Wednesday, March 16, 2011

What's up with the media?

What happened here? Several typing mistakes in one name, while it's perfectly possible to write the name correctly several times on a different page of the video text.

But let's move away from this. I notice a new tendency in the news, and it's about video text again, so the pictures above fit.

The video text is probably known in most countries, it's a service on tv that you can enable with your remote (in most cases, some tv devices don't have it). Then there are information pages in the video text, and it's like a newspaper on screen.

The one thing I noticed recently is how unsatisfying it can be when the people who type the news are faster than the people who read them. I have to examples to explain what I mean:

1. Some time ago, Robert Kubica from Poland, a race driver, had a bad accident which will stop him from competing in Formula One for many months. I had not heard about this the previous evening, which was a Sunday. The next morning, Monday at around 6am, I checked the video text and was shocked to read things about Kubica. But what I read was not "Kubica injured after crash yesterday" or "Kubica had an accident on Sunday at xx o'clock". What I read was "F1 pilots worried about Kubica's condition" or "Season over for Kubica". Even worse, in the text, there was no indication what exactly had happened or when the accident occured. It took me a lot of time to find out that the accident had happened less than 24 hours ago.

2. Felix Magath, coach of football team Schalke 04, was to be fired. They had been talking about this for a while. But then from one day to the next, the video text mentioned that a new coach was going to be in the team very soon, but the second in command coach (the so far assistant) was going to train the team until then. But then again, no word about Magath having been fired yet. I had to change to a different tv channel to find out that Magath was expected to be fired on THAT very same day that I was checking the video text at 6:30 am.

What we learn from this is that everything needs to be faster. It's really annoying when news media only throw around keywords, but don't even refer to anything that happened before or is not even 24 hours old. It's hard to follow. On the other hand, when there's a disaster such as the one currently happening in Japan, the news reports loop over and over for hours, you get the same stuff replayed all the time.

Another thing that bugs me is the lack of being neutral in the news. I notice more and more often how people who present the news use words that are filled with opinions. Stuff like "the sick leader Gaddafi" or "he slaughters his people". I mean, sure, he does that stuff and he seems sick and wrong in the head, but since when is it okay that the guys and girls on the news tell us what to think? What's next? Normal politicians who don't kill people are stupid or annoying, and after that, the media tell us who to vote etc.

I just believe that it's important to know what's going on and not be manipulated. For example, if a tv station makes a poll about "should all nuclear reactors be shut down", and you have to call in order to vote, then you get a 88 per cent "yes" vote. BUT: If it's a representative poll (that means that you call the people and don't ask those to call who feel most outraged), then you only get less than 60 per cent. But many people don't know that these differences exist, and they take the results of polls or the opinion-making of the media for granted. Manipulation is everywhere.

Last but not least, I hope that Japan will be okay. I usually don't care so much when natural disasters happen, because they just do happen anyway, but in Japan's case... it's just a country I care a little more about. They have contributed a lot to our standard of living, and they are cool. So yeah... I hope things get better there.

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