Read carefully this text.
THE NEWS MEDIA
Newspaper articles answer the following questions: who, what,
when, where, and how? Whose, which, how much and how many are
simply variations of those.
The first and last sentences are also summaries of the article.
In addition, like other news media, newspapers do not present
a realistic picture of the world.
About 95% of the news concerns negative things. The other 5% is
positive in order to make the 95% appear realistic. For instance,
no U. S. articles say that in one day: 180,000,000 people in U.S.
arrived to work safely; 240,000 lives were saved in hospitals;
11,000 peoples´ lives were saved by heroic acts; etc.
Not only does the news media distort reality, but it also presents
different distortions.
Studies confirm that the the news in Spain is different than in
Italy or England.
Of course news is also fabricated. If the amount of news varies,
the news media´s coverage does not: radio news lasts the same
5 minutes every day; TV news usually lasts 30 minutes; a newspaper
has the same number of pages (except Sundays).
So why do we read, listen and see the news? What news? How much
news? Whose news? |