News Reports are NOT Gospel

Who decide what to report and how to report?

It makes no difference if it is the US which is well-known for press freedom or Singapore where press business is owned by the government, biased media seem to exist in one form or the other as shown in cases examined in this paper.

Biased media may come in a hidden form which is market driven and ratings-led in some places or controlled by the government through ownership.

Journalism is not purely about reporting stories based on facts and evidence in a fair and just view. Who owns a particular news agency or publication? Whose interests are involved in a particular story? Who have the ultimate control over the editorial stand? These are all the forces,which are invisible to members of the public, working behind stories produced by news agencies.

News consumers do not realize what they see on television, read in newspaper or listen from the radio is not just a piece of information or news. It is a piece of news that has been angled and packaged before presenting to them with people working behind the curtains pulling strings attached to hands of journalists.

New Media acting as a check point

With the new media coming into play, monopoly of the mainstream media deciding what to report and how to report no longer exists. Individuals, be it journalist or ordinary net surfer, anyone can post comments, messages, facts, evidence concerning anything that is happening around the globe in the cyber world where there is no physical boundaries, time frame and regulation, providing fresh angle and sometimes information that proves what has been reported in the mainstream media to be misleading or even untrue.

The timeless nature of cyberspace allows surfers to gain easy access to information, both new and old, presented in various forms whether in vedio, picture or simply texts, to look at news stories reported by the mainstream media with a fresher and perhaps more comprehensive view.

An article titled Was Michael Jackson Framed? by Mary A. Fischer, a front page story of the GQ magazine dated October 1994 which presented strong arguments defending Jackson's innocence when he was first accused of being a child molestor back in 1993 was ignored by the mainstream media when it was first published.

The article is still being ignored by the mainstream media, but has been widely circulated in the internet after Jackson's death allowing news consumers, young and old who are intersted in the subject to learn more about the late pop star. Without the internet, access to the article would not have been as easy as net surfers' finger tips and the circulation of the piece of writing would be confined to who actually make to effort to look for the 16-year-old magazine that might be buried somewhere in a public library in the USA.