We live in a world where the ordinary man can gain access to top secret government documents with a click of his or her track pad or learn the Five Precepts of Buddhism without setting foot in a Tibetan monastery; but it’s best to not take everything you see and hear to heart.
News is nothing more than information and thanks to television, newspapers, magazines and the all-powerful Internet it has become the most pervasive form of information. However, it’s function has been misconstrued as social, political and economic gospel. People treasure their individuality in the United States and often it is a person’s opinions that form the cornerstone of their individuality. One of the darker aspects of our culture is that we tend to look for everything in pill-form and, unfortunately, we do the same for our beliefs and opinions.
Media televangelists such as Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Nancy Grace offer these pill-form opinions. While some of the information they present is factual, the majority is opinions presented as facts. While this makes for good entertainment, this is not the function of news.
News is pure fact and is meant to direct discussion, not belief. All facts concerning an issue must be free of opinion and presented to the people so that they may render their own judgements. What is seen on TV is an analysis of the news laden with opinion, which can be detrimental to the way people think and act.
Basically, it all comes down to whether or not an information consumer is apathetic, angry, looking to fit in or, frankly, not intelligent enough to make their own decisions. Understand that individuality is a wonderful thing, but dangerous when it needlessly divides people over a few comments made by a man with a microphone. For us to succeed as a culture, as a species, we need to communicate with each other and come to a satisfactory conclusion. Intelligent discussion, debate and compromise will take us much further than pointless, heated arguing where everything is in black and white.
By all means, listen to and consider the opinions in the news but, do not take them at face value. Talk amongst your friends, family and peers about these opinions and decide amongst yourself what is fact.
In this media-saturated world that we live in, information is power. Besides directing the public’s perspective of the world around them, news information serves another important function. A news story is a starting point for change, something that cannot happen in a democracy without action from its citizens. For instance, should the Lion’s Roar publish a story about Southeastern’s budget and report that tuition is set to rise 200 percent (just to be clear, this is not happening), students should seek to get involved with this issue and seek to defeat or defend the rise in tuition. Reporters, by definition, can only observe and report. It is up to the information consumer to act on the information.
News outlets and, as arrogant as this sounds, journalists hold immense power in our country and our world. To give you an idea, here are a few examples of how influential media can be.
Think back to 1971 (if you weren’t alive then, prepare for a history lesson) and the Pentagon Paper Scandal. Daniel Ellsberg, political activist and former military analyst, released classified military documents that recounted the history of the United States’ political and military action in Vietnam during the Vietnam War in unforgiving detail. Excerpts of the documents were plastered on the front pages of newspapers all over the country, including the New York Times.
This occurrence drastically changed the American public’s opinion of their government but more importantly it made average Americans willing to readily question their leaders. Because of these documents, news media and one brave man, the United States underwent a coming of age, as it were, and shed its naivete. This is the proper function of news.
Historically, and my favorite example of yellow journalism ever, is the case of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hurst. In an effort to sell more papers than the other, both of their newspapers provided sensationalized and false coverage of the sinking of the RMS Lustitania in 1915 off the coast of Ireland. Hoping to capitalize on the Cuban revolt against the Spanish, both Hurst and Pulitzer reported that it was sunk by a Spanish submarine. In actuality, the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat.
This little feud encouraged, if not caused and sustained the Spanish-American war in Cuba. By the wars end, thousands of soldiers and civilians were killed. This is not the proper function of news.
Take what has been written to heart, gentle reader, but on second thought, that would be a major contradiction of everything written above. Listen and watch. Analyze and think. Talk amongst and respect each other. Always question what has been presented as fact, no matter how ludicrous it might seem. The first rule to being a good reporter is “if your mother says she loves you check it out, get the facts.” But in today’s world where everyone is basically a reporter, this is advice that we all should follow.