Call it a habit of questioning authority if you may but sometimes it is very difficult for me to trust the media. It’s not that I believe every piece of news the media reports is false or over-exaggerated but I am left wondering if the “Top stories this evening” are truly the top stories. Are there certain events that happen or pieces of news out there that our government forces the media to keep secret? If so, then why? Is it for the public’s best interest to live in a need to know basis type of society? No matter the answer it is obvious that the media is personally responsible for our social construction of reality and the daily beliefs about the world we live in. It is difficult to imagine my perspective on the social world if there wasn’t television, film, radio, the printed press or internet. I would have no idea as to what was happening outside of my own social world. As stated in class, “Different levels of institutions are responsible for creating a social world and reality for us.” Without the institution of media we wouldn’t know about the current troubles taking place in Washington D.C., the protests and revolts in Lybia, the civil wars taking place in African Nations, the news surrounding the beginning of the NFL season, and the possibility of the University of Missouri leaving the Big12 for a new conference. The world we live in continues to evolve everyday and without the institution of the media normal citizens such as myself and the majority of the entire Mizzou population would not be able to keep up. However, as human beings – human beings with a brain – we must ask ourselves if certain types of media pull us away from the actual realities of our world and into false manipulated realities. Are we ever given the truth about the actual reality in which we live? There is no way of knowing…unless the media tells us so.
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