▶ Your Answer :
Some people think that the news media delivers a lot of distorted information, so it is hard to believe its information. However, in my opinion, it is reliable enough for us to believe for two reasons. First, companies consisting the media compete with each other, so they would go behind in the competition if they gave wrong information. Also, a lot of people who view the contents given by the media supervise and give comments to it.
To begin with, severe competition between media companies protect them from conveying wrong information to people. There are more than a hundred of news companies existing in Korea. If a company tried to hide the truth and deceived their readers, one would be soon abandoned by their readers and get bad reputation from people. I would like to give an example which I've shown recently. One of the news companies in Korea received some money from government and wrote a news article containing some false information. As it became a very hot potato for a while, people started to question whether it is true or not. Soon, it was found out not to be real, and additional research revealed that they were paid a huge amount of bribe from governmental relevants. Afterall, it was blamed by all the people in Korea, and could not retain their fame as before. They are now known to be almost in the danger of bankruptcy. This example has surely shown that companies cannot easily include false information unless they would be abandoned by their readers.
On top of that, users today of the news media try to find the truth by themselves not just relying on it. There is even a word "Netizen Police" in Korea which refers to people who try to reveal the truth by their own and to modify wrong news articles if possible. As they constantly keep watch on information given by the news media, it is hard for news companies to intentionally include false information. There was a research done by Korean Statistics Office to figure out the change of the number of "Netizen Police" in last 5 years. By analyzing the datas of officially registered "Netizen Police", researchers recorded that more than twice more people are now participating in this project than 5 years ago. They also added that the steep increase of "Netizen Police" might have led to the transparency of news media.
To sum up, news media companies are in a harsh competition with each other and are under the supervisory of their readers and users. In this regard, the news media these days is quite believable source. |