These days there is so much information that we have to makes choices when accepting new facts. We do so by choosing which source of the information to rely on and which to not. Some major sources of information are newspapers, radio, internet and so on. Some people may think that these are reliable and accurate. However, I believe that this is not true. The news media is usually one-sided and inaccurate in someway.
In cases of newspapers, the words and expressions can create different images. To prepare for my college entrance exam, I read newpapers every morning. However, I realized that an identical situation can be interpreted very differently depending on which herald you are subscribing. The opinion of the journalists obviously has an impact on the article, which can advance into affecting the readers' points of view. In Korea, many people know about this effect, so some readers including myself, reads two newspapers to be able to judge a certain situation more correctly.
Not so long ago, I was quite astonished when I was listening to a foreign radio broadcast. The anchor who was informing the listeners about the capital punishment used several words that could influence the judgements of the listeners. Here, I have seen a couple of news anchors who got warned because of delivering biased information. I understand that "how much the anchor can speak aloud his or her own thoughts" differs from country to country but in this respect it is not such an exaggertaion to say that people from diverse nations could be getting very different information about essential global issues. This is a huge problem we have to deal wih.
There are numerous words and expressions that could be translated in opposite ways. "Passive" and "calm and quite" or "eats like a pig" and "is not a picky eater" are just a few examples. According to my examples, many people will likely get a different first impression depending on what kind of words the speaker or the writer uses. The news media which usually rely on the words to deliver messages therefore is affecting the citizens by using words that have a certain nucance. |