In a recent article in “Student
Life,” the Newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis, brings up the issue
of media sensationalism ruining the truth. A report on an incident of a Sigma
Alpha Epsilon racial slur was taken out of proportion due to several different reporting
on the incident. Many absurd rumors flooded the internet and everyone had a
different side of the story. The article states “sensationalist journalism and
poor fact checking have robbed the students involved and the Wash. U. community
as a whole of the opportunity to tell the truth.” The internet has increased
the speed at which information is relayed and as the hours went on the story
continued to blow up. Each news story competes with one another by sensationalizing
their stories. The story grew into a wild report with so many different
sources. The Huffington Post got hold of the SAE story and decided to make
their own report. The Post used Facebook postings reprinted from blogs as their
main sources. The unreliable source gave way to false information. Information
should not be written based off of rumors and secondhand information. As a
result false stories reporting the racial slur incident continue to circulate
the media.
This is an
example of sensationalism in the news. The article was written on March 4,
2013. Feeding into sensationalism in our society can drive media to take
whatever means possible to “one up” another media source. The great competition
among them also creates a mad dash to report, creating a lot of holes in their
research. Society needs to be aware that all the information they are receiving
is not necessarily reliable, even coming from a well-known source such as the
Huffington Post. The article tries to warn people about this giving the specific
example of the reporting of the SAE racial slur. Don’t believe everything you
read.
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