Manila Hostage Situation: Time to Evaluate the Function of Media?
I made a new promise to my wife, to send her off to work even though it may be my off day (meaning I can stay in bed longer). The early morning sun, the green of the trees and the fresh air definitely worth my sacrifice of a few more hours of sleep.
I managed to grab a copy of the free Today too :)
The frontpage news is bout the hostage situation in Manila, in which the HongKong tourists were held by a gunmen, and a family of five lost 3 of its members. It is awfully sad, for a supposedly happy occasion to turn out to be such a tragedy.
and who is the culprit? It could be the gunman, the authority, or even the Media. Why Media? because the Media provided a Live coverage of the entire situation, which the gunman can monitor through a TV in the tourist bus.
In the report, an analyst mentioned that the Live Media coverage was the mistake number 1. Although others may point out that the authority was at fault for slow response or lacking of skills, I tend to agree with the analyst.
Indeed, in the world today, Conventional Media appears to be more of a bad influence rather than good to the society. They seek for higher readership, or viewership, by seeking to provide news that appeal to the audience. As a result, news about crime, scandal, sex, anything that sells became the 'only thing' that matters.
Some information about certain crime are described overly vivid in the coverage, which makes me wonder, is the intention of the reporter/writer/editor to provide more detailed information of a crime, or to inspire others to follow. Cases of rapes, incests and sex scandals are the constant highlights and front page news of certain Chinese News Paper, and one wonders why...
I believe it is irresponsible for Media, particularly in this case the one who provide the live coverage for the incident in Manila that costs 8 lives altogether. But 8 lives is comparatively small, compared to the vast number of public who absorbs whatever the media puts up and indirectly affected by them. Programmes and articles that are "hot" and "sellable" are mostly morally questionable and slowly but surely deteriorates the moral standard of the community.
Perhaps it is high time for the people playing major roles in the media world to stop and think, is money really the only important thing that matters? Is media solely a means to provide for the need to satisfy the insatiable hunger of the populace for more scandal, sex, and crime, or can the media serve as a means to educate the public and promote on what is right, true, good and beauty that are essential for the building up of a healthy society?
All things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial.
I managed to grab a copy of the free Today too :)
The frontpage news is bout the hostage situation in Manila, in which the HongKong tourists were held by a gunmen, and a family of five lost 3 of its members. It is awfully sad, for a supposedly happy occasion to turn out to be such a tragedy.
and who is the culprit? It could be the gunman, the authority, or even the Media. Why Media? because the Media provided a Live coverage of the entire situation, which the gunman can monitor through a TV in the tourist bus.
In the report, an analyst mentioned that the Live Media coverage was the mistake number 1. Although others may point out that the authority was at fault for slow response or lacking of skills, I tend to agree with the analyst.
Indeed, in the world today, Conventional Media appears to be more of a bad influence rather than good to the society. They seek for higher readership, or viewership, by seeking to provide news that appeal to the audience. As a result, news about crime, scandal, sex, anything that sells became the 'only thing' that matters.
Some information about certain crime are described overly vivid in the coverage, which makes me wonder, is the intention of the reporter/writer/editor to provide more detailed information of a crime, or to inspire others to follow. Cases of rapes, incests and sex scandals are the constant highlights and front page news of certain Chinese News Paper, and one wonders why...
I believe it is irresponsible for Media, particularly in this case the one who provide the live coverage for the incident in Manila that costs 8 lives altogether. But 8 lives is comparatively small, compared to the vast number of public who absorbs whatever the media puts up and indirectly affected by them. Programmes and articles that are "hot" and "sellable" are mostly morally questionable and slowly but surely deteriorates the moral standard of the community.
Perhaps it is high time for the people playing major roles in the media world to stop and think, is money really the only important thing that matters? Is media solely a means to provide for the need to satisfy the insatiable hunger of the populace for more scandal, sex, and crime, or can the media serve as a means to educate the public and promote on what is right, true, good and beauty that are essential for the building up of a healthy society?
All things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial.
posted by Suhandy Yao Wei Xuan @ 9:59 am
1 Comments:
At 11:15 pm ,
Shelly said...
I totally agree that how the media handled the Manila hostage situtation was not wise. Well I didn't read the whole coverage about the event. But one thing I definitely do not agree about is that they reported the policemen's moves and whatever happening outside the bus LIVE. Hence, the hijacker was able to watch from the TV inside the bus and was very updated of the situation.
This is a similar situation with the Mumbai bombing a couple of years ago. The terrorists were able to track the policemen's moves because the media followed them on their ambush and broadcast it live. And this had been very much criticised worldwide. Yet it happened again now in the case of the Manila hostage. Sigh.
Yet, although I do agree that sometimes the media are not being ethical in their reporting, I still believe and have some hope that there are good journalists out there (be it from the traditional media as well as from online media) who are really dedicated to their works, not merely to report on events, but to improve our lives socially, politically, etc through their investigative, ethical reporting :).
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