Роль СМИ в современном мире (The mass media in the life of Society)
The mass media in the life
of Society.
Modern life is hardly possible without information.
Of course friends & relatives keep us informed about what is happening in
the world, but such information is second-hand, & therefore is not at all
reliable. It is the mass media that provide us with first hand & reliable
information.
The mass media plays an important role in our life.
Millions of copies of newspapers are printed in our country every day. The role
of the press can hardly be overestimated, particularly at present. It keeps you
informed in the latest news, different events, home and foreign affairs, news
of culture, science and engineering development. But publishing news is not the
only purpose of the press. There are many other purposes, which can be achieved
by the press. It enriches our knowledge and broadens our outlook. The press
shapes public opinion, influences governmental policy, gives citizens a view of
our country and foreign countries as well. It performs a few functions: informative,
entertaining, commercial & is addressed to people of different political
views & different stations in life. What is printed & what is not,
largely depends on the publishers’ concert of news. There is a well-known joke
circulating among the publishers, which exactly defines their idea of news: “If
a dog bites a man, that’s not news, but if a man bites a dog, that is news”. In
other words, news must be something unusual, unexpected, and sensational. But
with many papers & magazines there exits a funny tradition to mystify their
regular readers with sensational & incredible stories, published on their
pages.
Everyone knows that we get a great amount of
information by mass media, especially TV. TV now plays an important part in
many people’s life. It is an immensely powerful medium, as it uses the most
important from of communication, the visual image, it is essential for us to
try to decide whether it is a blessing or a curse. It demands complete &
silent attention. It is death to conversation & normal two-way contact
between individuals. It makes passive non-participating spectators of us all.
We begin to forget how to occupy our spare time. Now all our free time is given
to television. Obviously TV has both advantages & disadvantages. But to the
former outweigh the latter. Really if there is a TV set in your home all you’ve
got to do is to turn a knob, or to turn over to another channel or to turn the
sound up & down, &you see plays, films, operas & shows of every
kind, not to mention political discussions & the latest exciting football
matches. TV, it is often said, keeps one informed about current events, allows
one to follow the latest developments in science & politics &offers an
endless series of programmes, which are both instructive & stimulating. The
most distant countries & the strangest customs are brought right into our
sitting room. You can hardly find a corner where one cannot receive radio or TV
broadcasts. Hundreds of stations speaking in every language of the world fill
the air. Radio & TV-n are undoubtedly, the quickest means of spreading news
& information. What a great amount of information we get! We watch TV to be
well informed. It gives wonderful possibilities for education. There are
considerable variety of programmers & we can select what we want to see: a
film or a play, sport programmes, the latest news and so on. We find it
pleasant to sit in our armchairs and glue to our sets & little by little
people get accustomed to this mode of life & are cut off from the real world.
Another kind of link between the public & the
media is advertising. The mass media helps us with information about new goods
& services. But some people are tired of advertisements & don’t like to
see their favourite films or programmes interrupted by them. I hope some way
will be found to solve this problem. For example, there are 2 organizations
providing TV & radio services in Great Britain. The BBC is state-funded
& there is ABC on lately no advertising in BBC programmes, & in the
programmes of the Independent Television, the advertising is also restricted.
As for me & my family, we like the programme “My
family”, I think it is a very useful one, because it gives us many examples how
to live, how to act in different situations. I watch this programme with
admiration.
So to my opinion, I’ll be quick right to say that
the volume of information in the modern world is tremendous, that is why we
should decide for our selves what is really necessary & what may some day
appear to be useless.