Transforming the Influence of the Media on our Lives

Our goal in this publication is to help our readers lay a foundation for transforming the influence of the media on their lives. It is in all of our interests to critically assess, rather than mindlessly accept, news media pronouncements. Our hope is that we can aid readers to become more independent, insightful, and critical in responding to the content of news media messages and storiesIf objectivity or fairness in the construction of news stories is thought of as equivalent to presenting all the facts and only the facts (â€Å"All the news that’s fit to print†), objectivity and fairness is an illusion.No human knows more than a small percentage of the facts and it is not possible to present all the facts (even if one did know them). It isn’t even possible to present all the important facts, for many criteria compete for determining what is â€Å"impor- tant. †We must therefore always ask,â€Å"What has been left out of this article? †Ã¢â‚¬Å"What would I think if different facts had been highlighted here? †Ã¢â‚¬Å"What if this article had been written by those who hold a point of view opposite to the one embedded in the story as told?†For example, people commonly consider facts to be important to the extent that they have significant implications for them personally: Is any given event going to affect what they want, how much is it going to cost them, how is it going to influence their income, their living conditions, their leisure, their convenience? How some given event is going to affect others, especially others far away and out of sight, is quite another matter. There is therefore a large divergence among the news media of the world as to what is presented as â€Å"significant† in the world.