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How Media Affects Society Essay

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How The Media Affects Society

The media is undoubtedly a significant and influential aspect in modern day society. As a means of communication in a world very much advanced in technology, the media touches all types of people through various forms such as the radio, newspapers, televisions etc. The question remains: what information is left unbiased and untarnished? The people within society must sort through the many bits of information fed to them and unfortunately, in most cases, all bits of media is taken as the whole truth. The ways in which media impacts society to a great extent are through the facts it chooses to reveal, as recently seen in the case of the Tamil war in Sri Lanka. The tone in which it is presented such as the …show more content…

The tone can affect society's view on the situation, resulting in either a positive or negative reaction. As seen on May 10th when thousands of Tamils met on Toronto's Gardiner Expressway, for almost 4 hours shutting down a key artery in the city's road network. If the media had said, “The Tamil protesters are keeping Torontonians hostage in their own city” vs “The Tamil protesters are bravely doing what needs to be done to save their families”. This could have resulted in Toronto turning against the Tamil community and possibly resulting in hate crimes, but instead the tone of the media was in favour of the protesters. Which has resulted in a positive reaction from Toronto and the Canadian government. The tone in which the facts are presented by the media, can easily change the point of view of the consumer, and can have either a positive or negative reaction regardless of the truth behind the facts. Lastly, the media uses its voice to target certain audiences for certain reactions. Who can the media target? In the case of Victoria George-Pazzano, a 29 year old woman who suffered a severe asthma attack while on vacation in Mexico became critically ill. Victoria's family pleaded to the Canadian government and Ontario hospitals to bring her home,but were continuously told that there were no beds and doctors available to treat in all of Ontario. The family of Victoria then pleaded there case to the media,

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