Brad Roberts - We Media and Democracy

One piece of news I heard about during the summer holidays was that nearly two thousand migrants tried to go through the channel tunnel. I heard this story while listening to Sky News on the TV, but I did not look further into the subject due to prior knowledge of the migrant crisis already and being bored of the news subject. Most of the news I pay more attention to are more recent and new news stories, rather than ones that have been of concern for some time, so after hearing about the migrant crisis so much already, I failed to have any interest in the story at that time. I initially believed what Sky News had said due to it being a supposedly reliable news company with large outstretched areas to find out accurate information. However, after recently learning about how news companies have the power and can change the way news is portrayed at will, I became discouraged that the news was indeed accurate or if it was adapted to reflect the views of Rupert Murdoch; the owner of Sky News. As he is very wealthy, he is more likely Right Wing and supports more Conservative views and would want to project the news his companies put out to reflect that. This can be shown on how negatively the story was initially portrayed with many migrants walking away from the tunnel saddened by their failure with the news reporter talking about how it is becoming a problem that migrants are taking such extremes to get away from Syria.
Another piece of news I heard about during the summer holidays was the fire blast that occurred in China. Once again, I heard this from Sky News and watched two days of coverage of the incident as it was of interest to me personally due to the mystery initially of why the fireball occurred. It was also interesting as the only official video of it was amateur footage, which made the incident questionable about what had really happened. While I didn't find out what had happened in the end or after the couple of days coverage on the event, it was more interesting than the Syrian refugee stories as they became stale. While I didn't realise it at the time of watching the news story, it now occurs to me that the story is biased towards Conservatives by initially presuming it was a terrorist attack rather than any other possibility. Due to the lack of quality in the footage, it is difficult to say whether the news story is true or not. However since the story was on front page newspapers as well not owned by Murdoch such as the Independent, it means the story isn't simply made up unless the video was tampered with and the people who were interviewed told fake stories.
Another piece of news I heard about was the restrictions that are being placed on music videos. The story spoke about how there are to be age ratings on music videos due to their popularity and how some are becoming more than just music videos and more like miniature movies. I was very much intrigued by the story due to it having an effect on me personally making and studying about music videos, and how this age restriction may affect artist's music videos. I heard this on the BBC news at ten, which is supposed to reflect all sides of the country; whether they are Left or Right Wing due to the country and the tax payers funding the BBC. However this has become more and more debatable recently of whether this is true or not due to some biased opinions it makes. The story also interviewed artists about their opinions on the subject and getting their views, to help argue for and against the point. A lot of the time on the BBC news they have topics that are more up for debate rather than just being news. With the BBC news Twitter page, people are more inclined to post their opinions on the subject; similar to how it is on early morning news programs such as Daybreak.
Finally, I heard about a local news story which involved a man dying after police refused a lift for the man. I did not look into the matter personally as it wasn't something that particularly interested me, but I saw it on the front of a Derbyshire Times newspaper. Due to it being local news it would seem as if the topic should be understood well as it is a case in the local region, but would be portrayed in a way the residents of that area would prefer. From the headline alone, it appears the police are to blame for the death of the man rather than anything else. This may be done as the author may not like the local police and want to raise awareness of their flaws such as in this case, despite it being very unlikely that the refusal from the police being the sole reason for the man's death.
Overall, I've learned that news isn't always trustable as the owners of these news corporations have their own influence on how the news stories are portrayed, rather than trying to support all sides of the argument as to how the BBC attempts to do instead.