Media Influence On News

470 Words2 Pages
oes The Global Media Provide A Neutral Perspective On The News? For many years, the media has greatly influenced society, and has possessed an immense amount of power in shaping our world today. It is extremely vital for news media, and other forms of media, to portray precise and honest depictions of information. However, the global media today barely ever respresents a neutral perspective on world news, but rather, is extremely biased. There are several factors that contribute towards the partial portrayals of world news. Firstly, there is a great lack of diversity in many large media houses. There are imbalances in the amount of women and men representing these media houses. There are also significantly small percentages of gays and lesbians, and people of color in some our world’s biggest news corporations. PBS, a media power house in the United States, conducted a survey and found that their staff was 90 percent white, and 87 percent male. It is also important to consider the point of view from which media is reported. Some media companies report stories and depict how the rich, the powerful, or politicians will be affected, but tend to ignore those who are directly affected by the issue. An example of this is seen when natural disasters occurm and some media companies focus on how the tourism sector and economy will be affected, rather than on how the dead and their families are affected, or on how the region will recover, Sometimes, those affected by the issue barely get a chance to air their voices and thoughts. There are many other factors that affect how fairly news is depicted, such as the context, the language in which the news is reported, the terminology used, and societal stereotypes. There are also examples where headlines and stories do not match. An attractive, biased, or controversial headline is used the capture readers, but the story
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