Monday, March 4, 2013

Blame Society for False News Annemarie Holbrook



For my research paper, I am investigating the media and the news. My question is whether or not the media goes too far and crosses the line between reporting news and creating news. I have begun to argue in my paper that the media is too quick to jump to conclusions, therefore saying what they believe. However, there is another side to this argument. The news is there to investigate what is going on in the world and to report it to society. They don’t sit in a building making up stories; rather they go out into the world and hear first hand from other people. So is it the medias fault for creating news? Or rather is it the fault of the faulty source of information they receive? In an article “News as a Purposive Behavior: On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents, and Scandals,” the reason proposed for the creation of news is the general public. It is stated that all individuals have a need for news and present their own interpretation for what they believe and observe. One can elaborate stories and construct events, which is part of our nature as humans. We live through story telling and sharing the past, present, and future. Each occurrence reported becomes and even based on its usefulness to an individual. Those not seen as useful are ignored. We as a society control the news. We give it purpose; interpret it how we please, and fuel what is to come next. Each story comes from a person, not the news people.
Looking into this article and viewing this argument from the standpoint of psychology can explain much of this. The human mind craves news and has always lived through story telling. The newscasters receive their news they report from the public, where all this stems. Therefore it can be argued that the creation of news stems from society itself, the news is just a middleman taking the heat.

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