Truth and Accuracy in Media; To Be or Not to Be?

My name is Jeremy Giannini. I am 22 years of age and a summer intern at SWOP. The line of work we are doing directly involves many different groups in society. We deal with politicians, communities, authorities, businesses and other organizations. One entity that we also deal with is the media.

Since the media is such a large outlet to bring awareness and news on different issues to the people, it is important to understand how the media works. SWOP continually provides training on different subjects to the staff and to us interns. One of the recent trainings that I underwent was Blogging and Media Analysis. It is said by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and many others that "Press has power so we must challenge them to be fair and accurate." So this is my question, The Media; to be or not to be truthful and accurate?
To answer my own question, I found an article on the internet titled "Child Porn: Yahoo Shuts Down Sex Chat Rooms". (You may read this article by clicking on the link) I will attempt to briefly analyze this article using the tools we learned in our Blogging and Media Analysis Training. Some of these tools are as follows: sources, point of view, stereotypes, sensationalism and advertiser influence. I invite you and strongly recommend that you read this article first to help you understand my brief analysis. To read this article click on the articles title above.

The article is mainly about Yahoo.com shutting down user-created chat rooms to keep pedophiles from luring in minors. At least, that is what it seems to be about. On the other hand, does them shutting down these user-created chat rooms have anything to do with advertiser influence? Are the sources credible? There are many questions we have to ask as a consumer to media. This article states, "...a Houston-based TV netwok showed the online service is being increasingly exploited by pedophiles to lure minors." The underlying problem is that we don't know who this "Houston-based TV network" is. It may consist of one channel or a series of them. The article also refers to and frequently uses the words "media sources" and "a television report" without stating specifics. This leads me to believe that these unspecified sources could actually be little Susie's grandma glorified as a "media source". And to top it off, she could have a neighbor who is a sex offender that influences her thoughts toward pedophiles.

The next thing that I noticed was a point of view leaning in Yahoo's favor. "...a Yahoo spokeswoman maintained that the company closed down user-created sites to make enhancements and to ensure users were adhering to the site's terms of service". My response and sarcastically thinking: "Of course, how could we possibly think that pedophiles would utilize Yahoo chat rooms to lure in minors. How ridiculous!" Little Susie's mother might also read this article and ban Yahoo.com from her computer so that her daughter would not become a victim. This would be very detrimental to Yahoo.com's success. So it makes sense that a Yahoo spokeswoman would say that they closed these user-created sites to "...make enhancements...".
Let's just throw that source out the window. It is obviously from Yahoo's point of view.

The third thing we need to look at are stereotypes. This article could be making pedophiles look completely inhumane. I mean, not that I agree with what they do, but I still wouldn't put them down in an article. This article states that a television show (again, which one?) exposed pedophiles' online in Yahoo chat rooms luring in minors. I have one question, "How in the world does this television show know that 'tecky165_' or 'scorpio2005' are pedophiles just by their user names. I will leave the rest to you to determine whether this stereotype of pedophiles in chat rooms is legitimate or not.

Fourth is sensationalism. When skimming the news online or in print these are some of the words that you may read in article titles. "Soccer...kids....water....Authorities....officials....books.... education....PORN...delegates...etc." Do you notice how much the word porn sticks out? Sensationalism is what attracts our senses to read a news story. The publisher putting out this article could have simply chosen this story to attract more readers which will, in turn, generate more income through advertising sales.

This leads me to my last point: Advertiser influence. According to this article "...advertisers including PepsiCo, State Farm Insurance, Countrywide Mortgage and T-Mobile pulled out their ad placements from all Yahoo! chat rooms.". These companies have very big influence on what Yahoo!.com hosts on their website because a huge amount of revenue comes from selling ads. If these companies were even spooked by anyone stating what was going on in Yahoo! chat rooms then it would be enough to pull ads from them. Loss of money for Yahoo!.com means that they will have to "...make enhancements...to ensure users were adhering to the site's terms of service." My response: "Of course, Yahoo! is cleaning their chat rooms so that little Susie's mom will still use Yahoo! and PepsiCo will still buy ads so Yahoo! will still make money. It makes sense; advertiser influence." Why don't we just forget about freedom of speech and the right to say what we want in chat rooms. It should be little Susie's mom and grandma who regulate what she's getting into, not websites regulating what they are getting into.

I leave you the reader to decide for yourself with this article and any other. Truth and accuracy in media; to be or not to be?
Jeremy Giannini