important, mostly through story framing (Soderlund, 2007).
Most stories are going to be subject of framing, because regardless the objectivity that a
news piece is written with, the writer is the one who is going to decide what is more important
and choose one story over another, this fact allows us to see the bias of different media channels
(Olesen, 2008). In 1997, when policies were becoming harder for undocumented residents, the
media coverage was framed towards sympathy and appealing to the idea that society should help
those lacking human needs (Soderlund, 2007).
When communicating, the style media uses affects its persuasiveness. It is argued that an
emotional message persuades people more than a logical message. Journalistic standards require
a news story to present controversial issues such as unauthorized immigration. In 2006, media
covered a protest called “A Great American Boycott” or “A Day without an Immigrant” which
called immigrant community to abstain from buying, selling, working and attending school in
order to demonstrate how much labor from unauthorized immigrants is needed (Hamilton, 2006).
In pro immigration rallies such as the one mentioned, the images broadcasted of people
protesting, waving American flags and demanding an amnesty and legalization are an example of
how news can show images in a way that they emotionally influence the audience and persuade
them to support pro-immigration policies (CNN, 2008).
th
On the 15 of October 2015, The Philadelphia Inquirer released an article written by
Michael Matza titled “Restaurants putting immigration reform on the menus”. The article is
about Cristina Martinez and her husband Ben Miller, owners of “Barbacoa” a Mexican
Restaurant in South Philadelphia that are also using it as a platform to perform activism for the
undocumented immigrants working in American kitchens. The article narrates how Cristina
moved to the US to earn a better salary and improve herself. It also states how immigrants are
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