Media And The Truth | Harison Xavier

                           

Introduction

 I didn't wanted to write about this, I deleted this post before and I am rewriting it again but if I don't post it I will not get peace. This is a topic that is bothering me for a very long time. I hate to think about it, it consumes too much mental energy. And the research needed to find the truth is beyond me but that should not stop me from making my point or a first step. I find it very difficult to write about it.                                 

 I am an avid reader, I am keenly interested to know what is happening around the world. I spend minimum 2 hours reading all the news I can find everyday. If you ever read the same news from different source you will know how biased they are. The same news could be twisted to different forms and made up into a mockery for people who read it. 

                                I wish to know the truth, I don't care how hard it is to swallow, I want truth not biased truth, so do other people who reads news daily. News and information should not be biased, I feel like it is a human right to know the absolute truth.  Below are a few problems I seen when it comes news and the media. I am not trashing anyone here. Just want to keep it clean and simple.

Biased News Is Fake News  

I started noticing that the same news could be showed in different ways to make it sound positive or negative. I wondered why they had such difference. After a bit of a research I found that most news channel in my country are controlled or funded by the political parties. I was at an impression that medias worked for us, they are here for letting us know the truth. All that speech of about dharma in journalism, slogans and taglines about true news was just a showoff. 

I was wrong. They are just business institutions working to get more marketing coverage and satisfy their bosses. All that catchy slogans are just marketing all they are doing are serving their master whim.

I feel so fooled to believe that what you learn from news is good. I remember when my parents used to say read news daily, it is a good habit and will help you in your studies.  It may have been true in the past, not anymore. They are just twisted truths, in the end we will be left with confusion. 

The following images shows where top news networks around the world lean towards. It is all about politics. So biased to right and left wing. 

Image courtesy Allslides

        When news medias are biased like this the chances of getting truth from these sources are less. They report any news with an agenda behind them. The news channels just turns into a loud speaker or a mass radio for political propaganda. 

News Business 

I don't have to say anything here, this is all information that you already know. The more viewers the more the ratings. The more the ratings the more the revenue generated. 

I came across a video of Denzel Washington long time ago, I can't explain better than him, Please watch the video below and see how correct he is. The need to be first, the need to get all the attention from the people. The need to make everyone click. The need to sell their propaganda. Just pure business as usual.   

Just be the first, no matter what and sell it to innocent viewers. This some nasty business to be in.  

The Hungry Vulture 

Another behavior news media show cases are same as vultures. They are waiting for you to fall down, fail, hurt or have a success,  they want to know how you feel, what you are going to do next, whom they want to thank for their success.  

If some celebrity is admitted in the hospital due to cold or minor fever, even that is a flash news. They make it appear as the greatest disaster of the century. 

I remember when one of our former chief minister died due to old age all these news channels swarmed around his home for live coverage, even after his funeral, they were still looking for news . This behavior must change. 

An old Al-Jazeera news of their own behavior shows it all. The video is very interesting. 

 

Click bait,  False and Negative News

Lets blame ourselves for a while. It is our fault that the media behave such a way. We love to hear negative news, we want to listen to news that affects us emotionally, we want to get fooled by the thumbnail title with a hot women's picture which says something like " 10 secrets of her beauty" or "This is the new girlfriend of so and so celebrity". 

If there is a negative news, people give more attention to it, the news business know this trick very well and love to play along with it by feeding more negative news from around the world.  They make every political news as negative as possible so that people would click and spend time around the news. 

To understand how false news spreads, Soroush Vosoughi assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth, used a data set of rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. About 126,000 rumors were spread by 3 million people. False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth. The degree of novelty and the emotional reactions of recipients may be responsible for the differences observed.

 No One Should Be Fact-Checked More than Media

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, recently slammed media organisations on their false news coverage. I would like to make it clear that I am not into politics and I am leaning towards any political parties, but here Kayleigh have shown some guts to stand up against the nonsense of the media. 
She included that " No One Should Be Fact-Checked More than Media". This is a one brave women, so is prepared to taken on anything coming her way, Now "This is women empowerment! " 

Another moment when she slammed the media for their Gotcha question.  She is incredible, the right women for the job.  I wish if other leaders would see how biased these medias are and restrict them from making false news. 

Tweeter, Whats app Forward, Trolls and Memes and Online Warriors 

This is a large topic which will need its on different post, A new generation is here, the social media and the people in it are the new news reporters. Anything or anyone can be a news reporter nowadays. Everyone have great coverage on the topics and knowledge to come to a conclusion who is right and who is wrong. People can insult, call out, abuse anyone online, if someone disagree with your opinion they will form an army or online warriors and trash the person who disagree with them with insults and abuses. 

Any one can create a news story, I see messages that circulate through whats app asking for help, for a girl who went missing about 7 years ago. Whats app forwards are mostly hoax. Just to manipulate peoples feelings and have fun with it.

Most of the targets of memes and trolls are the celebrities, they are humans and idiots just like us. They make mistakes all the time. They say out their feeling on social media and that become offensive to a few and then they get trolled back to back. 

I would like to stop this every soon, I hate how this system works, News channels should stand for the truth, not kissing the boots of the politicians.  

 We are in 21st century and we deserve to know the truth, the right news, without any biased or twisted words. 

Nowadays I would say to people don't watch  or read too many news, its going to give you brain damage. I understand news is a business organisation and they must make profit to survive but as humans in this modern world the people have a right to know the truth and correct news. No more fake and twisted news. 

If they do not change and never stood for the truth, they will be vanished. There are more smart people who could bring truth into the light. Just like internet brought a change to the traditional system, something or some will bring in a disruptive innovation. That will change the face of news industry.

By the arrival of more A.I into the industry, people will be able to find out the correctness of a news more easily. A.I will be an important player in regulating profit hungry organisations from gaining illegally. 

Final word

I can't say who is right or who is wrong. It is up to us to think which is the truth and false 

 Lets use our brain over emotions. Lets be rational. 
Last but not the least, I want sincerely thank Alya Fairy for all the support and resources to write this post, without her help this would have been  incomplete.