In today’s society that hungers for instant information, more and more people are questioning the media’s role and their legitimacy in authentic news reporting.
The press seems capable of taking any situation, blowing out of all proportion, predict the outcome, anticipate what people will say before they say it, and put words in the mouths of people without any justification. The gutter press of today appears only to want to report on the negative aspects of any situation. The question that begs to be asked is: do the public only want to hear bad news?
Is this form of media reporting detrimental to the national moral? Are we entitled to ask the media to adopt a more balanced view point, and to keep things in proportion?
When challenged media institutions can become very defensive. When, on the rare occasion, that a member of the public, who is under scrutiny by the media, launches a counter attack, the media immediately adopts a semi-self righteous pose. They are inclined to operate in the grey area between supposition and truth and are masters of providing information that can be readily misconstrued .When accused of telling outright lies or at least cynically manipulating the facts to lend a little edge to the story, the counterattack by implying that their’s is the role of protecting this democracy and all it stands for, especially free speech. Even it is damaging or offensive.
Their point in arguing the legitimacy of media within a democratic system is that the very people who were the architects of constitution set one of the principal foundations to be the right to the freedom of speech. And it is true to an extent.
The media rightfully enjoys very high levels of protection for the reason that as flawed as members of the press can be in pursuit of today’s scoop, democracy would not function as it was intended to do.