Should The Media Be Able To Hide Information or The WHOLE Truth To The Public? We had this recent debate in school and I wanted to see your opinions. I say that the Media shouldn't lie, but they don't have to tell the whole truth. Like say a family dies, they don't have to bring the whole thing like the man raped the mom, blah blah, my teacher said because the media said the whole truth about the VA Tech Incident (Go Hokies, I go to every football game) that it inspired copycats, and on the other side that since some people thought the media wasn't telling the whole truth about 9/11 that they thought that the gov't had some conspiracy. So, share your thoughts here!
I don't think the media should lie. Like you said. But really they can say whatever they want other than that. They can be very biased, they can make things look better or worse than they really are without lying. They can withold as much info as they want. But I woldnt want to hear a lie
Yea I agree with that, but before this gets out of hand, this debate is not about the media lying its if they should tell tho WHOLE story or leave out some of the details.
they shouldnt leave out details.. if they are going to make a report on something then tell it like it is... not just say what they want and leave the important details out... example: 2 countries are at war... country "A" is attacking country "B" with alot force and are winning because they have more money and better weapons.. the media would say house country "A" is bad and that they kill lots of people.. but what they dont mention is why country "A" is attacking country "B" in the first place... when in fact country "B" has been doing small but deadly attacks on country "A" for years and country "A" has finally had enough... lol sorry for all the "A" & "B" stuff.. but u get my point.. its leaving stuff out that makes the media really bad... they twist any situation to make news more interesting and get more viewers, therefore getting more money. i think the media shouldnt be allowed to do this.
Although we need to remember that the media is not controlled by the government so if the media wishes to hide some information, they have every rights to do that media companies are private companies, so they have the rights to broadcast news and w.e. however they want of course, i would wish they always tell the whole truth..
Its not so much as the media hiding the whole truth. Its kinda the opposite. You don't need to tell the media to say something. As long as its a juicy enough of a story, you can be sure they will cover every single bit of it. In fact, I believe that they read WAY too much into matters that would normally be small blunders. Of course, they do hide a lot of the information that contradicts the "juicy" part of a story. Even though I dislike that, I think they have every right to do so, even if they shouldn't.
Sometimes, the truth can be devastating If we knew every thing the US was doing, US would have no respect
They already have no respect.. the only respect America gets, is from their own people.. the rest of the world thinks otherwise..
The media doesn't need to give us all the messy details about how the woman was raped 3 times and stabbed twice in the chest in a murder. But it shouldn't hide important details, like about political scandals.
I don't think media could hide information cause this would make possibly for it to twist the information.
Media shouldn't be too restricted like in China since you'd miss out important information, then again they should keep away the stuff that violates other people's rights or plainly grosses us out. There should be a third option here.
I believe the Media needs to be removed. They've made a habit of getting militarial strategies, and talking about it on National News. They talk about things we do not need to know, and only truly care about the tragic things for ratings. I do not think that the public should know about things that they only think concerns them.
I think that they should tell some of the truth, to keep us informed. becuase I think that most of us wouldn't be able to handle the ENTIRE truth about everything.
Well I disagree because I think that the media ALREADY gives us the ENTIRE truth and people aren't like OMG! That girl died! (Wait? She was raped, stabbed four times, had her heart cut out and he head was mounted on a pike? All while the guy was raping her?) I mean its like please we don't really need to know that but its told anyways!
The media do hide some things or just dont print them cause they're the boring details. They are only justified in hiding stuff when it may breach national security. There are some things that have been held back from being shown on TV by the government because of this, when the government knew it was going to be shown that is.
I think the media should be aloud to hide things but i certainly dont think they should. For example if you heard the whole truth about each candidate in elections you wouldnt want to vote for any of them.
I think the media needs to just come out with things and tell us. sooo many things happen that don't get reported, cause its so called "negative". They have told my dad a million times when he worked for a paper to not give them the negative information and only the positive, but he still did anyways :tehe:
I say the media should be able to present whatever they want, however they want. That being said, there should be a form of information distribution, i.e. specific channels, sites, papers, etc, that the government has control of. This way, people can choose to listen to what the government wants them to hear, or what other people what them to hear. ~M
I'm a little confused. Is the question, should the government be allowed to force the media to withold info, or should the media be allowed to hide information? I get the impression that the question is the latter, and I think the latter question is a much simpler one. The media can and should be allowed to print whatever it wants. Generally, it's in the media's best interest to tell the full the story as best as they can, but you can't force them to. One of the underlying principles of the U.S. legal system is that you can't punish somebody for inaction/not doing the right thing if that somebody didn't break the law.
This seems like a pointless discussion to me. Why don't we debate whether or not New Jersey politicians should be able to openly rape their state without consequence, or whether or not famous people like singers and movie stars should be able to wipe their buttocks with the Constitution and not even show up to court for a charge that would have landed me 20 years in prison..... we already KNOW the answer is no.... there's no debate, and discussing it is just a venting session. Honore De Balzac said "It is an easy thing to sit up and take notice. The difficult thing is getting up and taking action." That's one of my favorite quotes. If you're so steamed about it that you think about it day after day, then DO something about it. And if you can't think of what to do about it, then make productive posts like "So how do we change the current media system in America? Brainstorm with me."