We Media and Democracy - Lizzie Stafford

Over the summer I collected information on the different news articles and where I got them, such as newspapers, television, social media, etc. This gave me the chance to really look at how I personally get news about what is happening locally, nationally and worldwide. Overall I collected most of my articles from the internet on my Facebook feed or news websites such as ‘The Guardian’ website or the BBC news website.

The first news article I came across was on the website version of ‘The Guardians’, which was about the ‘North Korea and South Korea Risk of All Out War’. The article went on to tell us about how because of South Korea’s propaganda speakers and artillery being fired by North Korea, people have been evacuated on the south side of the Demilitarized Zone and that both countries have been threatening each other with retaliation, such as missiles.I read this article in depth, with it coming across that the writer wanted to give an unbiased article. The reason behind the article wasn’t to try and push their view, which is exactly what good journalists do, the article only wants to get as much information out to the readers as possible about the conflict occurring. They wrote it like this to not try to push their own view on to the reader like many articles done by amateur journalists but to show both sides of the story. It was also written by ‘The Guardian’, a popular newspaper which has now put all their articles online as well, so it can be seen to be reliable, for a lot of people read their newspaper so, in theory, they need to give unbiased information to the public. This of course doesn’t apply for all newspapers which can be very left or right wing when it comes to things but this article itself gave a clear unbiased view because of there being hardly anything between the UK and Korea at the moment.

My second news article was on the BBC website, which was about the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Hungary. The headline was “People Treated Like Animals” which is what caught my attention while I was checking the daily news. They used this sort of headline to draw people in by being vague and to appeal to people’s conscience at other people being treated badly.  I didn’t read the article itself in depth; I only read the headline. This was because of so much news coverage on the Syrian Refugee Crisis over the summer, I personally didn’t want to know any more for they are/were becoming very repetitive and upsetting. As its the BBC, and they swear on trying to get both sides of every discussion, there are a lot of articles similar to this one for this country and others in the EU, such as Hungary, Germany, France and Denmark, that are just people either saying that they didn’t want them in our country or that they did. And this isn’t really news I want to see or hear for it just frustrates me at some of the things people being interviewed said, so I didn’t read into it at all.

My final piece of news I found was on my Facebook feed which is a place where I get a lot of my information daily. It was headlined “Grenade training exercise leaves one dead and two injured in South Korea”. It tells us that during a training exercise that undertook men in the army under the compulsory military service of South Korea, where they had to throw a live grenade at a target, one of the grenades was faulty which caused the thrower to be killed and 2 instructors to be hospitalised. The article was written to inform us about this tragic accident and was written in a way as to try to get sympathy from the reader. It is written by a website called “Koreaboo”, which I read/follow mostly for information on celebrities from South Korea, but they also report on the larger new stories from there. They also include translations from korean social sites for english speaking readers to see what the people it has affected are feeling, not just the writer’s view, like people who had gone through the compulsory military service saying that the grenade throwing was their worst experience. I also know that, while this website does cover the major news stories of the country, they specialise in celebrities, gossip and fashion, so I can’t trust them to be a reliable information source for this sort of article.