Reaction to Essay- 9/05

Which Media Do You Trust?

Part 1)

This was a pretty interesting article. A little boring, but interesting. Once I was able to read through all the numbers that the author was throwing at me, I started to get into it. It makes sense that the majority of people trust TV news stations the most, as it is their job to report on news 24/7. I stopped watching TV news a long time ago. I got sick of hearing ridiculous things like “Can your microwave kill you? More on this at the top of the hour”. I realized how ridiculous it was when I saw a sketch on Saturday Night Live where the anchors would start a story, and then never finish it. They had stories like “The President has been assassinated. The President of what? Find out more later!” or “Certain household products have been found to cause severe neurological problems within minutes of being opened! Which products? More at the top of the hour!”. The skit then finishes with Will Ferrell reporting that EVERYONE should panic.

Another thing that pisses me off about TV news is that half the time, the most important news isn’t even being talked about, it’s just scrolling across the bottom of the screen. The other day, Bill O’Reilly was talking to Miss New Jersey about her provocative Facebook pictures. Meanwhile, scrolling across the bottom of the screen are updates on Al-Qaeda, the war in Iraq, the latest news from congress, and other things that actually matter. If GlobeScan had polled me for this survey, I would’ve been in the 9% that said the Internet is the most important news source. With the internet, I can read the stories that I want to and I can read them from different sources. I usually read the same story from a couple different places so I can pull out the consistencies and leave the opinions behind.

Part 2)

In the article “Which Media Do You Trust?”, author Mark Glaser cites a GlobeScan Survey of citizens from ten nations. They found that overall, only 61% of people trust what the read or hear in the media, while 28% of people have abandoned news sources in the past due to lack of trust. As he went through the rankings of the types of media that were most trusted he began to form a valid argument. He asked of the people surveyed, “What media do they actually see and use regularly?” He argued that people are prejudging certain forms of media, when they should be judging each medium on a case-by-case basis. Glaser makes a logical objection to the survey, but then the following must be asked of him: How does he know how 10,000 different people judge their media? While he does make a good point with his argument, it is pure speculation. Glaser’s argument is exactly the type of media that when it is read, the audience needs to take a step back and realize that what they are really reading is one person’s opinion on a study.