Issues and the News

"Off Course", by Michael Massing.


Problems with entertainment media really exist everywhere, in each country and each society and it should be covered and discussed more, because of its detrimental effect on every person, but especially on children. The TV shows, movies and popular video games are overfull with cruelty, violence and bloodshed, mostly every modern movie propagandize free sexual relationships and irresponsible behavior. If we take a look on the most popular cartoons, South Park or Simpson’s for example, what do they teach us, which valuable they promote? And the same picture we would see at mass media, where articles about the new boyfriend of Paris Hilton or beautiful girls after plastic surgery take place in every single publication. What kind of persons we are able to rise under the influence of this pop-culture? Cruel, pessimistic and brutal generation – is that what we are looking for? Of course, not. And mass media should be responsible for this influence, because, as Michael Messing said in the article, children mimic the behavior they see on TV, and what they see there is totally opposite to the behavior their parents want them to have. And this problem is not only about children. People of different age are influenced by media, we sometimes just copy everything we watch or read, even not realizing that. We try to look and act like our cult figures on TV, who are killing, stilling and having sex with different partners at the same time. But I think that prohibition to watch TV or read magazines is not a way out from this situation, because in this case you only try to hide your children, but you don’t solve the problem. We all should try to change this situation, because it’s not only a problem of mass media, but the problem of the whole society. We should protest against this rules, we should not buy these products and don’t let our children be influenced by this modern “pop-culture”. We should propagandize real values, such as family, kindness and sympathy, although it sounds too romantic. We can control the Mass Media, because their job is to give us what we want, and our job is to show them what we really want…

"The agenda-setting role of Mass media in the shaping of public opinion"

- Mass media in every country is thought to be the fourth authority in the state. It means that mass media can influence on peoples life in the same way as government does and sometimes it even can influence on the fact of existence of the government. All we know in our life, the way we find out about the surrounding events is what we see on TV, read in news papers or listen on the radio. Mass media forms our opinion about everything, it even influence on the level of our education and knowledge about the world because “What we know about the world is
largely based on what the media decide to tell us”.
- But even though mass media has a big influence on our opinion, it doesn’t mean that we follow all the instructions it gives us. It depends first of all on the kind of person and the level of need for orientation. Secondly, it depends on the way that person perceives the information and react on it. There is a great expression between journalists “the objectivity is an asymptote” and it means that there never will be a real objectivity in any newspaper or TV station, because people, who work there are not objective as they are people, but not robots. So, if somebody wants to find the truth, he should observe all kinds of available information about the event, analyze it and only after that find still subjective, but his own opinion. ("Rather than engaging in a
comprehensive analysis based on their total store of information, citizens routinely draw
upon those bits of information that are particularly salient at the time judgment must be
rendered.").
- Mass media really forms people’s opinion about mostly everything. The main topics of conversations at the street or at home are often the same that were given by mass media. That’s why it is so important to understand that journalist have a huge power in their hands and they can influence on different kinds of decisions of the society, which are tought to be independent and objective. There are so many examples of the influence of Mass Media, especially when there is a time for election a government in the country. Peoples opinion about politics directly connected with the tone journalists were talking about them. One more thing Ive noticed in different countries is that peoples opinion about events in the world (Georgia for example) are formed by mass media, which has a huge influence on the way people think about everything.
But there is still a way to avoid such influence and to be as more objective as you can. It depends only on your own efforts. Being objective means trying to get as more different information as possible from different kind of Mass Media in different countries and than analyze it and come to your own decision.

