Friday 22 May 2015

Why you can't always trust the media.



I was blog hopping this morning and came across a post that was berating a phenomenon that had caught on in Canada and the US that was basically about men behaving badly and bombing live newscasts.  Various video clips had gone viral.
You’ll probably be able to work out what I’m talking about with a bit of googling but I’m trying hard not to give the whole thing any more airtime than possible and you’ll see why below.

That might sound strange given that the targets of the bad behaviour were women (and I’m all for defending women’s rights) but, as I hadn’t heard of this issue (and it was using an acronym that I wasn’t familiar with) and it was quoted as being something that also happened here in the UK I decided to do a bit of digging.

What I found was that it appears to have been started deliberately by someone who wanted to just get attention and create a video posting that would go viral.  So it was reported that the first incident of this behaviour had happened when really it had all been a set up.  And the set up had included a woman.

The point I’m trying to make here (albeit a bit haphazardly) is that we can’t always trust the media.  It can tell us things that are not true and it can influence our actions.  In this case in a very negative way.  Of course I’m appalled at the way the men were behaving.  Being derogatory towards women, or anyone for that matter is not acceptable.  But I’m also appalled that when I tracked back this all started because of a stunt to get attention and the unsuspecting public took it on board and ran with it.

Yes, you can argue that by commenting on it like this I’ve joined that crowd but given the options of just being able to click on a video link in a post or having to go away and google, how many of the people reading this post will bother to do the googling? 

Clicking on video links is so easy and most of us (myself included) will do this and comment on it and then it perpetuates. But sometimes it’s worth looking beyond what’s placed in front of us and finding the truth.  We shouldn’t always be sheep.

3 comments:

  1. I have tried hard not to follow this story or click on the links, but thank you for ferreting out the fact it was a media stunt.
    Sigh.

    You would think people could find better things to do with their time - like, oh, I don't know - working towards peace and harmony.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm afraid I don't know what you're referring to; but the principle is a good one. I often post a comment like why are you trying to make this person famous, that's what they want when someone post something with a link, video or the like and they say lets make this go viral to shame the person. I often think that's exactly what they want. I like to be informed and depending on the topic might follow up on not...but the simple make this go viral I usually ignore.

    ReplyDelete
  3. oh the attention seeking behaviou of people today drives me nuts, it all seems to pointless. Plus the media in general can't be trusted anyway. They just report what ever they think will sell most or get most attention. What a weird world we live in these days :-)

    ReplyDelete

I love receiving comments and will do my best to acknowledge them, either by replying here or dropping in on your blog.

Thanks for stopping by.