alized nation. Here the top 1 percent of households controls the same percentage of the nation’s income as the bottom 90 percent of households (Ore: 81). If in truth America represents a society that obviously restricts opportunity to a small number of people, why has the idea of the American dream been reinforced for so long? To answer this question, it is important to first identify where most of this reinforcement takes place. In this case, the media is largely responsible for supporting the myth of equal opportunity in America. The support comes in the form of distorted media coverage of the poor and inaccurate portrayals of the wealthy. One of the ways the media distorts the facts about distribution of resources is by deceiving the public into thinking that it is common to be wealthy. Even though they make up an incredibly small percentage of the population, the affairs of the wealthy are most often the focus of the media. By presenting these issues as the most common, the American public is led to believe that the “concerns of the wealthy are the concerns of us all”(Ore: 75). Another way in which false values been supported by the media is evident in its terribly inaccurate presentation of poverty in this country. On the rare occasion that the poor are the focus of the media, they are portrayed as a small percentage of the population that is responsible for creating financial problems for the middle class. Rather than examine the tremendous barriers that serve to keep the poor from attaining financial success, we are trained to see them as a burden on those who have already achieved financial success. This is where the myth of the American dream once again comes into play. If we are in a country where all have equal opportunity, then the poor are considered to be wholly responsible for their situation. Problems such as crime, drug and alcohol abuse, lack of education, and reliance on welfare are rep...
