Ethics and the Media Arts: Who Can Be Trusted?

There are so many misconceptions held by the people of this country due to the lack of evidence provided to us by those in power. It is taken for granted that most of the population will absorb whatever is told to them and consider it to be true, merely because they saw it on the news. People simply choose not to look into issues further because they are apt to believe that the information provided to them is correct. If we do not begin to contest falsified news reports, then the truth will continue to go unknown.

Here we are in the midst of a great technological age in which so much information is literally at our fingertips, yet many people rely on television (most likely they have a favorite network and do not stray from their chosen news reports) to be told what is going on in the world rather than research for themselves. Chances are if it wasn't covered in the evening news, people don't know it happened.

Even if someone did want to further research issues, my guess is that the majority of people have no idea where to begin, and who is to say that the information they would find would be any more "truthful" than what they already "know?" There really is not a great variety of neutral sources through which to obtain information. Although skepticism isn't usually the best decision, it isn't out of line to say that journalists aren't exactly trustworthy. Anything can be twisted and taken out of context so as to support the writer's opinion of the matter and decided story line.

It is rare that two articles, both covering the same issue, will read in the same manner. Every writer puts his/her own spin on the material to make it "fresh." Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election provides a perfect example of the disparities between the far-left and the far-right media sources. I cannot count the number of debates that occurred following the election about what actually happened in what time frame. Of course the end result was the same for all, but a person's impression of the election itself is dependant upon the channel through which they chose to watch events unfold. (How close was it?, etc.)

There is an immense power that comes with developing story lines - take reality television for instance. When the events are captured on video, it is next to impossible to deny their existence, but timelines can easily be reconstructed. Through editing and manipulation of interviews, it is possible for the creators to literally make up events. An example of this comes from an episode of MTV's Making the Band, when there was a supposed dance-off between two girls.

There were five main shots cut together to create this "intense" moment: the first girl straight on, the first girl through the mirror, the second girl straight on, the second girl through the mirror, and facial reactions of P. Diddy. What I noticed was the disparity of clothing and shoes through a corner of the mirror when it was focusing on the first girl, which was clearly not the clothing being worn by the second girl. What struck me as the most fabricated were the reactions from P. Diddy edited into the dance sequence clearly from moments either prior to of following the event.

It's becoming hard enough these days to trust news segments, but it is even harder to decipher photographs. We have only the photographer's description of the event as a frame of reference. There is no context of truth readily available as to the situation in which the picture was taken, using as an example the reported attack on the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad. One picture is taken so as to show crowds of Iraqis bringing the structure down while another, taken from a wider angle, depicts very few people participating in the statue's destruction. Point of view matters a great deal to the framing of a picture and the implications as to the backdrop of the story behind the photograph.

There is a definite battle of ethics involved in artistic interpretation/manipulation. A large responsibility of the truth in this nation relies on the shoulders of reporters. It's too bad so much of our information is false. The question we need to address is where to draw the line in order to ensure a reversal of this negative media.