Modern day technology such as cameras, cellular phones, and television, has made the media more accessible to the public. Before technologies were attainable to most, the news was spread around by newspapers or by spoken communication. An example of the media using conventional technology in the early 1990’s, a standard camera, is in “The War Photo No One Would Publish,” in which Torie Rose DeGhett addresses how the media censored graphic photographs, such as Kenneth Jarecke’s photo of a soldier’s burnt corpse.
Since the 1990s, the voice of the press has changed because of new advancements in echnology allows popular opinion to be the media’s source for content which spreads to the majority of people promptly. Technologies that have developed since the standard camera is the GoPro; in which, Nick Paumgarten wrote about in “We Are a Camera” where he addresses the various perspectives a GoPro can capture and how the users value their experience with the technology.
Today’s technology has enhanced the media’s voice from being independent of the public to expressing the public’s popular opinion, which influences those who have access to media. The media today can now spread their biased political views, their misleading modern trends, and their unattainable beauty standards, in a more quick and personal manner. The media is capable of influencing the public’s views on politics because of widespread technology. The media can influence the people to become interested in biases they show the public to change people’s political values.
Since there are multiple sources of media, there can often be times where one source of media that people trust and favor instead of doing their own research on political events and facts. As a result, people would form their political values based on a media source whose goal is to make the public agree with the public’s popular opinion. For example, Aine Cain, one of many journalists for Business Insider, uses one video in her article that shows former President Barack Obama and new President Donald Trump shaking hands in the Oval Office, as a welcoming into the White House.
The video shows how their handshakes express the lack of trust in each other, tension and a defensive posture (Cain). Aine Cain and other journalists would use the ideo to influence a political viewer to either favor or detest Donald Trump more by adding their opinion, such as saying that “US President Donald Trump has a notoriously weird handshake” (Cain). A video, as well as images, allows for the media to show their audience, either the right or wrong of a situation that can be displayed either way to support what they want the viewers to see.
Paumgarten says that “Not until very recently, with the advent of digital photography and video, and unlimited storage and distribution capacity, has it been conceivable to film everything” (337). Being able to film verything then means that with technology being accessible to the media can then give the media more opportunity to capture and show biased, one-sided images to the public. Thus, technologies that feature everything benefits the media by recording or documenting news to influence the public’s opinion.
The media uses technology to promote modern trends through different sources that provide feeds of popular items, food or styles that are appealing to the public, even if what they are promoting can be misleading. The media promotes themselves by advertising compelling content through photos nd videos, which convinces people to spend money on certain products and to trust the media on their opinion for good- looking products. For example, a popular trend that is photographed on social media is Starbucks’ colorful “rainbow drinks.
A Seattle Times article by Janet I. Tu features a photo of five hands holding up cold pink, blue, yellow, purple and green drinks with the Starbucks-labeled cup. Tu’s article states how these drinks are not on Starbuck’s official menu, which confuses customers and baristas with the difficulty of ordering these popular beverages (Tu). The social media shares modern trends with the public to gain more popularity for themselves, even if that means causing frustration and misunderstanding among the public.
Even before advancements in technology, the media was still misleading with information in the 1990s. DeGhett was able to interview Stella Kramer, a freelance photo editor for Life magazine, who said that their magazines were “are all basically just propaganda,” regarding to not publishing Jarecke’s explicit photograph (81). Even before the media used todays technolgy, the media was using their sources as propaganda for their enefit of being more well-known as a source for news.
However, the 1990’s compared to today is the amount of time it takes the public to discover that what the media is sharing is misleading. In the past, Jarecke’s photo would not have been accessible to the public, so the public would not know if what the media is stating is true or not. In Paumgarten’s essay, he states that if “You’re sharing the photos of your ski trip not just with your family and a few friends but, if you’re any good, with thousands, if not millions of people” (337). Paumgarten shows how technology allows even the most personal photos to ecome more widespread.
If a simple photo becomes well known, then the most trending photos can be quickly accessible to the public and can be determined if it is misleading or not much sooner than without today’s technology. Thus, because of smart devices and the internet, the media has more capability to influence misguiding information to the public. The media has the power to establish beauty standards that are unattainable. Often the media in magazines and social media platforms would show models who have well- proportioned bodies and characteristics that define them as eing beautiful.
Today’s technology allows the media to alter the most beautiful models to make them more idealized through photo editing programs. For instance, in Entertainment News, Jackie Willis wrote an article based on celebrity Meghan Trainor, a well-known singer for self-love, when she released a music video called “Me Too” (Willis). Trainor stated that she did not have much time to review her video and overlooked the fact that her body was photoshopped in a dancing scene, which made her body seem longer, thinner, and possesses unnatural body curves (Willis).
Trainor’s film editors made the conscious decision to completely alter her body even when she is against the way media portrays beauty. Editing software that beautifies people then creates beauty standards that are unattainable by anyone, not even by the person who is being depicted. The media then affects the public on a personal and social level by creating this false standard, which causes people to judge others based on physical attributes that are not feasible. In DeGhett’s article she discussed the New York Times decision to remove images of dead passengers from a flight wreckage in
Ukraine and instead publish photos of the mechanical wreckage and described it as “making the coverage incomplete, and even deceptive” (DeGhett 75). The media in the 1990s only published partial views on a story that did not do justice when presenting it to the public’s view. Similarly, with Meghan Trainor, the media was showing the public a partial view of what her actual body looks like. With technology, the media is then able to become more deceptive with the public with showing the full story and creates the world that is idealized with no bloody photographs nd people who have long, unnatural body shapes.
In conclusion, today’s source of media when receiving the news and global happenings mostly are derived from biased, misleading and false sources. With technology such as computer editing, photos, and videos, the media can become creative when altering the news to fit the wrong happenings they want for to publish to make that source be seen as superior compared to other sources. The publics way of receiving media’s news has become more of a vague statement rather than telling the public the truth.
