Why do we allow the media to run our lives?
We let the media run our lives because we are scared to run them ourselves. We let them scare us, we let them panic, we let them make us happy, we let them disgust us, but the one they they don’t do, is give us a choice. The UK is heavily based around its news, take the news away, and you have 61 million people without someone telling them what to do. Take away the big news papers, such as The Daily Mail, The Express, The Times, and you have half the population reading doctored news to make it easier to read. Remove the other half, and you have a bunch of intellects walking around panic buying toilet tissue because “their newspaper told them to”.
Lets take a piece of news, and see how three different news sources respond, mainly focusing on their headlines, and how they put the story across to the user. The three news sources I have picked are:
The news article which I have picked is that it is possible that sandwich ham could cause cancer. I know this is a possibly knowledgeable topic, but I am just looking at how each news source reacts, and puts their article across to the reader.
The Daily Mail says: Don’t give children ham, says cancer experts.
The BBC says: Charity seeks end to lunchbox ham.
The Daily Star says: -No Article Found-
As you can see, the Daily Mail has gone for the “we know it will kill you, so we’re going to scare you” style of headline. A lot of people read the DailyMail, and a lot of readers have children, and nearly all of them just read that article, and just ran back to their house to bin the ham, like they have just been threatened with death if they don’t.
On the other hand, the BBC has gone for the “we know what we’re talking about, and our researchers are computers” style of headline. There is no scare-tactic in the headline, but instead suggests that there may be something else involved other than cancer.
Finally, the Daily Star just chose not to publish an article…
So as you can see from just the headlines alone, we let the media decide how we’re going to react, we also let the media decide whether we like or dislike something.
