Mass Media- Blog

Mass media is present in our everyday lives, through this technology we can get informed about things that are happening all over the world. It's a good tool when getting to know about last news, events that have took place few minutes ago or events that are taking place at any part of the whole world. But mass media is usually biased, this means that it usually tries to make us believe things in a different way from how they really are, so us to make up an incorrect idea in our mind in order to get a benefit. This benefit is that the idea we make up of a situation or an event that has took place in any part of the world, is the idea they want us to have, which is completely different from reality. I'm not saying they are lying to us, but they usually omit important facts that could change our opinion, or they even manipulate the information they are showing to us.

I will now tell you a personal opinion that happened to me with biased information that made me have a different opinion about some aspects of the Second World War.

"This afternoon, when I arrived home after an exhausting schoolday, Iturned on my computer and started searching for information about the Second Worl War, as I had to make a presentation about this for my history class. Thanks to nowadays technology It took me less than one minute to find out some interesting information. I could quickly make up a clear idea about the development of the war, so I decided It was time to start making the presentation. I didn't have to visit many sources because I found out an American source which a really good and complete analysis about the War.

Today I had to expose  my presentation about the Second World War. While I was presenting I felt really confident about what I was saying, but for my surprise, when I finished my presentation, my teacher looked me in a strange way. She asked me about the sources I used when elaborating my presentation. She told me my presentation wasn't bad and that I had clearly put some serious work into it, but she explained me what I had done wrong. She explained all of us the reason why we shoul never make a work or a presentation with information from only one source, and used my presentation as an example. She showed us how the American source in which I had searched the information had been manipulated in order to represent United States as  a country that just defended themselves, she mentioned Pearl Harbor as a clear example of biased information, they had omitted some facts that could have changed our opinion about this conflict. What I had said in my presentation was that Americans took place in the Second World War because they had been attacked by Japan troops without  any precedent, if we read from this source will think of the US as the victims of this Japanese attack, but they omitted that US had a economic interest in Asians territory and that they imposed an oil embargo on Japan.

When I came back home this afternoon after being humiliated because of my recklessness I started searching in different sources about Pearl Harbour, because I just couldn't believe the manipulation some sources had in order to make people believe what they'd like them to think, but indeed I found out mass medias reality, I realized many of the sources I usually visited were usually manipulated, I even found out that my favorite sports newspaper omitted some facts in order to make readers think Real Madrid made everything right and Barcelona just didn't do anything the right way (I guess thats the main reason that made me like that newspaper so much)."

With this I´m not saying you that you shouldn't listen or see media at all, I´m just trying to persuade you about mass medias reality, so my advice, be sure the source you're using is quite objective when making History presentations.