The Credibility of News in the Media

What do we call the news nowadays? Is getting our knowledge of current issues from popular media sources like the television or the Internet really enough to keep an objective view on things? Sure, the video below from JibJab only deals with issues in the US, where the ratings race has indeed dramatically affected integrity of television news; and in corporate America the press can't be expected to perform much better... but what about in our small country of New Zealand? With less competition news should be more credible, more 'fair and balanced' like Fox News's ironic motto. Yet are we all so desensitised by the goings-on in America that even though the New Zealand Herald is basically a monopoly, we nonetheless get biased views that are blown out of proportion to generate mass hysteria?

Case in point is the Mercury power cut case: due respect to the deceased woman and her family, but was it really such a big deal that had to be covered by news continuously over at least two weeks, vilifying Mercury Energy as the greedy corporation who ruthlessly cut off their power, when police investigations and the coroner's report had not even confirmed any details yet? And there is Helen Clark attacking Mercury and parliament ready to pass emergency legislation to assure the public that this will never happen again; is that really the issue? How about the often overlooked fact that the poorly funded healthcare system could be the central problem in all this: because they are short-staffed and do not have enough facilities, they have to send home dying people with machines reassuring that the hospital is doing something to help them when it simply wants to save space for other patients. As the doctors said, the machine should not be for sustaining life, but for helping her to breathe; if she was sick enough to die after 2 hours of power cut she should not have been home! Why pass legislation on SOEs when that is not the cause of the problem? All because of mass hysteria caused by the media.

It's a sorry state when people cannot read about issues relevant to them without being brainwashed by manipulators at the same time, but that is what is happening, simply to glue us to the screen or continuing to buy press articles so we can find out more 'dirty details', in other words pay the media more money to hypnotise us even more. What is worse is being bombarded by news stories that have absolutely no relevance to us, such as Britney shaving her hair off or Paris going to jail, and making them seem like the most important issues of our time. This video hits the nail on the head.

What We Call the News