Philosophy Essay - Are we able to criticize the media

Feb.22.2020

University of Miami

PHI 101

Zhenyuan Wang

Should we criticize the media?

Recently, a novel respiratory virus called Coronavirus that originated in Wuhan City, Hubei

Province, China, has spread quickly throughout the country and to dozens of other nations. Tens

of thousands of cases are confirmed, and thousands of people die from it. This news has ignited

all the people and socials medias attentions instantaneously. One of my friends complained to me

about one of the articles from the medias he saw that wrote about how terrifying the virus is and

was extremely emotional without any reliable facts listed. In general, similar to the propaganda,

this media delivered messages with their own judgements of the severity of the Coronavirus and

tried to provoke the audiences to go to the same direction they suggested by utilizing emotional

sentences and selective facts. Such intentional and manipulative approach has to some degree

discomforted my friend and make him criticize the media. However, what do media do when

reporting certain issue? Is propaganda acceptable? And should we criticize the media due to that?

In my friend’s case, the criticism came from his unsatisfaction of the emotional content and his

willingness of knowing about the persuasive facts. Therefore, he claimed that this should not be a

proper way for the media to communicate with the public, and instead, the media should provide

facts without their own bias or judgements. However, we have to admit that different ways of

communication exist in the media. Actually, there are some reasons for the existence of the former

type of media and it might be reasonable to have the direct and emotional type of articles under

current social environment, but not ideal.

The level of education can be one of the reasons why the differences exist among the media. While

there is variety between the education level, people show different capability on interpreting the

same material. And, as a matter of fact, to be able to filter out the useful information and make

correct respond to it after relatively comprehensive analysis is a precious ability. It requires

knowledge in various fields, access to the information, the academic and learning ability which

can be considered as scarce resources in nowadays society. Hence, people might need suggestions

and analysis from the media to facilitate them to make the correct decisions.

Secondly, media can be biased due to political, cultural and racial reasons. A double standard could

be applied when reporting the event. One example of this double standard is the comparison of the

deaths of Michael Brown and Dillon Taylor. On August 9, 2014, Brown, a young, unarmed African

American man, was killed by a white policeman. This news spread throughout news media and

discussed about how this incident related to the races. However, another story happened just two

days later, did not get as highly publicized as Brown’s. In this story, Taylor, unarmed white and

Hispanic man was shot and killed by a black police officer. The bias was created due to the

occurrence of racial problems and the double standard company with these problems. These biases

change the way how the media reports the issue and also what to report, which causes the

discrepancy among the media.

Third, different media companies may produce the articles differently due to their distinct scales.

To report a thoughtful and accurate facts cost a lot, which to some degree distinguish the articles

of the media with different scales. In order to produce a ‘perfect’ article, the media company need

to hire many educated officers and need time to do the research. However, in the cutthroat world

of media, the media company has limited time for response. When the constraints apply, how

powerful the media company is will directly affect the style of the article produces.

Hence, the society itself has already determine the variety of the media. The propaganda style

articles are produced due to the other problems in society such as the limitation of people’s

perceptivity, the existence of bias and limited time and resource. Then, should we criticize and

eliminate this kind of media? Is there any optimization can be done? Certainly, there is something

we need to change. But, in order to solve the problem, we should optimize the relationship between

the public and the media instead of criticizing the media.

Indeed, my friend’s complaints were the result of the mismatch between the media and the reader.

In other words, my friend has read an article that wasn’t suitable for him since it hasn’t provided

him the information he wanted. Neither of the stakeholders, readers and media, should be blamed

or criticize the other one because the main factor that causing the problem here is the relationship

and the connection between these two parties. The system constructed between the readers and

social media is imperfect. In details, this system involves a double-way selection process where

the readers have the targeted media or information and the media has its own target audiences. It

is imperfect since people aren’t receiving the message they wanted, and the information fit to them.

Before the illustration, I want to discuss about one of the most famous theory, the butterfly effect.

The butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in

one state can result in large differences in a later state. One example to demonstrate this effect is

the domino chain reaction, where we put the dominos from small to big in a line. In this setting,

we can actually topple a 100 pounds domino by push the first tiny, 5 millimeters tall domino. So,

in this case, when the 100 pounds domino falls, should we just conclude that the cause of the fall

is that 5 millimeters tall domino? Maybe, the answer is true since if no one push the first domino,

nothing will happen. However, taking away the first domino won’t be managed to solve the

problem because the major problem exists in this butterfly effect experiment is the system itself,

the way how the dominos are arranged. Rather than taking away the ting domino, we just need to

pull the domino apart, in other words, alter the system and the relationship between the objects in

the reaction. Similarly, in the system of media, we should also think about the relationship between

the audiences and media so as to solve the problem, instead of criticizing or taking away the related

domino.

In the system of media, there is a double-way selection process involved between the readers and

media. To begin with, each media has its own target audiences and the media may adjust their

content base on their audiences. For instance, the censorship in China censor the content over all

the media for mainly political reasons, but also to maintain its control over the populace. Because

of the censorship, the media in China cannot touch the red line of the censorship so as to ensure

the consistency in values and also for moral, cultural, religious reasons. Hence, the media that

targets Chinese audiences need to amend their content to fit the political and social environment

in China and the ways of how Chinese audiences thinking. Additionally, the international media

such as New York Times and The Economics, which are blocked by China as there are conflicts

of the values between them and Chinese citizens, will publish ‘political conflict’ issues to the

audiences who are not censored and won’t affect the Chinese government and society.

Besides, the readers are also selecting their media. People has different needs in the media, and

they may select the media base on their habits, characteristics etc. Get back to my friend’s case,

which is a great example for illustrating this. As an international college student in U.S. and with

an educated family background, he has got a great education and has the knowledge and ability to

analysis certain issue. So, he can easily recognize the emotional content in the Coronavirus article

and notice the intention of the media, which has snatched his opportunity to think about the

Coronavirus event. As a result, because of his relative rational characteristic, he may need the

media that can provide him with more facts and supported evidences and will skip the

oversimplified one with strong intention.

How we optimize the relationship between the readers and media is the question about how we

associate the readers with proper media and vice versa. And the ratio of novel knowledge provided

and the material within the reader’s comfort zone (named comfort ratio in the following) may be

able to describe how well the media and the reader fit each other. To improve the media system,

we may need to match this comfort ratio from both the media and reader side and to make sure the

targeted media or audience is the correct one.

Take the report on Coronavirus as an example, there is media sharing about the clinical progress

on the virus and some information require some knowledge in medical field such as the process of

the creation of vaccine. In this case, the comfort ratio of this article will the ratio between the novel

knowledge in medical field for the reader and the other information. The comfort ratio for the

reader will be the ratio between the new knowledge or information he can accept from the media

and his comfort-zone material. Only the people who has enough clinical knowledge or is able to

learn this will have the proper comfort ratio to match with the comfort ratio of this Coronavirus

article. If there exists a mismatch, the media will become useless or difficult or even threatening

for the audiences.

To conclude, there exists imperfections in the media world per se. Though it is not ideal, the

existence of propaganda and manipulative media is reasonable due to various social factors, which

also leads to the distinctions among the media. However, instead of solely criticize the media or

the audiences, we should focus on the improvement in the media system about how the media and

audiences are related. Since there is a double-way selection between the audience and media, we

should improve the media system by matching two stakeholders’ comfort ratio so that media can

target to the correct audiences and the audiences could find the media that fit for them.