A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
To quote a clichéd line that I’m sure you are all familiar with, “with great power, comes great responsibility”. What Uncle Ben didn’t tell us, is that with great responsibility, also comes great power.
Over the years, as media evolved from papers to radio, from television to most recently the Internet, it has become increasingly intertwined with the lives of the mass public. It is not only available in abundance, it has become easily accessible, and media is now at its pinnacle in terms of the influence it has on the public.
Cue politics. True intentions of political leaders have always been a topic for heated debates. In a democratic country with several main political parties, it is never an easy thing for the layman to make a choice that will do right by him. This is where media and journalism in particular comes in, to provide clear and unbiased information to the general public, to serve them but also to allow them to make their own informed choices. However, this is rarely the case.
Back home in Malaysia, most major national newspapers, those most widely read, are owned by political parties. One can imagine the extent of censorship and “truth-twisting” that go on behind the scenes of production.
Working for one of the major newspapers owned by a political party part of the coalition of the current ruling government over Easter, I experienced firsthand the grip politics have on journalism. The content of the paper was not so much controlled but steered in a direction viewed as favourable by the party. Most news stories were published without bureaucracy, but when it came to politics, the general rule was: maximum coverage for the government, and maybe mention the opposition at the bottom of page 36. Well, something to that effect.
As a result, readers of the paper generally got a favourable impression of the government, though this has begun to change as non-mainstream media have emerged recently with alternative perspectives on the local political scene in Malaysia. How truthful these budding media outlets are, is also open for debate. In any case, this is a separate issue for another time.
In the United Kingdom, the journalism scene is intricately interwoven with its political scene as well. While newspaper companies are independently run, major British papers have openly declared their support for certain political parties.
The Guardian’s continuous backing of the Liberal Democrats, the Telegraph’s support for the Conservatives and more are widely known and each paper’s political affiliation has not been a discreet affair.
There are certain consequences to this. Most pressing is that the general public has nowhere to go for impartial information and face the chance of being conditioned into thinking a certain way, more specifically, the way the newspapers want them to think. This provides crippling power to the media industry, and directly benefits the political party affiliated with the most influential media outlet.
In this sense we’ve become the voice of the rich and the powerful, reduced to nothing more than minions doing the dirty bidding of our masters. Like it or not, media and journalism play a big part in the indoctrination of modern society.
How is it the two professions that started out claiming to be “for the people, by the people” have joined hands in this convoluted partnership for arguably selfish personal gain?
Politicians have long been criticised for corruption and for being driven by personal agenda instead of the publics, and it all but seems like journalists have joined their ranks. Are we living in a day and age where journalism has become synonymous with politics?
Journalism is the voice of the everyday man. This is a concept that has seemingly been lost in transcription over the years. As journalists, we should remember that we are not politicians and we do not speak for an elite class of society. Our job is to lend a voice to the public, so that everyone’s story can be heard without fabrication or propaganda. At least, that’s what we’ll set out to do.
i couldnt agree with you more!!
Very good article.
i reckon more recently its the rise of social media ie facebook twitter etc that have begun influencing people, especially youths !
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