"A year in the News"

- Old media (newspapers and network) have broader and more diverse news, radio and cable news take 1 0r 2 hottest stories and magnify them over the airwaves - The press, unlike TV and radio, really gives bigger spectrum of different subjects in the news-papers. There are some reasons:First of all, press cant use visual influence on people (video) which often helps TV to retain attention of audience with pictures, instead of sense, and thats why Press needs to give more information about the event. The Press specialises on analytical articles which demand deep understanding, wide disclosing of a theme, while TV and radio are more entertaining, than informative.
- Education, religion, vital factors in our life are slow-moving trends, even though it is very important for people. Also, news that breaks, such as car crashes or explosions are more immediat news and its easier to keep peoples attention on it. Researches have shown that media doesnt always correspond to the interests of a society. On the foreground there are time events, accidents, failures,etc. Such events do not demand deeply theme studying or analysis so they are much easier for describing.
- International news cover only about 2% of all the News in the USA, and main theme depends on the own interests of the country.The War in Afganistan and Iraq is nowadays not so popular in mass-media and one of the main reasons is that many journalist spent a lot of their energy for the past 5 years to describe these events and political aspects. In 2007 "no country might have commanded as much regular media attention as China, whose growing economy makes it the energing growing power" - It confirms circumstance that the mass-media represents interests of the country on a political and economic platform.
- Only newspapers include business articles,health and medical stories among their top prioritets.Newspapers are indeed take more attention at serious subjects, they are counted mainly on businessmen, well-educated people and offer to their reader audience deep analytical articles.
- Web sites displayed the most interast in the world news and the least in covering US domestic politics.Web sites become more popular with every year, they are very comfortable in using, they quickly react on events and give plenty of information about events in the whole world.Inernet gives different kind of information,such as analytical, informative, or news articles.
- There are so many "one-week" stories in mass-media, which vanish in few days. People are interested in them only throughout several days, than interest vanishes and journalists start looking for another event. Mainly these articles are about explosions, catastrophes, fires et cetera.Instead of initiating discussions about the problems which resulted in catastrophes and searching ways of decision of these problems, the mass-media just describes an event and after losing interest, simply forgets it.
- Any way, the mass-media accomplishes errors often, pulling out on the first plan a subject, quite uninteresting to a reader (spectator, listener). Frequently the kick-up articles about the stars of show-business oust information about a worldwide policy or problems of economy.One of the main reasons is an inability of mass-media to analysis, to the search of new, interesting themes for society.In fact it is much more easier to come into the notice of public with next article about a new fellow of Peris Hilton, than to analyse the market of sales in economy or relation of countries on a world political arena. But also there are a lot of material aspects of these problems, because deep business or economic articles require much more resources than newsroom can afford.
- Anyway, mass-media nowadays is changing very fast. Many news-papers have been closed because more and more people prefer to search news online. That doesn’t mean that press is died, because for example in Ukraine, people don’t trust web sites, newspapers are thought to be the most informative and truthful.Also. in future newspapers will definitely find out how to earn money from their online versions. In any case, it is very important to understand, that mass-media is not just entertainment, but first of all, it is the fourth authority in each state. Culture and a level of mass-media depends not only on a freedom of speech, but also it depends on subjects of events and its conformity to interests of society.

"What is wrong with that?"

As I was the only one student who answered “nothing” on that question about what was wrong with taking 3 themes from the whole story and printing them on the first page of the news-paper, I would like to explain my point of view. Of course every person deserves to know the whole truth about the events in the world and inside the country, but what does this true mean? We want to read objective articles and objective information, although we know that there is no pure objectivity at all, it just doesn’t exist. Every reporter or journalist is subjective just because he is a human and even if he would like to write an objective story he couldn’t do that because he will represent his own opinion in any case. The part of the event which seems to be the most important for one person (in our case journalist) doesn’t mean that the same part of the event is the most important for all the readers. But at the same time it doesn’t mean that journalist wanted to falsify the event, he just wrote about that part, which seems the most interesting and important for him. So, I think there is nothing wrong if you just take some parts of the story and represent it as the whole story, if you think it’s the main idea of what really happened. And I think that it is not about journalist, who can’t be objective, but it’s about a reader, who doesn’t want to read more information from different sources to find his own opinion and his own objectivity.