AMERICAN actor Denzel Washington’s statement that if you don’t read the news, you are uninformed and if you read the news, you are ill-informed, or words to that effect, is a sad commentary on the level of trust people have on media, but for good reason. Today’s fast paced digital news gathering and the real time distribution capability of news organizations are both a blessing and curse for the messenger and the recipient.
News can be transmitted instantaneously and are vulnerable to the personal bias of the reporter as to what particular angle to highlight during the coverage and eventual transmission without the benefit of prior fact checking by editors. This is the source of complaint for most government officials subject of the news. But reporters as messenger of the news report only what they feel are significant in what they see or hear as the event unfolds. To accuse them of deliberately fabricating lies to expand readership is stretching the power of the press to determine the things the public ought to know to its limit.
No self-respecting reporter or media organization will consciously distort the facts of an event without seriously jeopardizing their standing in the eyes of the public and credibility in the business of selling news. But since selling news is their business, they invariably focus on the human interest angle of the story to entice more readers or viewers that in some cases they go overboard and are suspected of being unfair and subjective in their coverage of what has happened.
Those in government take this against the reporter, but who wants to hear endless numbers and statistics on government’s achievement of certain economic objective when more colorful, if not controversial, pronouncements by the politician were heard? It’s the job of the government’s news bureau to explain the facts and figures of what has been achieved, not the reporter’s.
And herein lays the present day conundrum enunciated by the second part of Washington’s statement about the media. Indeed, if people read the news, they tend to be misinformed. Government wants to hear only the good news about what it is doing, the press wants to attract more readers or viewers and want nothing to do about the image of politicians and the work they are doing. These are conflicting interests that should put the public on guard of what they absorb in today’s digital environment.
Easy access to social media has made everybody a budding reporter and commentator and the proliferation of fake news has made the situation worse than ever before. With countless media companies everywhere in the world competing for public attention and loyalty, it is easy for news people to fall into the trap of embellishing what they report to get more mileage in the race to be first, not necessarily factual, all the time. At the other end of the spectrum is the gullible public who often times believe the story they read at the instant of transmission. This is a dangerous combination of manipulative exploitation and unfettered naiveté.
The public must be forewarned of the wisdom of Washington’s statement. Nobody lives in a vacuum and everybody is the recipient of messages relating to certain events or developments in the world surrounding them at any given time, like it or not.
Read the news to be informed and make rational viewpoints on issues and events. Read more news to be informed and make rational viewpoints on issues and events. Strive not to be misinformed; everybody is out there trying to con you.