Cleaven Chia’s Edublog

What exactly does the media do? I personally think that it is a medium via which information is dissipated – specifically information from places that we were unable to reach physically. The reach of media developed from that of a community to national reach (with the rise of nationalist movements like the French Revolution) to regional and slowly to global.

We can also see that new forms of media began to emerge. The invention of the printing press saw the birth of the newspaper, the invention of the transistor saw the birth of the radio and the cathode ray tube brought about the first televisions. More recently, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, which slowly developed into the Internet that we know of today.

From this we can see that the media first developed in terms of its reach – then when the maximum possible reach was hit (and restrained due to many factors, more commonly technology, financial strength and maybe the mindsets of people) alternate forms of media began to emerge.

However, in a conversation that I had with Shannon, he claims that the media shows relatively “unimportant” stuff that does not pertain to the local or regional scene, and instead showing more news from the international scene. Some questions may sprout:

1. Why should we care for people in other parts of the world when we do not even care enough for the people around us?
2. Why should we care for people in other parts of the world when incidents that occur around us have more geographical significance and thus we should accord priority and attend to these first.

Shannon continued on by saying why our media does not report news on people who urinate in lifts and yet report news on terrorist attacks. Shannon also talked about fictional news, which I will touch on later.

Back to my questions. To the two questions that I posed (answers are targeted not at specific questions but are general answers to both):

• There is an increased global awareness due to the global reach of modern media.
• Besides, there is little chance that a whole population will be interested in helping the people around us – same applies in cases of rendering aid to other countries. Additionally, there are people who are selfish and care for self-interests only.
• Geographical significance does not necessarily equate to urgency – the scale and magnitude of the incident does.
• Some local problems do not have immediate – or rather, effective – solutions that can be undertaken. Also, the public may not be able to render help in the right form. (For example, helping the poor get out of the poverty cycle – this requires implementation of government policies to be effective, even though donations by the public may seem to be an immediate relief measure; contrast this with the seemingly much easier form of providing relief to other countries by donating necessities.)

With regards to why some news are shown instead of others:

• Degree of impact – some news are more likely to draw attention than others. A murder case, for example, will stay in the media for much longer than a case of theft.
• Importance of dissemination – some important news (especially those regarding government policies) may be important and needs to be spread among the public as fast as possible (e.g. the infamous 2% rise in GST (again) and the implementation of policies to offset effects of that increase).

In fact I retorted to Shannon, “What the heck is the media for if local news are not reported at all?” Despite the fact that the media allows us to know more, we don’t have to know everything.

Shannon also raised an interesting point about fictional/manipulated news. Imagine this scenario:

1. A terrorist attack occurs somewhere in Singapore.
2. Witnesses of the incident are silenced (i.e. they do not spread the news).
3. The media does not report it either.

Shannon says that the media should not report it at all since it will cause a big hooha out of it. “Ignorance is bliss”, as the old adage says. At first thought I would agree with him, since we will not be able to render help immediately (unless we are at the scene), and then people will start pointing fingers at who will be the mastermind.

In the case where the media actually reports the incident on the news, Shannon claims that one terrorist group will come out and claim responsibility (regardless of whether they were responsible) since some terrorist groups are out to get publicity of the group and their aims; on the other hand, I stood my ground by saying that terrorists do execute plans in line of their aims and goals, but will tend not to get in the way of law. Shannon followed up his argument by saying that since terrorists are out to get publicity, the media would be one cause of subsequent terrorist attacks (this rests on the claim that terrorists execute attacks to stike fear and destabilise peace, which may be their goals). I did not agree, and I said that the media is not the catalyst of subsequent terrorist attacks. I reasoned that terrorists groups would have different agendas (this would not exclude Shannon’s scenarios) and that some terrorist attacks that may look like follow-up attacks by first glance may be executed by a different group (also to strike fear and destabilise peace).

In such a case, should the media report a terrorist attack on the news? Stay tuned for Part II.

Filed under: Storm in the Mind