Is It Harmless Entertainment Or A Cultural Threat By Maryann Haggerty

Submitted By rommel08
Words: 867
Pages: 4

Argument Analysis Journal #1 In the article “Is it harmless entertainment or a cultural threat?” author Maryann Haggerty successfully integrates her sources throughout the article to provide supporting facts and influential data. By using these sources, Haggerty's article becomes more appealing, and by crediting the sources it also becomes more convincing. However, in the beginning of her article, Haggerty used a couple of sources that may have been detrimental in helping her prove her point that reality television is becoming widely popular and, indeed, very vulgar. In discussing the growing rate of viewers for reality television, the author uses her first source when she paraphrases an article out of a magazine called “Variety.” Haggerty used some data from this source by discussing how 500 million dollars was produced in revenue for the hit reality show American Idol. By using this information, the author backs up her previous idea that reality television has grown exponentially within the past decade. The author points out clearly with this information the relationship between revenue and the number of viewers (more viewers = more profit), and how the reality industry has grown tremendously. Although the industry of reality television is growing, the writer displayed a negative tone toward this growth by discussing how it is having a negative impact on the television industry. Haggerty uses negative connotations in describing and criticizing the reality industry by using such words as “lowbrow,” “vulgar,” “unreal,” “shocking,” and many other negative connotations. With these negative connotations, we can infer that the author supports the idea that reality television is a growing industry but also is a cultural threat to the viewers as well. Haggerty accurately uses her first source about the detailed revenue that American Idol is pulling in when describing the growth of the reality industry. Her intended meaning is accurate, as it shows the audience how the growth of reality entertainment has seen a drastic increase in profit because of the large increase in the amount of viewers. I think we can also generally agree that this source is a good piece of evidence in supporting her view on the growth of this industry. Although it is a good piece of data and well integrated with her ideas, the author should have more convincingly included a detailed example of how much money reality television actually brings in, when compared to other television genres. This source was published in an entertainment magazine known as Variety. Variety is known as a good source for entertainment news, which gives the source (and the article as a whole) more credibility. The source that Haggerty used in her article is a magazine editor whose name is Michael Schneider. Variety magazine lists Michael as a graduate from Northwestern University whose resume is pretty impressive, as he has appeared on shows such as World News Tonight, Dateline, Primetime Live, and the Today Show. This author has credibility and that makes this source very reliable. Haggerty used another source in her article when describing the negative influences of reality television. She included a detailed graph which showed the different technological and social changes in recent times. This graph made reality TV stick out like a sore thumb, as a higher percentage of Americans think reality television is a change for the worse, not for the better. Haggerty used this graph to show that this opinion, that reality television becoming a cultural threat, is a