As
an individual with ample access to the internet at virtually all times in my day-to-day life, I find it almost difficult to escape the news. With breaking
news alerts disrupting radio shows, events being posted about on social media
websites by those affected or concerned; and even by simple word of mouth (e.g
“Oh my gosh did you hear about Mary Berry leaving Bake Off?”). Without making a
point about personal first-hand consumption of the day-to-day news, I feel as
though, one way or another, it will find me.
That
said however, I do make a point about
finding out the news first-hand (not first-hand in the sense that I appear at
the scene of recent news events, this must be stipulated), and have a couple of
apps downloaded to my phone, with banner alerts notifying me when terrible or
less-bad-than-terrible things are happening around the world. The app that
notifies me about breaking news alerts is BBC News, I chose this app to be my
primary news source as, due to being funded by the Taxpayer, the BBC has a duty
to deliver the news in a relatively unbiased manner, meaning that the information
I should receive about global events should carry no interpretations or lexis
to sway a reader into thinking a certain way about a particular topic.
Whilst
I personally am suspicious of hidden agendas even within PBS’ (Public Service
Broadcasting Channels), I have a tendency to read a BBC news alert and believe
the first pieces of information I read to be true (with exception of the news
alert about David Bowie’s death, which had the adverse effect, encouraging
denial). Topics such as the current affair with Great British Bake Off’s move to Channel 4, I often hear about
through headlines to articles which I don’t read, or through conversations that
interested parties have about the matter in the dinner-line: since the topics
are of no particular interest to me, I do not research into them as I would do
with subjects that I regularly follow within the news.
Recently,
I enabled the ‘My News’ section of the BBC News app, which allows you to pick
categories of personal interest and filters articles of those categories out of
the regular news feed, generating a personal feed. It can be assumed that the
idea behind this is to save scrolling through a mass of headlines to find articles
that you wish to devote your time to, but there is a danger that, by being
curators of our own information, we may become unaware of news that is
important to know or could be affecting us without our realising it. It could
be argued that there is an element of ignorance in choosing which news topics
to dismiss and which to be presented to you, for instance: with the recent EU
referendum, I found that those who had no view or were on the fence tended to
be quite uninformed (largely through no fault of their own) and those who had a
view were strong on their views and weren’t necessarily well-informed about
their opposition. Adding personal news into the equation could mean that
people’s own views are perpetuated through what they choose to know (notice
that I’m using the holistic term ‘know’ to sway the reader to think a certain
way about the matter, I’m sorry if I’m annoying you).
BBC
News isn’t the only source of information through which I hear first reports of
world events. Surprisingly, the social media sites I frequent can often be the
first and, on rare occasions, the only way I find out about certain news. By
searching keywords into Twitter, I can scroll through the top tweets on my
search, which I usually do when tweets about a news event appear on my regular Twitter
feed and get my attention. Mostly this year, it’s been news events about
American police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement that I’ve read
the first information on through Twitter. In events of injustice such as this,
I am more inclined to read most about the event through my social media
accounts, as I believe conglomerates feel the need to be suitably delicate or
evasive about situations concerning high authorities (sometimes though, I just
want to be angry about the situation). This could make me an oppositional
consumer in this case, meaning I am more likely to reject information that news
organisations distribute and trust that @magalufLAD95 is providing me with
credible information.
For
those who do not seek out the news personally, they could be at an even further
disadvantage than those who choose their own news, with little clarity being
gained in the passing news they’ll hear on the television in the background, or
in the line for a small Pomodoro. It is more often than not that people,
especially those who do not actively consume the news, will know little about
many current news events rather than a lot about a few. Whether this a positive
or a negative effect of the proliferation of news is down to interpretation. In
researching the ways in which others consume the news, I found that an
overwhelming percentage (I don’t know the percentage) of people mainly get
their news from the BBC. Whether it’s the news app, television, or the radio,
the BBC are or are among the public’s main source(s) of the news.
In
this oligopoly, with 75% of British newspapers being owned by only 3 people: with the
BBC owning a 75% share of radio (of which around 44% of people said they got
their main source of news from) and being one of the most watched news
channels, would it be paranoid to question the authenticity of the news that we
receive? To wonder if we ever really receive truly unbiased news? In my
research I’ve found that most people viewed The Guardian as a trustworthy
source of news, but my research lacks generalisability, as I didn’t survey a
panel of representatives for the whole nation, I only questioned those who
lived in my area, went to my school, or were my mother. The Guardian is often
regarded as a more left-wing paper, and by only interviewing a small number of
people from the same area, it’s no surprise that there is not a wide variety of
beliefs.
In conclusion to this rather weak analysis, there is a plethora of ways that members of the public can consume the news, and they aren't necessarily different formats of established news organisations. It could be the comedy panel shows you sit down on Thursday nights to watch, hashtags that you search for when a person has retweeted about that gorilla story, and many other ways. The news is everywhere, which, in a way, is democratic in the sense that everyone is able to gain information and form their own opinions on subjects; but on the other hand, with the incredible amount of power that few people have over our news organisations, it could be that we're one nation under, not a groove, but a set of heavy influences that in time, will come to make a less democratic Britain that we know today.
Cheers for reading, and sorry again.
