Context in News
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Introduction
Fake news has become rampant today, they mostly occur from people who want to be the first to share information before verifying it, unfortunately, they are even being used also to com people who apply to a fake job advertisement and later are asked for money for documents or to depict as strong interest. While today they are many ways to access information, news from the newspapers and TV channels are still being used widely because the information is usually verified before being shared. However, while the fact they verify information puts their listeners and readers at ease more often than not they withhold some information either to prevent chaos or if they have no certainty of the data. Increased prevalence of it has resulted in scholars defining it as paltering referring that it tries to make sense of why we lie at all and the distinction between telling the truth and lying. Paltering does not only occur in the regard to important information but also in our daily lives when we fail to tell people everything so as not to embarrass them, unfortunately, it becomes an issue when it is used not only to mislead but also to manipulate others; happens often with our politicians. In the discussion below focus will be on some stories that have depicted this issue, publics thinking related to one of the eat minds and Martha Stewart perception.
To begin with, the first story that has had the non-telling truth context is the reassurance that Trump is telling the people about the Coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 2000 lives since its emergence in China. The president on his social media platform has claimed that the vaccine for the disease is almost one yet it is estimated to take at least a year, he also claimed that the stock market on Monday looked great which was not the case since it had reduced and it is still falling. While the President might try to hide some of the facts to prevent people from panicking, he continues to lose credibility as some who can be trusted and misleads people to think that the diseases are handled which is not the case (Rampell, 2020).
Secondly, the Iranian election from the candidates to the results was a major view of non-truth telling, throughout the whole period the presidential candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was against the west and who sought independence from western opinions was depicted as a hard line with no positive impact for his country. Contrary, the presidential candidate Mr. Mir Hossein Mousavi who was more western-oriented was shown to be an honest person was depicted as the best choice, these portray of the famous news reporters in the USA were biased. This biasness was one effect of this context and the news sources went ahead and claimed that it had been rigged trying to discredit the win of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Mohammad Marandi & al-Sadat Motahhari, 2011).
Thirdly, the last non-truth telling context was a story that was one of the many that caught the global attention after a young man who had gone with his friends to India was killed after people thought he was kidnapping children when he offered them chocolate. The death resulted when one of the locals posted the picture on WhatsApp platforms, the locals told his story based on assumptions ignoring the other person’s truth and eventually led to death. Fortunately, they have been a reduced number of people who can share videos with on this platform to avoid such cases in the future, while efforts are being put to avoid people falling prey of such issues the technology today continue to advances making the efforts made unrecognizable (Pokharel & Roy, 2018).
Moreover, they are various scholars who have talked about truth but in this case of non-telling truth, it tends to affirm more with Aristotle’s who believed that when one says something that is false this is wrong and when someone says something that it is true this is right. The scholar’s notion is evidenced by evaluating all the stories above where various authors shared the truth but part of it since they had an idea that if they presented the whole of it things would have been different from their expectations. Additionally, in all these cases the non-truth telling context has not only been used to misrepresent the information but also to mislead the people. Unfortunately, the public does not judge people according to the scholar’s standards since according to him not everything that is good is right and neither one that is bad is false, the public assumption that everything good is right and vice versa. Aristotle too believes that everyone’s activities are usually to do good but the aims differ across various people hence in our case all the non-truth telling parties were trying to reduce panic and create awareness but the results of their actions were disastrous.
Lastly, while looking at the standards held between Martha Stewart and the Bishops, they are so different. Martha is a businesswoman who traded on the information and was convicted, this is wrong but as a businesswoman, most people tend to align with the fact that in most cases business people make decisions for the purpose of earning profit. Concerning the standards, the Bishops are held with most people consider them as angels who are not prone to making any mistakes, these standards are reflected especially when they are reports of wrongdoing done by the Clergies, regardless of whether the action is prevalent in today’s society. I agree there is a lot expected from the Clergy but we should remember they too are human beings.
In conclusion, whatever the situation to not disclosing the truth the parties involved should seek to ensure that the misrepresented information does not only mislead the people but also do not put any other person in danger too. We agree that while fake news is continuing to be criticized, with the advancement and the more people using social media platforms reducing the effects is becoming harder every day.
References
Mohammad Marandi, S., & al-Sadat Motahhari, M. (2011). Orientalist Representations and the 2009 Iranian Presidential Election: The New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN. com [Ebook] (pp. 1-24). Retrieved 28 February 2020, from http://s-space.snu.ac.kr/bitstream/10371/88669/3/4.%20Orientalist%20Representations%20and%2
Pokharel, K., & Roy, R. (2018). India Says Rumors About Child Snatching on WhatsApp Led to Mob Killings. WSJ. Retrieved 28 February 2020, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-admonishes-whatsapp-after-deaths-1530730096.
Rampell, C. (2020). With coronavirus, Trump’s lies and his reassurances backfire. The Washington Post. Retrieved 28 February 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/with-coronavirus-trumps-lies-and-his-reassurances-backfire/2020/02/27/63797f32-5986-11ea-9b35-def5a027d470_story.html.
