Information has always played a significant role in all human societies and it happened so that throughout the time some people have discovered talent in telling others the news and corresponding things. Such people who have dedicated themselves to this art are forming now what we call mass media.
The ways information has been relayed and spread have constantly been undergoing major changes along with the development of the human civilisation, so in the last two centuries mass media has experienced a boom of new opportunities of communicating with people – starting from telegraph and radio and ending with the Internet. These changes have naturally had a great influence on the media of the modern day and nowadays there is a wide range of sources offering a lot of different information. On the other hand, each source has its own specifics and target auditory. However, the media agencies can be divided not only by their type – like newspapers, radio stations and websites, but by their thematics and national belonging, too. Therefore, today almost anyone can get any kind of information from any imaginable media agency by any possible way, and that's why the modern times are called 'the information era' – the age when information becomes ruling the world as one of the most important values.
However, despite having lots of bright sides, the media is suffering from numerous problems. Some of them appeared in the last few years, some have become even traditional. The most big and common problems are tied with the amount of truth in the reports. Urging to be the first to tell something (this means getting bigger auditory, hence, more money), media agencies may pay little attention to the proof of the presence of the described event and it results in a big amount of false reports. Moreover, some of the agencies can even tell the untruths deliberately – just to get more money.
The question of truth is also about the real view on the current events – if a news agency pretends to provide an independent overview it can have problems with the government of its state, and the risks depend on the degree of the freedom inside the country. On the contrary, if a media agency decides to provide the state position, the amount of truth in the reports decreases. It can decrease the belief to such agency as well but this happens only when the auditory has access to independent view. If not so, though, the media becomes a propaganda machine which is able to change a whole nation in a rather short period of time as it happened in Nazi Germany in the middle of XX century.
So the media has always been with us along with its ability of influence and it makes no sense asking whether the media is good or bad – such question can do nothing to its presence as well as to the efforts of converting it into one's powerful weapon. From my point of view, while looking on the history of the simultaneous development of media and humanity we should ask ourselves: how should we behave to get only true news and what can we do to make the media not to provide lies and harmful information?
The ways information has been relayed and spread have constantly been undergoing major changes along with the development of the human civilisation, so in the last two centuries mass media has experienced a boom of new opportunities of communicating with people – starting from telegraph and radio and ending with the Internet. These changes have naturally had a great influence on the media of the modern day and nowadays there is a wide range of sources offering a lot of different information. On the other hand, each source has its own specifics and target auditory. However, the media agencies can be divided not only by their type – like newspapers, radio stations and websites, but by their thematics and national belonging, too. Therefore, today almost anyone can get any kind of information from any imaginable media agency by any possible way, and that's why the modern times are called 'the information era' – the age when information becomes ruling the world as one of the most important values.
However, despite having lots of bright sides, the media is suffering from numerous problems. Some of them appeared in the last few years, some have become even traditional. The most big and common problems are tied with the amount of truth in the reports. Urging to be the first to tell something (this means getting bigger auditory, hence, more money), media agencies may pay little attention to the proof of the presence of the described event and it results in a big amount of false reports. Moreover, some of the agencies can even tell the untruths deliberately – just to get more money.
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| Emergent.info, an online service which collects information about claims and checks whether they are confirmed, unverified or confirmed false |
The question of truth is also about the real view on the current events – if a news agency pretends to provide an independent overview it can have problems with the government of its state, and the risks depend on the degree of the freedom inside the country. On the contrary, if a media agency decides to provide the state position, the amount of truth in the reports decreases. It can decrease the belief to such agency as well but this happens only when the auditory has access to independent view. If not so, though, the media becomes a propaganda machine which is able to change a whole nation in a rather short period of time as it happened in Nazi Germany in the middle of XX century.
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| Well-known Russian cartoonist Sergey Elkin comments on the 'zombifying' capabilities of media |
So the media has always been with us along with its ability of influence and it makes no sense asking whether the media is good or bad – such question can do nothing to its presence as well as to the efforts of converting it into one's powerful weapon. From my point of view, while looking on the history of the simultaneous development of media and humanity we should ask ourselves: how should we behave to get only true news and what can we do to make the media not to provide lies and harmful information?
I think it's impossible to do away with lies in media. There will always be people who write gossips and fake news because they expect to benefit from this.
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