As a communications major, it is fully ingrained in me to like, or rather admire, all efforts by professionals in the field to report the news, but also to generate discussion. From gotcha tabloid journalism to nightly local and international news, professionals in the journalism field do what no people in any other career do — report the real lives of real people.
While many are unbiased and tell us what is happening in the world we share, some exaggerate, lie or downplay one story to promote another. While I wholeheartedly believe that all stories deserve their time in the news cycle, some have more implications for people than others.
I concede that journalism is not just about summarizing the news — unless you are to be an idealist. It is about views and ratings. We see stations and publications that write and publish what people want a lot of the time, more so than what people need to know.
Selective consumption of news is a very real problem in our day and age. Social media makes it very possible to consume one bias or side of an argument and completely ignore another. I find myself unfollowing people that share articles that go against my personal views and political leanings so my news feed is littered with articles that I want to engage with, not ones that are from all points of view and from people who share political affiliations different from my own.
Of course, people who subscribe to Fox News and MSNBC fall into the same trap, both being traditionally conservative and liberal news outlets respectively.
The recent tragedy in Paris was the prime example of individuals — and journalists — doing what they do worst — criticizing coverage of an international disaster. While it didn’t have to do with basic conservative and liberal leanings, it had to do with how we perceived the tragedy and how we report and comment on it.
While I appreciate different viewpoints, taking one disaster and using it to elevate other issues doesn’t make your news story any better or worse. In times of tragedy, it is not also a time to criticize people for not knowing about certain events in the world.
People were criticized on Facebook for changing their profile photo to have a French flag filter, because the immense amount of support for the lives lost in Paris, to some, was taken as an offense to other lives lost in other bombings across the globe.
In the wake of the Paris attacks, people started Facebook posts and tweets about how other events — namely separate bombings in Beirut and Baghdad — were not being covered, planting some of the blame for that on their friends and connections on social media.
Regardless of whether I know about the other bombings, the world grieved the loss of many people that perished in Paris, and their lives deserve remembrance.
For the future, maybe we need to be better consumers of media, or maybe we need to better know what’s going on in the world. One tragedy, or one life lost, is no more or less sad.
