Due to the advancement of technology of communications, mass media's influence over people is greater than ever. However, regardless of the activeness of the media, it is difficult to tell who or what is trustworthy, because it has become easier to spread rumors. Moreover, the power over the mass media of government or large corporations is substantial.
Since several decades ago, the world is reorganizing to information based society by the help of the development of internet. However, not only it made people more accessible to information, but also it ironically gave people more chance to access into wrong information, usually in form of rumor. By abusing the anonymity of internet, people became more bold when they spread the rumor, even making renown celebrities to suicide. It is even hard to punish them, since rumors are made not by a single person, but by unspecified individuals. Moreover, many internet pressmen are using rumors as topic on their article, making situation even worse.
Furthermore, it is difficult to find organizations of public opinion that are completely free from the influence of governments or large corporations. In South Korea, there was a incident about famous actress's suicide. Although it was a death of an individual, it soon became a social issue because the actress wrote in her testament that she was a plaything of many top executives of several corporation, and politicians. However, the death of the actress, Jayoen Jang, was soon disappeared from major newspapers, because of the pressure they got from the executives and the politician. Not only this incident, there had been many incidents which were concealed by the cartel of silence of the leaders, such as Gwang-ju democratic movement.
In a nutshell, as the sources of information is increasing, it has become difficult to find the truth from them. Many rumors are made everyday, preventing people to know the truth. Also, information about big incidents often get controlled by socially influential group in a way beneficial to their own profit. Therefore, it will be important factor of desirable citizen to have an ability to tell the truth from many sources.
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