In my younger years, we get our news from the paper, which is a bit slow and old, and tv where it has form of sucking you in with the picture. But for a faster around the city and nation, it was the radio.
A small transistor radio would do. I even made a simple AM radio out from an electronic book and electronic parts.
Back then, the news were to the point, and sometimes entertaining when a live news is on the air. The printed news were always available, though my dad won’t buy one – there were too many advertisements. Those were handy though when we were of age and looking for work and such. Also, back then, the reporters need to be there where it happens and take notes and feeling the emotion at that time. That’s why they employ a few people around the country. And these newscasters are just the mouths of what happened. Write what happened and send to the station.
One thing, though, really stands out. One ingredient that you need to produce in your news taking, whether it be on print, video or audio, is that it has to be bad news. The more bad, gripping and brutal news, the better. People flock to hear and see it. And they make money when there is.
However, at this present time, those mouths have evolved. They now have a mind of its own. They write the news with their own perception of what happened written all over it. And most of the time, they are not even in the area taking notes.
And we are bombarded with news that are just totally misrepresented. Confusion ensues. People take fake news so openly without checking the facts. People trust what’s written, shown or spoken quite easily. I’ve seen that with my friends and family.
I can only imagine a future where people will become so confused that the news personnel or agency will become the boy who cry wolf.
What should we do? We should lessen our exposure of the bad news around us. Let’s try to read the good news. There’s not enough around of that. We should lessen our social media exposure. When reading, listening or viewing news, we should not believe at the first news. We should not pick a side right away without getting the information – which is quick and easy to get nowadays.
At least, that’s what I’m doing.