commentary

Link to Low Siao Chi’s blog: www.gp-is-blogged.blogspot.com

Siao Chi’s blog entry:

The media is corrupting our society. Do you agree?
How do we define corrupting? We defined corrupting as destroying or subverting the honesty or integrity of something. So is media corrupting our society? I shuld take it as a YEs.

Media is affecting all areas of our lives, since we live in the era where communication, broadcastings were common. We get both facts and opinions from what we see and hear from the media. Media is a form of propaganda that often is guilty of misleading their people with distortions, exaggerations, subjectivity, inaccuracy and even fabrications, in order to receive their support, in order to increase their sales, eg is the NKF issue . The extensive report on TT Durai caused a commotion and changed the public's view of NKF.

Media is so influential that if a author writes a biased article, u will tend to find yourself swaying towards the author's stand.

Also, since media is given the authority as a watchdog of democracy, there is no one to watch over it, no one to ensure that media themselves practice free media and democracy. They might just report things that are beneficial to the company as a whole, rather than for the benefit of the readers. in addition, journalists face threats of censorship, beatings and even death for reporting issues that may be controversial or not in the interests of power holders.

Therefore, i took a stand, that media is corrupting the society.They report news for monetary benefits and forget about their job ethnics. They forget the importance of reporting true accounts to their readers, giving them one-sided stories.

End of Siao Chi’s blog entry.

My commentary:

Siao Chi is very knowledgeable about the topic of media and its impact on society. This is easily identified from her use of terms like ‘fabrication’, ‘democracy’, ‘censorship’ and ‘monetary benefits’. It means she is widely read and this is essential in her blog about the media. She gives the reader an in-depth write-up because of her wide reading.

However, I feel that she is not thorough in her writing as she does not explain her points fully. She uses the technical terms like ‘fabrication’ and the likes but fails to elaborate on them. In the end, she just throws in those terms but does not say how they contribute to her write- up. This makes her write-up ‘loose’, in the sense that it is missing vital information which is her explanations. She could have said that fabrication was the act of doctoring articles so as to give the audience a desired view on a topic. Next, she should have proceeded to give examples on the media practicing fabrication such as the American judge whom the media made out to look in the wrong.

Moreover, she lacks examples in her write- up. In her whole write-up, she gives only one example which is on the T.T. Durai case and it is skimpily presented, consisting of only one line. She claims the media ‘report news for monetary benefits and forget about their job ethnics’ but does not give examples to substantiate her point. A good example would have been the Iraq war where American journalists reported only good tidings from the war but left out all the losses and casualties. The American media also did not show footages of the coffins of dead American soldiers. This happened because the American government at that time was pro-war and might not tolerate a media that was against its views.

Lastly, Siao Chi commited an error by the use of the word ‘you’ on her write-up. She should have used the term ‘ one’ instead as ‘you’ makes her write-up too personalized. Using ‘you’ implies that I, the reader, will definitely be swayed by a biased article, as she puts it. This is not true as I have the freedom to decide if I will be swayed or not. On the other hand, if she had used the term ‘one’, she would not have made reference to me but to people in general and to no one specifically. This increases her professional tone and makes her write-up less personal.