Who owns the Media?

Who owns the media is a very important topic in today's world, with multi-billion dollar news companies competing with tens of thousands of smaller sources to control the public's view of the world. The news is an extremely powerful tool and whoever controls it, controls what everyone sees about recent events and what we think about the world. To avoid a single person or group being able to abuse that power, it is important that the media has multiple outlets, but having too many sources of news can be a problem too. The more news sources there are, the less reliable most of them become. For example, there are very few TV news stations, but they almost always have reliable information. Meanwhile, there are thousands upon thousands of internet news sources like blogs and social media, but their information is far less reliable and than larger sources. This means in order to make news as reliable and available as possible, there needs to be a balance of size and number of media outlets.

The majority of news in the modern day, comes from a handful of very large sources. Companies like Google, New York Times, CNN, and a few others that are listed here, control huge portions of the media because they are the most accessible sources, and can easily be found in print, online, or on TV. Their audiences also do not have to worry about fact checking their information, because it is almost always reliable. Reasons like these attract audiences that do not have the time or initiative to look at multiple sources, and want their news quickly. The problem with this approach to news is when it comes to news like politics. Politics are often highly opinionated, and when your news comes entirely from one source, you are more likely to agree with their point of view and disregard any other.

The other portion of media sources are the smaller sources that are often located solely online. These sources ,as I mentioned earlier, often have less reliable information and should be fact checked, but there are advantages to these sources too. Because there are so many of these sources, it is easy to check other sources to confirm facts, and it is also possible to see an issue from different perspectives by using these sources. Although this approach to news is much more time consuming, it is a good way to eliminate opinion from your news.

Satire Blog

Being informed about the news is more important than ever. Events that take place on the other side of the globe can have a huge impact on your day to day life, so it is important that you at least have a basic understanding of recent events. Unfortunately, there are dozens of new and entertaining distractions from keeping ourselves informed. One solution to this issue, is satire.

Satire is a much more entertaining form of news that focuses more on humor than actual information, while still conveying a fair amount of information. For example, this article by the Onion makes fun of Donald Trump’s campaign, and also informs readers that he is the last remaining republican candidate. This story is much more entertaining than a typical news story, but still contains a fair amount of information and informs readers fairly effectively. There are cases where satire does not contain any useful information about recent events, like in this story by the Onion that just makes fun of people's eating habits, but satirical sources are usually relatively reliable sources of information.

One issue with satire is when it is taken seriously, which can cause confusion and spread disinformation. Because of this, it should be made clear when something is satire so readers do not confuse it with a serious news story. Some examples of this can be found at literally unbelievable which is a website that compiles people's responses on social media to satire that they had taken seriously.