Within the media today, a massive issue exists within almost every home in most western, first-world countries. An almost invisible, yet disastrously affecting issue. This issue is the unreliability of many news sources which thousands of families trust and rely on for current affairs. This is an issue that is almost impossible to detect, although there have always been small slip-ups and mistakes that are easily noticed. There are many factors which influence the unreliability of news sources, of which I will write about in this blog. Quite obviously, not absolutely everyone has access to the internet. In fact, the percentage of population that has access to the internet in Australia rose from 33.8% in 2000, to 88.8% in 2012. Like water, food and air, internet availability has become a necessity, meaning 19,554,832 of 22.7 million in 2012 had access to the internet and several news sources. For those who don’t, paper-print news and magazines have a just as large influence on their lives. The fact that the media is privatized creates a generally risky position for the owners and whole media outlet, because the political position of the person who runs the outlet can potentially sway the direction of the news being placed in people’s homes. For example in 2007, Ken Auletta, an American journalist, spent a considerably large amount of time creating a magazine profile on Rupert Murdoch, an Australian-American business magnate who has acquired some of the largest news and media conglomerates in the world. Auletta noticed that Murdoch spent a lot of time on the phone with his editors, which isn’t necessarily worrying. Although Auletta asked Murdoch what part of his job he enjoyed the most, to which he replied “being involved with the editor of a paper in a day-to-day campaign…trying to influence people”. All while this doesn’t sound too concerning, but why is it the job of the news and media to “influence” the public? This is great cause for concern, because the purpose of media should be to inform the public free of bias and discrimination. Whether or not it has been a planned agenda to occasionally mis-represent facts and statistics, news sources should be trustworthy and unbiased. The problem with privatized media industries is that the news reported is controlled and censored unnecessarily, or at least influenced by bias. For example, on the 2nd of July 2008, co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy aired photos of New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and Times television editor Steven Reddicliffe that had evidently been heavily doctored in order to make the journalists appear “unflattering”. To see one of two journalists, refer to the feature image of this blog entry. The reason I have chosen to write about this topic, is for two reasons. One, because the state of society and international relations at this time very heavily rely on the representation of facts and events. News sources should be providing straight up facts, divisive of unifying regardless, not simply one or the other. The other reason is because my next project will aim to spread the message of bias, hypocrisy, unreliability and discrimination within the media industry. As for a possible solution, news sources in particular should be entirely subservient towards the general population. Not just because I believe it, or not because one hundred other people may believe it, but because in creating a powerful, influential industry in which everyone trusts, bias, discrimination and an influence based on the interest of a particular corporation or monetary interests corrupts the facts and statistics we use as a basis to change the way we live and think.
Tyrone Monkey 