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Addendum Issue 069
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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
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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 suns 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 everyones 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 couldnt 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 oclock 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
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Addendum
(C) Steak June 2002
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