Can we trust the media?

Media as we know it today has changed drastically in only a few decades. And by changed, I mean that it has become a place where information is spread widely and instantly, but the quality of that information is questionable. So how did it come to this?

Media and the news first started in this country way back during the colonial era in the form of pamphlets. These papers were of such importance to the colonies that Great Britain viewed them as potentially powerful revolutionary tools. Following the Revolutionary War, weekly and even daily newspapers grew in popularity. The first of these daily newspapers was the Pennsylvania Evening Post, and Daily Advertiser and like pamphlets, they are a form of print media.

However, in the late 18th century and early 19th century, these papers were consumed mainly by political and financial elites who financially aided these papers in exchange for stories. This was around the time that newspapers became less objective and more political, hence why it has been called a partisan press that also focused on crime, riots, and scandals.

In 1846, New York newspapers first began to abuse telegraphs to create wire services in order to spread information even faster. The newspapers would gather news and make profit by selling it to other media outlets. And not only was the news getting around faster, it was also more in depth. This time period saw rise to a new type of journalism, investigative journalism. Investigative journalism was an approach to journalism that dug into stories rather than just relaying the information. This digging allowed for even more corruption, as a group known as muckrakers formed to search for scandals in order to sway public opinion.

Technological advancements that occurred in more modern times allowed the news to be transported even faster, creating broadcast media such as radio and television. The radio boomed in the 1930’s and was used often by President Delano Roosevelt himself so that he may speak directly to the citizens of America. The television had a similar boom in the 1950’s and has only expanded since then with news shows running 24/7. However, as the television expanded, it became just like the newspapers: extremely partisan.

After the radio and the television came the rise of the Internet, and with that came the important rise of social media. Much of the news content on social media are just reposts of traditional news stories, but not all of it. With social media came the rise of citizen journalists, or nonprofessional journalists that offer their own analyses and opinions on the news.

While information is now spread instantaneously, this haste comes with quite a bit of waste. While events from all over the world sit right in the palm of one’s hand on the screen of their phone, how can one know for sure if the information is valid? “Fake news” is a term often used today, but what does it really mean. In all honesty, it depends on who you ask. Some may say it’s the intentional use of media to support a political party. Others may say it’s the intentional presentation of material known to be untrue or at least unverified. Still others may say it’s the intentional use of the mass media to change political outcomes and deceive the public. In fact, it can be all three at once. Our task is to determine which source is fact and which is fake, but such a task isn’t easy to accomplish, especially when even people of high official standings blatantly lie or make stories with little proof just to stir up drama, such as many of the articles and news stories made of President Trump’s alleged association with the Russian government.

So can the media be trusted? I say that yes, it can, but which parts? At this point, it’s hard to tell.