What is the medias’ role in modern society?
With Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the 15th
century, modern television and the internet, we are in the age of information.
This overflow of information does, however, mean you have to be critical to
what you see, hear and read. How news and other information are presented is
essential to how the receiver interprets it; so what causes the media to
present information the way they do?
The world is a competitive place, and to
make profit, news agencies must adapt accordingly. There is a broad specter of
news agencies that have different focuses on what they publish. You have
“serious” and internationally recognized newspapers like The New York Times, and
newspapers like The Sun, whose content may look more like gossip than news. Why
aren’t all newspapers like The New York Times? One answer to that is probably
that a lot of people prefer to read the, far from objective, gossip about
celebrities, rather than the latest update on the crisis on Crimea. The more
shocking the revelation, the more they sell.
The vast majority of the media present a
lot more than news. Personally, I rarely watch live broadcasts on television,
except from the seven-O’clock-news, because half of my time I’ll be watching
commercials. It’s not just on the television either; magazines and newspapers
are stuffed with these adverts. The amount of advertisement does vary of
course, but generally it’s too much. Has the profit become more important than
the news themselves, or are the news agencies simply forced to advertise in
order to avoid bankruptcy?
In Norway, and most other countries in the
West, the news agencies are independent organizations, under no obligation to
the state or government. The people that live in the West, me included, may
take this for granted, but in many places propaganda and censorship are common. The media is an essential part of the democracy, and if they’re not independent,
there is no democracy. To exemplify, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un won
several gold medals in this year’s Olympics, at least that’s what North Korean
newspapers wrote.
I could write a long novel on this topic,
but the lesson would remain the same. Sir Francis Bacon once said “knowledge is
power”, and in many ways that’s true. What people think, or are convinced to
think, affect their actions; the media has a great responsibility, as well as
great power. So keep in mind whenever you are exposed to new information, that
there is always more than one aspect to a matter.
