Apollo Moon Landing
By: AJ Payne
Background
Perspective 1
The NY Times wrote an article praising the moon landing. This is expressed by their use of phrases like ”camera outside the craft transmitted his every move to an awed and excited audience of hundreds of millions of people on earth”. Wording like this certainly portrays bias, not that it’s uncalled for though, because this was a historic event. The article also explains how the President at that time, Richard Nixon, gave the astronauts a congratulatory phone call after their return saying “Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility it required us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to earth.”
Perspective 2
The Express thinks there’s a problem with that NY Times article however. They think that the Apollo moon landing was faked. According to an article on their website “a bearded man” claiming to be The Shining director, Stanley Kubrick, had an interview with a documentary maker named T. Patrick Murray. One of the quotes from the article is “The bearded man says: ‘The conspiracy theorists were right, on this occasion.’” He then goes on to say that he filmed the moon landing and that it was all fake. The article quotes confessions from someone who isn’t even confirmed to be who he says he is. It only refers to him as “the bearded man”. It claims that the interview was shot four days before Kubrick’s death in 1999, even though it was only released in 2015. (Austin, pg. 1, 2015)
Media Bias Explained
Bias in the media is to be expected about anything, whether it’s a good or bad bias. In these two articles, there is a completely different interpretation of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The NY Times article came out right after the moon landing occurred so it pandered to the excessively patriotic feelings of the public at the time so it would resonate with more potential readers and sell more copies. The same is true with The Express’ article. They wanted an article that would entice people to read the story and help them make money, so they wrote an article that they thought would make a lot of money.
Criticism 1
This event can be viewed through a variety of different criticisms. One of these criticisms is historical. If it was viewed through a historical lens, you would see how the culture was shaped by the competitiveness with Russia. You would see how the entire mission was carried out in order to show military and technological superiority to Russia.
Criticism 2
Another criticism you could view this event through is Marxist. Marxist criticism shows that it takes a lot of money to build the rockets that took the astronauts up to space. It also shows that the rich people who built the rocket can choose who to let on and who to keep off. They rich people have the power over the poorer people even if they might’ve been qualified to go on the mission.