The unconscious influence of the Media

Media has a great influence on the society. Not only a great influence, it is actually "controlling" our mind in an unconscious way. Especially in the show business, the public always get influenced by the movies stars. The public always want to know more about them, and even got influenced the way how we thought towards a specific incident.

After I read the article about the interview with the American famous movie star Ellen Degeneres, I realized the whole interview is about
her personal details instead of some perspective towards anything relative to her career.
The questions in the interview are trying to discover Ellen's own
interest and privacy. It has no relationship to the public, but the public
wants to read it and know about Ellen. In this case, the public is sometimes influenced by the famous stars' words unconsciously. For example, we always believe in something which said by the famous stars, we never tried to think if its real. And the public just read the newspaper and believe all the contents without judging it. As a result, th public's mind is 'controlled' by the media unconsciously. The influence of the media can be great and affect our daily life and how we think.

testing testing, 3rd post

Coloured transparency

Canada Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon hided, no, actually he was trying to lied to the public of his expenses!

Goverment's expenses comes from citizens. Citizens have the rights to know where their money goes. The Canada Goverment should give a good transparency of the expenses to the public. Indeed, do the goverment give us a totally transparency or a coloured transparency of expenses, which is show only partly of the expenses to the public?

A couple days ago, the Federal Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn tried to hide the expenses for his travelling trips to Quebec. I found this article and Mr.Blackburn defended that he could not do job "by bicycle"! Nobody says he should do job by bicycle, that is definitely no problem for him to travel by flights. But isnt it ridiculous to show only 8 trips out of his 25 trips to the public and stated its cost as ZERO!? Mr.Blackburn actually treated the public as idiot, everybody knows there should be no free trips.

The picture on the left is Mr. Blackburn while he is defending on the incident of hiding his expenses. His face expression showed that he actually thought his words is the best and most "reasonable" explanation. Is his words worth to be trusted? The way he hided his expenses proof that NO.

The government has not enough transparency to the public and the taxpayers. Showing only part of the expenses and hiding the real expenses is actually a "coloured transparency", which do not let the public see clearly where their money goes.

Now, another conservative cabinet minister Mr.Cannon was discovered that he hided the real expenses of the trips again! It is the second time in a few days that, the ministers of the govenment used the taxpayers' money in an improper way. Although he defended that he did report the cost, he splited the cost to different department without stating clearly what the cost for. If Mr.Cannon was using the money in a proper way, why didnt him report all his expenses clearly in a same department instead of spliting it into different department? It should take him more time and effort to do such things. The only reason can explain this is that he was trying to hide his real epenses. Mr.Cannon tried to split the cost to different departments in order to disperse the checking from the public.

*Is Mr.Cannon's explanation for his expenses trustable?

Mr.Cannon was forced to show the details of his six missing under the request of the Canadian Press. He explained that he already reported those expenses on the website. The fact is he did not mention all the expenses in detail. I consider the way of Mr.Cannon hiding his expenses is a kind of corruption, because he used the govenment's money for his private expense. I did not mean Mr.Cannon surely used the expenses improperly, but if he use it properly, there is no reason for him to hide the expenses.

The government should set up a department to check how the ministers use and report their expenses. Since the income of the govenment is from the taxpayers, the public absolutely have the right to know where the expenses are used. The public pay tax to the government for giving a good service to the public and society. I did not mean the ministers should do their jobs "by bicycle", but I also did not mean they could hide the expenses to the public in order to have a really good flight, like aboarding a sleek Citation C-550 executive jet for the ministers own benefit and enjoyment. If they do so, they should report CLEARLY to the public. And not reporting part of the expenses and hiding part of them at the same time, pretends that there is a transparency between the government and public, but actually is a "coloured transperancy".

Is the BBC biased?

After reading the article "A Powerful Corrosive Internal Culture", I was alarmed that there are biases in the BBC, the media vehicle that has a powerful influence on how the public throughout the nations view an incident.

There are quite a few examples showing the bias of BBC in the article, the most significant one being the clip of an interview of Robin Aitken, the journalist with 25 years experience, expressing criticism about the poster comparing President Bush to Hitler which was hung in the BBC newsroom.

(Video clip from 18doughtystreet)

In my own opinion, any broadcasting company, especially for the news and political department should be always objective. As what Aitken had mentioned, nobody in the newsroom objected about the poster. Case in point, people who work at the newsroom already have bias over Bush.


The picture(britainandamerica.com) on the left is the poster comparing Bush to Hitler in the BBC newsroom. Historically, Hitler symbolized a cruel murderer due to the massacre of millions of Jews during WWII. The poster labeled Bush a "killer" and overall, a negative image. The fact is BBC is doing a Bush-attack because of opposing viewpoints on multiple issues. Clinton (former U.S president) was in presidency during the occurrence of the Kosovo bombing, however, BBC did not give a lot of coverage of the incident due to the fact that they liked Clinton. In contrast, BBC presented the war in Iraq quite differently; BBC attacked Bush by emphasizing all the wars were started off by Bush. The two events by Clinton and Bush are basically the same thing - illegal. BBC chose to hold a different role in these events, which obviously showed prejudice.

This is directly related to the 9/11 incident. In this case, I strongly agree with Aitken's point of BBC being too sympathetic over the Americans because I was influenced by the news of BBC - having too much sympathy on the Americans. When I watched the news report of BBC, I felt that it was all the terrorists' fault and thought they were incredibly unreasonable. I did not know that I had such bias until my mum told me a different viewpoint; the terrorists were forced to take an extreme action to fight for freedom. At that time I realized I was influenced by the hidden message in the BBC news report! I accepted BBC's viewpoint over the incident and neglected the existence of other viewpoints, which suggested that many of the public did so as well. BBC was not being objective enough to be a public media.
Here is one of the video clip of BBC reporting the 9/11 incident with bias in my opinion:
(www.youtube.com)
In the above news report, BBC emphasized its all the Iraq's and the terrorists' fault for bombing the World Trade Centre. It made many interviews and put all the responsibility to Iraq, neglect the fact that Iraq was forced to take such extreme action because it was suffering in a place without freedom. The Iraq also sacrificed a lot of people to fight against the United State for freedom. BBC did not stay objective in reporting the 9/11 but putting too much sympethy on the Americans in this case.

In my own opinion, the reason that BBC could mold the public view was because the government gave the news station too much power, what I mean is that BBC dominates almost the whole media market in England. A good way to weaken its influence is to "demassified" the mass production. Take an example in Hong Kong for instance, there are two powerful TV channels and two cable companies for the public to watch, also a few radio stations. The Hong Kong government provides a good control of them and balances the power among the vehicles, so that none of them could have a too much influence on public views. Even though one may have bias over an incident, the other media could impart different view points, which ensures that the public would not be influenced by a certain bias. The newly online TV, online radio, and the internet enables people to discuss any events on blogs and forums, in this case any people can give their different view points. More generations like teenagers are willing to discuss news online, which also paved the way for the declination of the monopoly media power of BBC over the nations.

For more opinions on discussing about the biases of BBC, please visit "britainandamerica.com", there is a lot of others' opinions towards this incident.