ah....there we go I think I just shat a whole essay, now let me just pick out the relevant crap.
More frequently and more obvious however was media bias on their favored/unfavored policies, slander became a common term when describing news interviews no matter which side you're on, it's even more depressing that the networks doesn't even hide the fact that they take sides.
Watching the Iraqi war coverage on multiple news channels was a fun activity, you have BBC international reporting with a flat, monotonous, unexciting yet gave nothing but reports, CNN international tried to be a little more neutral than their local American version by having less opinionated interviews and only giving out some reports and figures, the local Australian networks doesn't seem to care until an Australian soldier shot himself on the leg or got killed by friendly fire, then there was the Fox, it hardly featured the torture of "enemy combatants" done by the Americans, all I heard from them was "go go go!! serves those towel heads right", that apparently was the American version of journalistic professionalism.
The print media wasn't doing any better it was all left or right but since 990% of the print media was owned by the same bunch of old bastards who owned the rest of the news network I wasn't surprised. News articles talking about the evils of gay marriages, spotlighting stereotype muslim terrorist, pointing out the possibilities of small no name towns becomes a target for terrorist attacks and the evils of video games. Journalism now is disastrous, speaking of disasters....
Not long after the whole US "election", Iraqi war and all that sort became an everyday news a small tremor in the base of the Indian Ocean caused the destruction of entire cities and death of more than half a million people in Indonesia and a significant number in neighboring (and not so neighboring) areas. I can't forget the date it was the 26th of December, it was boxing day, while people I know were boxing their presents these people were boxing their relatives. On the spot reports came in a matter of minutes from local and international news networks, it was probably the biggest natural disaster in this decade, almost every major news network were there to cover it, almost, someone was missing and when they reported it was only snippets, not even a major interview. Sometime after, a sweet little whirlwind called Katrina (or as I like to call it Katty) came down to New Orleans to play some music, and play she did. Just when you think you can't go wrong with reporting natural disasters the media managed to make this a political issue, especially after that "Bush hates black people" comment. On one side of the news the reports were all about how fast the US government reacted and praising the efforts and speed of federal emergency workers in handling the situation, on the other side as always was the ugly fact.
The main thing is if the media isn't too busy chucking shit at each other they're busy scaring the readers and audiences and this isn't just in western media, in fact local Indonesian news are doing it much worse than the Americans when it comes to scare tactics, most people I know here have become desensitized by it but they keep on watching, the Japanese media aren't any different either, but at least scaring people with things that happened can still be counted as news rather than reporting on opinions, and yes I'm more than aware that opinions may be helpful or may give further insight to a situation but repeating the same opinions every day looks way too much like a propagation of an ideology.
To me objectivity in the media died, it died when the media owners thought they should do more than report the news, it died when these people decided to play a dangerously addictive game called politics. I don't expect a happy news every time I switched on my TV, in fact I'd rather not see "happy news" everyday because we all know when that happens something is wrong with the media, when I watch or read news I want to know what happened and why it happened from a neutral angle but that's probably as likely seeing ex-dictator Suharto arrested, tried and sentenced to cleaning mall toilets for life.
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