(Week Six "Commercial Media")
These are the thought my brain conjures up when I think of the word "Propaganda"; not Journalism.
We were introduced to commercial media today in our lecture, as opposed to public media, which we will be covering next. Commercial media is, in a term, profit oriented media, more business than journalism, relying on advertising to make money. Being so, we recognized a few challenges this media brings about, one of these being whether it could balance both profit and public trust. Now I wonder, could it?
This worries me, deeply penetrating beneath the skin of the part of me that shudders for the world. Our lecturer mentioned the word 'propaganda' and I know I had a miniature freak-out. If commercial media is so strongly profit driven that it could cross the line between being informative and becoming propaganda, I am not sure I want to be a participant as a contributor. I know my pre-WWII history well enough to know how strongly propaganda can influence a crowd into accepting radical ideas and destroying the fine harmony that can be called peace in a nation state such as Australia.
What power journalists hold, what responsibilities they bear.
It is more than a basic morality that should prompt journalists to uncover and report the truth as unbiased and possible, it is a duty. They are the collective justice league of the world, keeping nations harmonious and as corruption free as possible, keeping tainted hands from tainting minds. They are responsible for giving the public the power to think and make decisions for themselves.
Am I ready to take on such a calling?
Wait, and we'll see.
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