------------------------------------------------------------------------- Addendum URL: http://www.adden.tr.cx/ Issue# 69 : News and the media 17th June 2002 Author: Steak, this issue (69) has nothing to do with sixty niners ------------------------------------------------------------------------- News, the media, the popular press what ever you want to call it the sad thing is that it is corrupt. As bent as a very bent thing. Most news is censored, sensationalised and distorted, and it's not fair. When we turn on the TV or the radio and get a news broadcast we expect to here the truth and the whole truth, not fabricated lies. When we here a news story we go away thinking we know the whole story, we might think that we don't know all there is to know, but we do think that what we do know is right. This is something I personally experience almost everyday, I read the news and I get a story, and I am pretty happy and I feel that I know what is going on. And then while thinking about this is stop for a second and realise that I know that the story I got is very likely not to be what really transpired Unfortunately this is the case often, if you take a news story from many different places, they will all tell dissimilar accounts of the events. This is bad. This is due to many tings, censorship, differing wittinesses, euphemisms, and (mostly in the herald sun’s case) the changing of long words in to shorter less syllabled words to make it easier for the average Joe to read. The problem with this is the fact that in changing those words you can sometimes change the entire meaning of those words, and in a disastrous chain reaction you can change the meaning of the entire article. Causing the reader to get the totally wrong impression of what was said or what happened. Sometimes it is even done deliberately, to change your words so they still mean what you said, but it instantly implies something else to the reader. In the industry this is called twisting the words. This is of course bad. Mix in some big company and government influence, lucrative sponsorship, advertisements, the human brain and the occasional case of down right simple straightforward corruption, and what you have left is a Hollywood style dramatisation based on events. With a big-boobed-bimbo(tm) with a fake face presenting it all for you. It doesn't help when she has a name like "Sandra Sully" either. But all the way through this there has always been one News station that has remained true to the ideas of journalism. That is everyone’s favourite television company: the good old British broadcasting corporation. Or as most people know them: The BBC. Now I feel that I should point out here that I am British, I have grown up watching the BBC, I have been there watching the quality programs and news broadcasts, there was a time that you couldn’t pull me away from the TV. But this decision of mine is not in anyway prejudice. It is based on the facts which, incidentally are there staring you right in the face, the BBC is the only news station that does not censor it's news for all the family. They are the only news station that, when they get a report from a journalist, they don't try to change the words, they don't try and cut out all the bits they deem "unsuitable for a home audience" unless of course it is particularly graphic, then they won't show it before the nine o’clock watershed. This is great I think, when you watch the BBC you know there is one less journalistic obstacle that the article had to get over before it reached your eyes or ears, you know that the only thing that really could be making a difference to your news is the fact that the journalist himself could be biased. What it all boils down to is the fact that if you want to know the truthful, whole, not cut, non censored, non family-ised, news then the Ten O'clock news that you get on BBC one in England is the closest you are going to get to perfection. And as the Borg say, we all strive for perfection, just in different ways ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Addendum (C) Steak June 2002 -------------------------------------------------------------------------