Introduction
Within each country or sovereign body, the media plays a key role in the everyday lives of the citizens, because it is the only means by which events of national interests can be made known to the public. It is therefore of prime importance that the media system remains impartial and fair in the analysis and presentation of information. This is the only way, ensuring that people form their own decisions, based on facts rather than propaganda. Sadly though, this fairness is severely threatened by the very systems under which media corporations operate. This environment should be reviewed and modified to maintain the media’s integrity. The purpose of this research work is to analyze evidence, indicating that mass media are gradually losing their relative independence and the level of their integrity is slowly dropping. We may focus on such questions as privacy, monopoly of cable companies, and so forth. To some extent, all these issues signify that the modern community puts less and less trust in mass media.
Privacy
Media news channels are particularly hampered by several ethical issues. By their definition, the news channels are supposed to broadcast any information that is of public interest. But at the same time, they have to ensure that they don’t infringe on the privacy of citizens. There is a legislative clause against the invasion of privacy. This creates a conflict of interest for the news channels (Andrew and Ruth, 1992). Granted, everybody deserves his or her privacy. But some people or interest groups misuse this and hide critical information from the public. For media news channels, it’s a tight-rope walk between the privacy issue and the public’s right to information. In her book The Journalist and the Murder, Janet Malcolm explores this issue, according to her, in the vast majority of cases; non-fiction writers are more involved with the popularity of their books than the well-being of other people. She mentions such an author as McGinnis, who deliberately distorted the facts for boosting the rating of his book. The thing is that he did not even deny this fact. However, the most compelling evidence is the medias interest in the lives of celebrities. According to recent researches, conducted in the field, at least thirty percent of media reports, magazine articles, news bulletins focus on the lives of rather famous people such as Hollywood stars, musicians, artists (Gray, p 77). In the vast majority, the information, disclosed by the journalist, is highly personal, but this is exactly what attracts people.
Sensationalism
Media entities have often been accused of sensational reporting. This is the practice whereby a certain media house deliberately broadcasts issues based on their controversial or shock value rather than their practical value to the public. Sometimes, even the accuracy of the information becomes compromised. Robin Andersen defines it as a “yellow-page journalist” (Andersen, p 479). In his belief, there are certain methods of creating sensation; for instance, media may always use such topics as the life of a celebrity, extraordinary scientific findings, outrageous behavior, etc. The scholar states that it is very easy for the media to get acquitted of these charges, but saying that the validity of the data has not been verified. It is believed that approximately, twenty-eight percent of news bulletins are labeled by the journalist as sensational (Malcolm, p 45). To a certain degree, this word is supposed to catch peoples attention. Yet, the most stressful issue is that such reports are not even based on facts.
Internet
The internet has changed some of these media anomalies. It has presented an avenue through which the average citizen can countercheck news bytes for consistency. And, in keeping up with this need by the reader, most news reporters are now providing links within their articles for related new reports or bulletins (Kevin, 2002). This practice demands that their interpretation be accurate and impartial in the first place. At the same time, media bodies are now concentrating more on local news, since international news can easily be got through the net. This has resulted in more focused reporting, and hence more informative news. In some way, Internet has become an alternative to traditional news, yet we cannot say that Internet new reports are always objective and impartial because a great number of leading media companies have already created their website. The thing is that if a person is searching for some information, he or she is almost bound to enter these websites, whereas some other sources are more difficult to find.
Cable companies
The ownership by few individuals of the media houses is made worse by the monopoly of cable companies. Research in 2002 showed that the top 40 cable companies are owned by a certain group of elites who hold shares in several cable companies simultaneously (Hoynes, p 3). With such a monopoly, the cable companies have been raising their prizes arbitrarily, without any reasonable grounds. Their monopoly ensures that these misdemeanors are not challenged (Mark, 2002). Breaking this monopoly will need decisive action from the government. Gillian Doyle argues that it is rather difficult to prove the very fact of such a monopoly. The scholar believes that the whole danger of this phenomenon has not been brought home to the public. If we take a closer look at the dynamics of this process, we will see that the number of cable companies is gradually decreasing. They are beginning to merge into some single entity. It goes not only to cable companies but to other media companies as well.
A la carte system
There has been talking of introducing a la carte system within the cable systems. This is a system whereby the programs broadcasted by a company are sponsored and paid for on an individual basis. The problem with such a system lies in the way media houses presently operate. Usually, several programs are bought as a bundle, and those getting the highest revenues to act as financial platforms for the others, giving these others time to be accepted in the market. In this way, programs leapfrog on each other. If a la carte system was introduced, this system wouldn’t work, and programs would have to market themselves right from oblivion into the limelight. Some programs would never get anywhere near the limelight on their own. The content, diversity offered by the media bodies would hence decrease over time. Because of this, it is probably better if the la carte system is not institutionalized – at least until the other fundamental market factors have been modified (NCTA, 2005). Many scholars claim that a la carte system narrows down the choices, which people have now (NCTA, p 12). They substantiate their argument in the following way; any program, which does not generate good benefits, will not be put on the market, and even those few, who might be interested, would not be able to find it. As a result, even now media content is becoming highly commercialized.
Works Cited
Andrew Belsey, Ruth F. Chadwick (1992) Ethical Issues in Journalism and the Media Routledge, 1992. Pgs. 59-61.
Answers.com (N.D.) Sensationalism. Web.
Anup Shah (2009) Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership. Web.
Barnhurst, Kevin. The impact of the internet on newspaper political coverage Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston Marriott Copley Place, Sheraton Boston & Hynes Convention Center, Boston, Massachusetts, 2002.
Gillian Doyle. Media ownership: the economics and politics of convergence and concentration in the UK and European media. SAGE, 2002.
Fair.org (2003) Is Media Bias Filtering Out Good News from Iraq? Web.
Janet Malcolm. “The Journalist and the Murderer” Vintage Books, 1990.
FCC-Federal communications commission (2008) “DTV” is coming. Web.
Mark Cooper (2003) As Cable Rates Rise Again, Consumer Groups Say Companies Are Using Monopoly Power to Unfair Advantage. Web.
NCTA (2005) Mandating a la carte distribution of cable programming would harm consumers. Web.
Robin Andersen, Jonathan Gray. “Battleground: The Media”. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008.
William Hoynes (2002) Why media mergers matter.Web.