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Can the media ever be relied upon to convey the truth?

The media is supposed to be liberal, supporting or allowing changes in political or religious affairs and encouraging self-expression. It should be a source where people are able to obtain first hand information, facts and truth. However, media in today's society are not delivering the truth and some have proven to be unreliable. Even in countries like America, where democracy is highly emphasized, the media is not that reliable too.

The media can forsake the truth for a lie just to earn credit. The example of Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s has shown us that the media should be blamed for the spread of the big lie. When he said he was holding on to a piece of paper that contains the names of communists who were employed by the America's State Department, the media believed and reported the news. In the end, it turned out to be a lie. This incident prove that they do not care to question the reliability of the source of their news and just reported it to the public, causing them to be fooled. So how can the media be relied upon when what they reported was just a fabricated story?

As quoted from the passage, many of the decisions made by the media are based on the 3 "P's", Popularity, Prejudice and Profit. In order to gain popularity, the America corporate-controlled media was likely to report news stories that they thought will be sensational enough to attract the audience. They tend to focus more on terror attacks, death and injuries. Take for instance the Iraqi war, the body counts of US killed or wounded are often accompanied by the tales of disillusionment on the part of Iraqi locals which will arouse the audience's feelings.

The media can be prejudice too. They have the freedom to choose their interviewee or edit news based on their personal judgment. The example in the article, where the journalist chose to interview a white instead of an African-American, show the biasness of the journalist. Her white audience applause for her actions, but in my opinion, she was unprofessional. It is alarming to discover that prejudice is actually exercised by premier journalist openly. In addition, the writer's personal encounter with the editor and his experience of such censorship showed us that the media would alter news as they wish. So can we still trust the news stories being reported by the media?

Corporate-controlled news are also profit driven. To increase profit, they "manufacture" and "market" news, treating news as a product. As stated in the article, analysis given by individual can be condensed to "sound bites". This will be manipulated to bring across the desired message. I think that this is equivalent to deceiving the audience, hood-wink them into believing the "processed" stories. The media is actually diminishing their own reputation as they sacrificed the truth, impartiality and ethics in exchange for ratings and profits.

The greatest concern of the media today is in fact their survival. Being government-controlled, they had to observe some rules. The US media coverage was polarized between 'good news' and 'bad news'. The media had to toe the line between a 'good news' and 'bad news'. In the debate "Iraq-Is the media telling the real story?", people are arguing about the reliability of US media. Lt Col Boylan who returned to the US as the chief spokesman for the US military said that there were less coverage of Iraq in the US media on his return than he expected and the complete story is not being told. A columnist for the International Herald Tribune, Roger Cohen said:"If you write a 'good news' story from Iraq you are immediately identified as an apologist for the administration...and if you write something critical then you're in the other camp." If journalists had to obey to these rules, they will not stick their neck too far out when reporting contentious issues. They will then not be able to bring the tuth back to the reader since they have to consider the classification of good and bad news.

Thus, the media can never be relied upon to convey the truth since it has not done its job as a pillar of democracy. If they continue to act in their way and manipulating facts, the detrimental effects will be felt for years to come.

Labels: Task 4

posted by Si Hui @ 3:50 PM