Question 7: should media be free from constraints and law in order to ensure that their articles are objectives and fair?
Media have the largest influences in this media age. This is because media can reach large amount of audience and they are able to spread the news in a few second to the world. It is true that the media have such powerful ability to influence the public. Therefore the media are under the control of constraints and law in order to avoid the media to discuss some sensitive issues.
There are many constraints and law that media have for example like economics constraints, law constraints and etc. The media need to concern about the ownership and law from the particular country when they write their article to avoid being punished.
The media should be free from constraints and law so that their articles are objectives and fair. This is because when the media are owned by the government or particular political party, the media have to consider their boss’s benefits and reputation also. They shouldn’t report something true but will affect their boss’s reputation to the public. It they do so, they might lose their job in order of not maintaining their boss’s reputation.
There are a few constraints that the media is facing now. The first one will be economic constraints. Media nowadays are much more depending on the advertisers and sponsorship. There is no way to debate about the ethics in media when the financial structures of the media are so transparently unfair. The media are depending on the financial support from the advertisers and sponsors to operate their company. Once the news is threatening their boss, they will lose their sponsorship and advertisement. For an example, when a press is controlling by a political party or the government, there are many rules and regulations that the press need to beware of. They have to make sure what they report is not affect the reputation of their boss. Or else they might lose their job and allowance. This had become one of the barriers that prevent the media having complete freedom to report the news.
The second constraints will be the law constraints. The media have to follow certain law that might prevent them from reporting the truth. For an example in United Kingdom, the reporters are not allow to report the criminal’s name in an murder case until the criminals are under conviction. This had brings difficulties to the media to report the news to alert the public when the suspects are not under arrest yet. The public might being endangered by the suspects and the media should have the responsibilities to alert the public about the case and the suspects. But when they have to follow the laws that shouldn’t report the criminal’s name when the criminals will be presumed as innocent until proven guilty, this will be the constraint for the media. The media have no completely freedom to report the truth when there are constraints and laws that limit their freedom of speech.
However, when the media are totally free from constraints and law, there might be some problems occurs. Especially for the country which have many different ethnics such as Malaysia. The media might accidently cover some news that might annoy some other ethnics group and caused conflict happen.
Therefore, there should have some law to control what the media deliver to the public to ensure the society stay harmony. But there shouldn’t have economics constraints for the media. This is because when the media are under control of certain political party, they are not able to reports in fair and objective way. This is because they have to maintain the reputation of their boss.
(624 words)
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