Now this can be in the form of subscription media, sponsored media or media subsidised by the Government. And the main aim of commercial media is advertising, social reach and (scariest of all) propaganda.
Now, we would all like to live in a world where we can fully trust on the media, any media, for the exact and all encompassing truth to every important event. But unfortunately, media has become so commercially driven that the wider public has become quite sceptical of what the media is saying, or more importantly, hiding. If it is all about money, then the control over what is published is surely in the hands of the investors? We have no other way of knowing the truth than journalists.\
Let's think about censorship for a minute. We are all a little bit afraid of it. I am scared. I am scared of the fact that so much of my knowledge relies solely on the ethical responsibility of the media. And we all know that is a little bit shaky. And we have all heard of government censorship in its most evil form in dystopian novels, and shrugged it off as a silly dream of something that might never happen.
"Winston’s work with the Ministry is to change history. He is involved mainly with articles in The Times newspaper, and he goes back and changes the text so that it supports the present. For example, if in the past Big Brother had made a prediction and it did not transpire, Winston would go back and change the prediction and destroy any evidence regarding the original entry."
George Orwell, 1984
Ridiculous. Ridiculous to think of in modern society. But there have been several unsettling examples in modern media that are clearly heading in the same direction. One is the so called "Secrecy Bill" that was passed in South Africa at the end of 2011.
Even Australia has problems with increasing censorship over Internet use. But I am by no means saying that the world is heading towards a totalitarian superpower, I don't think it will ever come to that. There are enough safe guards that protect the public from anything extreme. And as romcoms have been teaching me all my life; people hate being lied to. No, I don't think anything serious will happen. But I do think that commercial media can be a very bad idea.
Not just in the censorship world, it also results in news being dumbed down, news being reduced to scandalous gossip and news companies working only to please the public, and not to inform. Don't we have enough tabloids? Do we really want to know how Britney Spears lost her baby-weight or Justin Bieber gets his hair so shiny? As the marvellous Jerry Sienfeld said:
People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.
We can never completely get away from commercial media. There needs to be money to fuel all the journalists and newspapers. As long as we do not compromise on the truth of delivering news, we will be fine.
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