News Reading Source

In the epic of information communication, people’s view of the world is not only built by the education they receive and the leading of parents, but also be shaped by the information they receive from all around them. News is one of the basic sources of information that people use to know about what is happening in the current society, The way it is published, the events it describes, the social spirit it portrays, all have a huge impact on people’s view of the whole world. While reading news solely from local resources remains a prominent practice that is crucial for the maintenance of national dignity, reading news published by media from all over the globe should become the future trend because it will contribute to a balanced share of information among different countries.

Currently, the major source of news for people around the world is the news media of the country they belong to. It’s an undeniable fact that the news media will publish news in a way that follows the social spirit of the country they belong to. In this way, whether the content of the news or what kind of event is published by the news media is different among the whole world, and thus the information that is received by people in different countries is different. This practice creates an extremely unbalanced spread of news among the world of media only shows what the government wants people to see, and leads to biased views toward certain countries.

Here is an interesting phenomenon. After the “911” tragedy, a great fear of terrorism and Muslims rose in the heart of the American people. The term Islamophobia is born at the moment: lots of mosques are destroyed, Muslims are investigated, and the entry of immigrants from Islam countries like Somalia and Yemen became harder and harder. Even in nowadays society, 20 years after the “911”, the stereotype of being brutal and cruel is put on Muslims. Obviously, Islam is a religion that advocates friendly and brotherhood among all people, and not all Muslims are ruthless like terrorism, so what lead to this biased misperception? One big reason is the dividend of publishing of news. In America, especially after the “911”, most news media keep reporting the terrorist activity in the Islam countries, which provoke hostility against the whole Muslim body in Americans’ hearts. However, if Americans can learn about some good aspects of Muslim life, instead of solely about war and casualties, from the news media in Islamic countries, the prejudice against Muslims will be relieved.

There is another story of myself. At the beginning of covid, I was in my junior year in a high school in America. Due to the misleading and obscure reports of the local and social media at that time, some people there think the coronavirus is from China. I still remember the feeling of helplessness and indignation when I is kind of forced to explain to my classmates that covid is not from China. No one knows how much I wish those classmates can see the actual pandemic situation in China reported by Chinese media. If they can view the real condition in China and the Chinese way of dealing with the covid, they will never say covid is from China again.

Either from the born of Islamophobia or discussion about the source of covid, the local publication of news is not able to show the full picture of the world at all, the unbalanced spread of information will finally lead to people’s biased view toward a certain country or the whole races. In this way, reading news from global resources is not simply about knowing life in other countries in their own description style, but learning culture in a more comprehensive view and thus proceed in the elimination of prejudice and stereotyping toward other countries and races.

Here some may object reading news from local resources will contribute to the formation and development of national dignity. But the truth is reading news solely from the nation’s own media and keep putting the same spirit on people, a phenomenon called polarization will happen which is when a group of people hold the same opinion and keep communicating with each other, the group will get more and more polarized toward the idea. In this way, if people keep receiving information maintaining the same social value, they will gradually lose critical thinking and blindly follow the media or the government. Offering people a global source of news, in contrast, will help people have a broader view of events that happen in all societies in the world and learn the social value of different countries. People will think critically about the events happening in their own country and form their own opinions toward the world, which will be more objective than that is tried to be shaped by their own country. On the other hand, reading news globally doesn’t mean there’s no chance for people to read the news from their own country. Every country still preserves their own uniqueness and propagate the spirit they hold, but people have wider options to view. So national dignity will not be destroyed by people viewing the news from other countries.

So what can people do to promote the reading of news from worldwide resources? In the current society, the internet and social media provide a good environment for the spread of news from different countries, they bring up chances for all people to access the information came from all over the world. People can now go to the website of news media from different countries on the internet, some of the websites are even in English! Government practice of adding news published by other countries in national news podcasts or TV news reports and propagating news published by developed countries will help too. However, how to prevent the spread of exaggerated or fake news on the internet and how to call up the attention of the government still remain a question.

In a society that calls for equality among all races and countries, the spread of information and especially what seems to be the most objective — news are still creating a biased view of the world to every individual. So let us make a move, advocate reading news from diverse resources, and create a more balanced share of information.