By: Sathiyan Sivakumaran
The news is a great and terrible thing. No matter what we do, the information we receive as people of a free nation such as the United States is subject to bias and censorship. Eventually, we tend to get all of the information that we seek about issues that we take an interest to, but too often the information comes later than we would like or with details that are being accepted and rejected by the various other websites and news available. For example, what international news makes its way to America and is circulated around? Is it the most tragic news or the most relatable news?
One big problem comes with current events. When a tragic story, such as the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, all major news corporations are focused on it. This is perfectly understandable. It was truly a tragedy that an act of terror, in the sense that it was a mass shooting by two who are thought to be self-radicalized, occurred and even more importantly to Americans: it happened on American soil. However, in the meantime, over 180 people were known to have been killed due to the flooding in Tamil Nadu, India, from persistent rains. News is definitely prioritized by what is most recent, as the goal is to keep the population up to date with the most current news. Unfortunately, the news about the flooding gained very little traction at any point with American news stations and many Americans did not find out about the flooding. Although American news has an obligation to keep the people updated on pressing situations, there is also an obligation to provide us with difficulties being faced from a global standpoint as well.
The solution to the problem of unequal news distribution is not exactly an easy to solve problem. Using Twitter and other social media outlets has helped improve the variety of news we receive, but too often there are still major stories neglected. There was little to no coverage by some of the major American news stations even on social media like Twitter of events such as the dubbed, “Chennai Rains”. Ways we could improve is by a constant flow of headlines on television news, giving the main information of global news, while the major event or events of the day is covered by the anchors of the news. In addition to this, increase the utilization of social media to keep the American people up to date through use of the constantly used Internet. We need to take on new attitudes to properly keep the population informed of all current events, dramatic or not.