The mass media is very powerful and influential in the world. As one ex-president of United States said" a president governs the people for 4 years but journalists govern the people forever". This statement simply shows the power of media. In the modern age people now depend on media for information and i find that it is important for the mass media to report facts rather than create them.
What news i would like to do is about news that are fabricated in favour of the government or the corporate. These types of videos are particularly known as the VNRs(video news releases ). VNRs are pre-packaged "news" segments and additional footage created by broadcast PR firms, or by publicists within corporations or government agencies. VNRs are designed to be seamlessly integrated into newscasts, and are freely provided to TV stations. Although the accompanying information sent to TV stations identifies the clients behind the VNRs, nothing in the material for broadcast does. Without strong disclosure requirements and the attention and action of TV station personnel, viewers cannot know when the news segment they're watching was bought and paid for by the very subjects of that "report."
One of the examples is the report on nuclear weapons in Iraq. After George Bush's claim that Iraq purchase Uranium from Niger was exposed, it created a big buzz on the reliability of the news that we are listening to. Nowadays, government agencies uses media as a way to influence the mentality of the people to do what the government wants them to do. In this case, it is to spur the negative feelings of US citizens to fight the Iraq war. It questions what the media ethics does it have and the information we are getting through our senses. It refutes that basic definition of information.http://www.rense.com/general44/50.htm
Now we shall look at news in our local context---The Huang Na murder case. In this incident, the mass media exaggerated the situation and portrayed the victim's mother as a very pitiful and devastated lady who had just lost her daughter. In the end, the response was massive. Some of the Singaporeans who had read of her plight decided to give donations to Huang Na's parents. This sum of money grew as more articles are reported on her. In the end, this astronomical sum of money was enough to buy Huang Na's parents a three story bungalow in China. This once again shows the power of media again. The exaggeration has caused the people to lose their rationality and donate unnecessarily. The donations have lost its meaning and the media has to bear part of this blame.http://www.channelnewsasia.com/cgi-bin/search/search_7days.pl?status=&search=Huang+na&id=157756
The final report i am doing is on the exaggeration of reports on global warming. Although global warming is a serious problem, the media should not sensationalize it. A catastrophe is interesting but a climate analysis is not. Nowadays, when we flip through the newspapers, we see reports on climate change and how the world will end in near future. It just shows something, media would rather attract readers, have a veneer of superficial interest to increase its sales rather than provide the true story.http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,342376,00.html
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