Everyday we are bombarded with advertisements and media messages that force us to become consumers and adopt consumerism. We blame marketing for making us what we are today and marketing rebut saying that its society who is at fault. The debate between who is at fault has been an old one. It has prolonged for a long time and can be seen as the debate between the chicken and the egg. But, has anyone thought about the role news media plays in shaping society?
News and newsworthiness is now a social construction. The traditional view “where news is a mirror – a simple reflection of events – no longer works” (Croteau & Hoynes). In fact news media leaves out a large number of incidents and events based on their own interpretation of importance. The message is intertwined with questions of power and ideology. Only what they believe is important to them, is what is portrayed to us on the news. They don’t reflect the world, instead they actively select, present, structure and shape and engage in the practice to define reality. They give meaning to events and impose an ideology on the readers. Just like marketers, they advertise certain stories and show we should be. Yet blindly, every day I read the online news paper knowing that only a part of this is objective reality.
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