In a recent Ted Talk by Madi Hammond, she talks about how the most recent generation, Gen Z, has been impacted and lived with fear due to struggles in society and common recurrences of disasters in recent years. Many of this is due to the rise in recent years of the access to technology, and therefore, the news. However, the news is run by the media, and the news people read everyday comes down to the media. These media organization companies include CNN, NBC, Fox News, ABC, and much more. Whether or not the world really is getting worse, the nature of news will take any opportunity to make people think it is. This brings up the question: What is the real point of media organizations?
In the end, media organizations are still companies. One of the sole purposes of a company in order to keep it running is to make profit. Simply put, if the phrase “what is the purpose of a company” is searched up on Google, the result is “the main purpose of a company is to take money from investors (their creditors and shareholders) and generate profits on their investments.” This is the same concept for media companies. All of them have to find a way to make money, or else their company would become bankrupt and no longer function. However, the most impactful and large-scale news is not always the one that makes the most money.
Most people noticeably have a larger fear of flying in an airplane than driving or sitting in a car. Plane crashes kill about 200 people a year, but car crashes kill about 1.35 million people a year. This may be blamed on the media, where plane crashes are much more commonly on the news as compared to car crashes, presumably because plane crashes make for a more “exciting” and interesting story than a car crash. Furthermore, due to the increase in news coverage and technology in recent years, in a survey in late 2016 by the Pew Research Center, 57% of registered voters believed that crime has gotten worse since 2008, even though FBI and BJS data shows that violent and property crime rates declined by 57% and 71%, respectively.
As the media covers more and more of crimes in society, people will continue to want more and more of the news. In this way, media companies are able to make money. Many people are quick to believe anything they read on the news, but they need to remember that media companies want to make money, not make people feel better. Sometimes, in the end, it isn’t about the changes in the world, but more about coverage and media that controls our everyday news.