Nowadays, the mass media do not report the news; they make the news. Discuss this with references to recent events.

Recent events, from what I see it, ranges from the latest happenings, to events that may have occurred months, or even years ago. Perception of time is a subjective issue, so what might seem to be recent enough to one, may not seem so for another person. Moreover, the scale of the incident is also a crucial point to decide if it should be classified under recent events. For instance, the discovery for a new theory in Science, made a decade ago, can be considered recent. On the other hand, buying a book a year ago would not.

In today’s context, media plays a significant role in our lives, as it tells us the happenings around the world. Besides the conventional uses, media also shapes our thinking and mentality. We tend to just absorb whatever information we rip from the news, without processing them or fully grasping the hidden intention behind it.

Our minds are being manipulated in the process of news-watching, as we go on an auto-pilot, not thinking on our own. Instead, we openly declare that we borrow ideas from TVs, newspapers, etc. This habit of human to accept things for what they are is actually the cause of downfall of human minds. We get too comfortable with having information placed before us, such that we do not bother to consider of we fully agree. There may be certain things that we do understand, yet we just do not want to exercise the juices of our processing unit to give them a thorough thought to consolidate our opinions.

Anyway, there are many examples for media which falsely plays up issues, so as to attract peoples’ attention to buy and read their news. Just to name a few, there is the “sand ban”, and the “shootings that occurred at Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia".

http://www.siiaonline.org/better_than_the_ban

From this name of the website, we can clearly note the stand- ban is not right. From it, we can learn that the sand ban has some benefits as well as some negative aspects on the ban, with the negative outweighing the positive. The writer in this case, asks rhetorical questions like, why have the ban now, and if the ban it will work, going on to explore and highlight the gloom side of it.

After the ‘shooting’ of the ban, it goes on to suggest possible alternatives other than having a ban. A close analysis of the news will enable one to come to a conclusion that it is actually against the ban. As this is a Singapore’s website, it rightfully wants to escalate the problem, so the media may tend to blow things to above the real scale of problem. By doing this, it will then spur up feelings among the target audiences, and arouse a displeasure.

The point of making news instead of reporting a neutral piece is normally to propagate people towards a particular idea or belief. As it will be circulated, the content will have to be of appropriate depth, the setback is that, we cannot control the biasness of the source. We are actually required to filter off whatever information we deem as not agreeable, thus ignoring it.

Another kind of making news would be the gossips and tabloids news. There are many examples to these, when reporters seem to return to primary schools once again, as they do “composition by interpreting a series of photographs”. Unethical photographers tail movie stars and sometimes, “unintentionally” take pictures of them with some other artist of the opposite gender. You can almost be sure that if the rumour seems feasible enough, the write up will definitely be published in magazines.

http://www.hollywoodrag.com/index.php?/weblog/britney_spears_shaved_her_head/

In other cases like the case of Britney Spears who shaved her head, the media came up with many different interesting stories to why she did that, and speculated a whole lot of creative theories. They took some facts that she did shave her head, enter and drop out of rehabilitation, but they twisted these, and formed them up with their own ideas, which they eventually made into headlines. Perhaps they do not realize that the stars are also human beings who do need some privacy, and also respect.

Who in the right mind will want their own lives to be published everywhere? Yes, I do mean the nitty gritty details of where you ate for lunch, with whom you went with, and how much fat contents or the calories count. Sometimes, gossip writers tend to stretch their limits a little off, causing a whole lot of waves, regarding the incident that they blew up. This all sets to be a domino effect, as another company may read what you have written, do some editions; add in more salt, before releasing it to the public once again.

http://newsfromthewest.blogspot.com/2007/04/media-subterfuge-and-school-shootings.html

As for the school shooting incident, it may come across as natural that the gun man who shot 30 students and 2 lecturers cannot be subdued so easily. However, because of the way news is, they try to cover up the fact that the other students involved in subduing him also carry guns. And by not reporting the fact, many will not bother to link up, that the rescuers are also armed.

These are just very basic examples of how mass media make news. By only extracting the bits they want, they can actually alter meanings of quotes, or twist an incident in a way they want it to be. If they are doing this for the sake of covering up facts, it would be pointless for the news to be there. Or worse, if they are exploiting quotes from people to earn that extra bit of revenue, then the whole essence of news reporting will be going down the drain.