Why People hate the media

Max Meyerson
mm603815@ohio.edu

Somewhere along the way in American society, the term "truth" lost its value. Truth's stock is somewhere next to Tesla at this point. So far what we have learned from the readings and from our class is that truth doesn't have any overarching value on what we do in the media. Sure truth is part of what we do but, it is not our main goal. Based on utilitarianism the good of the people comes before truth. This would make sense to some, why would we jeopardize national security to run a story that is the truth?

 This article on PhilosophyTalk.Org  However I believe in honesty. Now if there is malicious intent one should withhold their knowledge, especially if it is irrelevant to society. However we as media members are the chroniclers of society. It is our duty to keep as much of the truth in the public conversation as possible. For it is this lack of truth that has repelled people from the media.

No one likes to be pandered too. No one likes to feel as if they can't, (for a lack of better terms) handle the truth. Even if you feel the truth may upset or disturb the public, they have the right to know. We as people have the right to fully understand a situation and make judgements for ourselves on what we feel is the right course of action. Instead we have these media outlets dictating the conversation and controlling the narrative.

This line graph was created by Greg Levine from Al-Jazeera America. It indicates that the overall trust in media is down in every category. For some reason the media likes to think it is not their fault that the trust has vanished. The problem is most media outlets don't understand that you need to have truth to have trust. In order for our society to better handle situations where extreme truth's are presented to us we must be 

familiar with the truth.

. 

In this video on Vox's YouTube channel they do an excellent job explaining how obvious lies can be used as propaganda by political leaders, as well as people in the media. One of the big issues with the media is that its hard to tell when they are withholding the truth or flat out lying. With a singular leader like Trump or Putin it is easy to get caught in terrible lies that decimate your social stature. However when it comes to the media, they actually control the narrative and they can spin world leaders words to make them look evil. Donald Trump is not the first president to have had "fake news" spread about him, even Barrack Obama got "fake newsed."How many countless lies were told about Abraham Lincoln in the southern press? The only way this can be solved is if there was no indiscretion in the media about what should and should not be printed and only the truth should reported every time. 

Overall I understand why the media withholds the truth at times. I see the logic behind it. However, we are at a critical stage in society right now. Information is everywhere and if people can't distinguish what is real and what is fake we have lost everything. When are we going to wake up and realize what we are doing now has not, is not, and will not work.