When you read/ hear/ watch something in the media, what makes you believe it?

Answer 1

Every story must pass a basic sanity check: does it fit in with what else is known, is the source credible and reliable, and so on. If it doesn't pass, I tend to ignore it.

Answer 2

In many cases, believing in what the media conveys to us is a matter of faith. How can you be sure something is true unless you have experienced for yourself? ie Do we really know if humans landed on the Moon? It was on television and there are moon rocks somewhere at NASA. This is true because we believe that it is true not because we KNOW that it is true. A government could stage a fake Mars landing and get away with it provided that they could censor the space agency personel and the media. I'm not saying this was the case with the Moon landings but think about it.

Answer 3

History is only ever reported and written by the victor. To get the full opinion you must read or understand the issue from both sides of the story.

In this day, where media is a big, multi-billion industry, I feel that headlines are becoming more sensationalist, in order to capture viewers or readers, which distorts the facts behind the real story. The also lead with a headline that may be itself misleading to grab attention and then dissect the story in a different way. What you recall after a time is the headline, and your mind takes that in.

Answer 4

first of all there are two types of media in this sense- fictional and factual-based. in regards to the news, i don't pay much attention to it because most of it is just an attempt gain ratings or to attain the highest readership population. in regards to the question, what makes me believe something i read, watch and hear, is dependant on a number of factors: the legibility of the reporting, the way it is reported, the angle the reporters take with the story, how genuine and convincing it is to the viewer, listener, reader. but these days, all good news is bad news, and alas almost all news is nothing but pure spin. rather than showing two sides to every story some news channels, newspapers prefer to take one side. even twisting some of the quotes and putting their own slant to them. almost all news is completely biased and controlled by media execs or representatives who often have links with the government, one way or the other. take for instance, rupert murdoch owner of the sun, sky, fox, etc and who is an avid supporter of tony blair and labour.

journalism these days has lost its way recently, and this coming from a final year media arts and journalism student

Answer 5

You make it seem like it is a "either/or" situation , like you have to either believe a thing, or DISbelieve it. But an intelligent person will never totally believe or disbelieve anything unless he see it with his own eyes.

Once any person gets a hold of a video camera, they- consciously or unconsciously- are selective in what they film, because they already have a picture in their mind of what their "report' will look like.

I always like to see reports from more than one agency therefore before i believe a thing. For instance BBC world AND CNN.

Of course for a little light entertainment, Fox news never fails to amuse.

Never, EVER totally believe anything in the media because it all has spin put on it, one way or another.

Answer 6

When I read, hear, or watch something in the Israeli/mainstream Western media, I usually DON'T believe it.

Answer 7

Unfortunately, I've got to the stage that if I see a politician speaking on TV, however reasonable it may sound, I find myself re-running it in my head to look for the mis-directing mind-control spin. Doubly so if the sentence ends in some platitude like "..... and we wouldn't want that, would we?"

How do you know when Tony Blair is lying? - his lips are moving.

Where are the WMD's, Tony?
Why do people go to hospital to DIE, rather than get well?
What else have you failed to deliver on?

Answer 8

i dont believe in evrything that media potrayed. i only believe news on accidents, sports, lottery number. either than that like politics, court news, etc. are hard to believe. agenda setting is all around those.

Answer 9

i choose to believe some things and others i dont! i know that a lot of the stuff they write though isnt really even close to the truth, but hey, its entertainment

Answer 10

I don't, i take it as data that will help me reach my own conclusion. I think of news as the 'chinese telephone' - i.e the story is never quite the same coming 4rm a 3rd party.