News or Olds?

News or Olds?

Mass media has many different ways of communicating information to us “the viewer”. According to Struken and Cartwright media is the plural form of medium which refers to the group of communications industries and technologies that together produce and spread public news, entertainment, and information. When we refer to “the media” it usually means a plurality of media forms (entertainment, film, news, radio, the web, television, etc.).

Last week I took a couple of days to study the news. Doing so, I paid attention to different mediums that the news is offered to “the viewer”. These mediums included the newspaper, television, and the web. During my little study I paid close attention to the kinds of different news stories that were explained. I found out that during the first five to ten minutes on television, the majority of the opening sections of the newspaper, and the major headlines on the web news all dealt with a common subject. This subject to me if I had to put into words would be something like a combination of depressing downbeat anecdotes of information. It seemed like at the beginning of all of these mediums were the same stories over and over. These stories ranged from violence erupting overseas in war zones, the economy crises hitting the western world, and violence happening in North America, just to mention a few.

After realizing this pattern after a couple of days of tuning in the news I asked myself “is this news?” Or is this olds? I mean, I have heard downbeat stories of unfortunate and ill-fated happens taking place concurrently one right after the other but on different days. It seemed like these downbeat stories were going in one ear and out the other. Hence, are these stories all news? There are such an extreme number discouraging stories produced by all mediums in the news that I can see why some people can experience depression while watching it. Paying attention to and thinking about the unfortunate happenings I can see could cause people to not want to watch the news.

This brings up an interesting question that stems from all this: Have we heard the same kind of information being televised on the news too many times that we just automatically hear it and then disregard it? Therefore, is the news, news? Or is news, olds? Olds, in this case, meaning stories regarding topics and subjects that we have heard over and over again.

Also, according to Struken and Cartwright, the presentation of news in different media affects our perception of it. For instance, in television news, our perceptions can be shaped by such elements as the cultural status of the newscaster, as well as by how he or she is situated on a set. I also tried to gather some perceptions of this and did not really notice anything or pay much attention to it. Therefore, my perceptions of the news did not really influence me in how I watch the news in any of the mediums that I viewed the news in. Nevertheless, does a different medium affect our perceptions of the news? For me, I have to say not really.