5.11.2021

 In this class, we focused on the reactions of the media following the imprisonment of a fighter in Israel by the Palestinians. Through watching the video by the BBC, I felt astounded as to the extreme rewording, illustrating the Palestinian acts as a "kidnapping", and calling the comeback of the Israelis as an act of  "detainment". Until last year, my family was on a media subscription that allowed access to BBC 24/7. My mother had strongly emphasized how BBC was unbiased and mutual compared to American news, and how she favored the British news. It may be because of how BBC covers both domestic and international news, but prior to this class, I had a decent image of the level of bias in their issues. However, since understanding the deliberateness of their script by using hostile and negative words to describe the single detainee by Palestine compared to the softball adjectives of the Israeli government, I was able to acknowledge just how much international relations can drive down the reputations of opposing parties. It is truly disturbing to know how ordinary people who have paid money to gain access to their exclusive services are subconsciously being fed with biased information. No wonder do we still have long-debated controversies present in society because we can't evade the everyday triggers that the mass media monopolize. 

I was most shocked though, by the lucrative methods of imagery in media, and especially as editing technology improves, I am worried about the decrease in liability of imagery and thus media itself. Now that Mr. Paterson pointed out the intentional placement of photographers to send subliminal messages about a certain political figure, I can't help but wonder if this tactic is used by other mediums outside of America. I had second thoughts as to whether that Bush photo in the press conference was real or not, because of how good these media are becoming in portraying the best version of the president, but had to give props to whoever thought of the amazing idea to utilize the emblem of the curtains to produce a halo effect. Not that I completely agree with Bush being rewarded with a prestigious mark, but this shows how detailed planning of a photo can affect the overall representation, and I bet this is more influential than the articles themselves since the majority doesn't read any further than the first few paragraphs. With that said, I predict that we will have an increase in image-based media as they are popular in understanding the world quickly and engagingly. In that way though, we also need to think about its reliability as well, because, unlike words where each sentence can be dissected by their wording choice to figure out its level of bias, slight adjustments in photos are hard to notice, such as the photoshop in the magazine that the teacher showcased us. Moreover, photos don't have to be fake, as long as they switch up the angles to give off a pretentious finish on the focus such as zoom-ups. In this way, we need to be careful in how we look at photos as they are easily and reasonably manipulatable. 

In conclusion, I have learned about the elusive tactics media use to connote biased reputations, especially towards targets who are not cooperative with their news agency, and moreover how we were willing to take the information for granted due to poor judgment based on their brand name and image. In the end, media doesn't exist on an equilibrium but instead is a one-way option of either choosing to support organization A or B, and this was well portrayed through today's analysis of vague headlines and intentional imagery. I wonder if there is a system that could point out possibilities of fallacious descriptions in articles, which will help people surf the web without being persuaded by subtle rewording and placement of press conference curtains.