Mass media, "our window" to which we are able to "peer through" at recent events happening all over the world. But the questions is are we able to trust our media? Is the media reporting the news in its purest form or is it twisting and making the news as they want it to be interpreted as?
What we know as "recent" is defined by the Merriam's dictionary as "having lately come into existence" and "events" are "noteworthy happenings". In other words, "recent events" are the latest things that happened or occurred. News is all about recent events as obviously anything way back in the past is not "new" and anything far off in the future cannot be confirmed. Recent events must happen during a time close to the present day.
However, news about recent events are always unreliable as the media usually do not report the news but rather "tweak" it to achieve their objectives.
One such example of the media altering news is the widely debated topic of the ex-US president, Bill Clinton and his scandals.
The reports of Clinton's affairs were so aggressive that it even caused his own government to become labelled as "corrupt", "incompetent" and "untrustworthy" and eventually caused his massive loss of support. Ironically, there was actually no concrete evidence of Clinton's scandals but it was the heat of debate as it involved sex. One reporter even admitted that they went overboard but said that they continued to report the story as "sex sells".
On the other hand, the same new organisations paid no notice to the present US president, George Bush's controversial sale of the Harken energy stocks. Bush, one of the head of the Harken company, "dumped more than 200,000 shares of the company's stock " when he heard that the company was facing a financial crisis. This caused the company to plummet and it would have lost millions.
However, top news agencies, including New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and many others, all completely ignored the incident, simply because it would not attract interest and that insider-trading was "difficult" to report. News agencies report more news that they feel will attract readers and leave out the more "boring" ones. Clearly, this shows how the media bases the news broadcasts on the profits they will earn form the increased viewership.
Another example is the huge extent of media coverage when the hurricane Katrina stormed the USA, one of the most developed countries in the world. The large extent of media coverage was astounding - ranging from actual footages of the disaster to websites and online commentaries based solely on getting more donors and support to Katrina victims.
However, the hurricane took about only 1,836 lives, which is by-far a small sum compared to the millions that die from AIDS every year in Africa. Surprisingly, the Katrina event was given more media attention than the African AIDS situation that was far more severe and deadly. This only spells one thing - the media is definitely not reporting the news but rather choosing and altering the news based on their profits.
Even our very own local media is not innocent of such altering of information. The case of Hwuang Na's murder is evidence enough how the media can blow up a single murder case to a large issue.
In conclusion, the altering and tweaking of information in the media will always continue as new agencies like any other company is profit-centered and will aim to maximise their earnings. It is up to us to decide which news information is reliable and which is just pure fiction.
Bibliography
Definition :
http://www.webster.com/dictionary
Bush info :
http://mediamatters.org/items/200605260016
Katrina info:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/katrina/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
Aids in Africa info:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/04/11/safrica.aids.reut/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aids_in_Africa
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