Some people may claim that the news media is unbiased and provides only reliable information to people. However, as far as I am concerned, this assertion is totally absurd because the news media is essentially biased source of information and we can easily witness the news media sending biased information.
First of all, all the news media cannot but have their own points of views on all kinds of social issues in terms of politics, economics and culture. For example, the ideology and managerial motto of news paper agencies appear in the front page of their news papers. As political parties that have their own foundation ideology and functional principle are characterized by their progressive, neutral, or conservative features, the same applies to the news media as well. To be specific, in the case of Korea, there are a number of news paper agencies such as Hangyure, Kyung Hyang, and Chosun, and it is a sort of commonsense for Korean people that the news paper agencies make reports according to their reporting principle and ideology. Thus, even when they cover the same story, the contents of their report appear totally different from one another.
Second, the news media is closely related to financial matters because most of them are in effect operated by private capital. Profits from advertisement and circulation account for more than 95 percent of their budget. Thus, most news media scramble to attract more advertisement from private companies and are always obsessed with how to increase their circulation and subscription. It leads them to become either business- friendly or make biased and erroneous reports in the process of competition among them to secure exclusive news first. Against this backdrop, it is safe to say that lots of news being sent by the news media is biased and unreliable.
In conclusion, even though the news media is the only source of information for most ordinary people, and some report and information is clearly based on fact itself, I believe that a lot of information they send is still untrustworhty and biased due to their afore-mentioned characteristics. And this tendency is likely to become stronger as the era of the Internet emerges and an increasing number of amateur news reporters participates in the media community today.
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