Sunday 31 October 2010

Mass Media Influence - part III

Mass Media and Politics
(Part 3)

Democracy is not a perfect political system. It is hard to require from people to make important decision on issues they do not know at all. Theoretically, in democratic countries people decide on future of their country, but in practice it is different. In Poland it is usual that political parties breach of promises. "Political parties do not make the question ourselves if their program is reasonable, but if it is attractive" said Carlo Schmid, German politician. I could not agree more with him. In my opinion political parties primarily want to govern, but not to keep promises.

Often political decisions are detrimental to our country. Some people are joking that in Poland we do not have politics, but we have only Public Relations (PR) competitions.:) We know that mass media are not objective enough. This is especially noticeable in Poland.
Our TV stations inform us of the conflict in front of the Presidential Palace in
Warsaw. We see people fighting for and fighting against location of the holy cross. Janina Jankowska, radio and TV journalist, commented on journalistic reports about the conflict: "Journalists at an incredible way impose their point of view. They should not only have a right to say the truth, but also respect a right of customers to have own opinions".

There was also a lot of information concerning designer drugs. There was a battle against them. But in fact, how many people go to a hospital because of overdosing designer drugs? And how many people go to a hospital or a sobering-up station because of overdosing alcohol? Then why alcohol is still legal? Media show designer drugs as a very evil issue, but there is still the lack of scientific information about their influence on people. Media ignore statements of designer drug sellers. So again, mass media show their subjective point of view. Some people say that mass media govern our country. We have democracy here, but mass media still have a big influence on our decisions, so maybe that is true...

Questions:
  • What is Your attitude to the conflict in front of the Presidential Palace?
    (there was already topic and discussion about designer drugs, so I am asking only about holy cross)
  • Which media in Your opinion are most objective?
  • Why the politics of our country creates so many negative emotions among ordinary people?

11 comments:

  1. What is Your attitude to the conflict in front of the Presidential Palace?

    I doesn't matter for me whether there is a cross or not, what matters for me is wheter there will be VAT raise or not :P

    Which media in Your opinion are most objective?

    I don't believe there is such thing as objective media, I prefer where situation is clear like in US where you have right-wing Fox News and left-wing MSNBC.

    Why the politics of our country creates so many negative emotions among ordinary people?

    Do you know any other democratic country in which it doesn't?

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  2. Sorry, I can't write anything I don't read newspapers and I don't watch TV... I really don't like politics and don't know anything about it...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Is there such a thing like objective media? Even scientific newspapers are more or less unobjective, because math etc. are objective, but writing about them is another thing. There's always some preassumptions when you're telling some story. The only way to deal with this is to read stories from different sides of the barricade and trying to understand each one of them.

    Are people in different countries much different when speaking about politics? I'm not sure.

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  4. HI:)
    I think this whole conflict in front of the PP was really annoying, it had nothing to do with religion. These people acted like fanatics not catholics for sure. Besides I think this cross shouldn't appear there anyway because the best place for cross - symbol of catholicism is in the church. Not every polish people are closely related to religion we have in Poland many atheists and some other religious viewers as well. We should be more reaspectfull.
    ..and about the next question. Is there such a thing like objectivity? i think it's depend on what definition we'll use. Media are created by people and we are always a little non-objective.
    ..and about the last one i agree with s3874:) people are always become very emotional when they talk about politics doesn't matter where, in what country.

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  5. I cannot answer the question which media are most objective but... for sure TVN is not. I am not fan of PiS actually I don't like politics, but in TVN they say positivies about PO. And they always talk about PiS like about some intruder. PiS is always bad bad bad...

    About drug designer... As I said in earlier post, it is illegal to close all shops in few days. Now they closed this kind of shop... in future they can close your own business. Of course now we are talking about "drugs" but they were legal... and they still are...

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  6. s5560
    If we consider the conflict in front of the Presidential palace, I need to admit that I was in shock when I saw what was going on there. Lots of educated, mature, religious people were fighting, and in my opinion they were not fighting for the cross, they were fighting to show that they are against the new elected President. I think that it was a political battle. These people were not fighting for their religion; they preferred the holy cross, the symbol, to be placed in a public place where all the hooligans who were against it, could easily damage, ruin it. Just be honest, are these people who were fighting for the cross to be left in front of the Palace visiting and prying in front of this cross right now. I suppose, 90% is not. I think it was a better idea to place the cross in a place where it will not be devastated, but cultivated.
    Talking about objectiveness of media, I do not believe it exists. Each medium, even the public one, has its sponsor, and the sponsor governs the rules. Just let us think, how often do we act against our bosses who pay our salaries??
    Regarding our politicians, I think this is not only the problem of our country. Each country has its problems, each country has few politicians parties. There would not be conflicts if there was only one political system and all the politicians were believing that this system is the only right one.

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  7. Honestly for me whole this situation was very funny!! The whole world laughed from us!

    Which media are most objective?? I don't know I never think about that topic. When it comes about Polish media, I Usually watch tvn24 or tvnwarszawa

    Why the politics of our country creates so many negative emotions among ordinary people?
    On the day when they were a politicians?:)

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  8. Holy cross placed on Krakowskie Przedmiescie street was not a funny situation. I had two friends staying over in my flat at that time. It was very humiliating to hear first hand information from them.

    Mediums are influenced and financed by organisations strongly conntected with politics at their core. Therefore I think that none of them is trully objective.

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  9. 1. I had mix feelings about that. From one side there ware people in some kind of trauma, most of them ware socially excluded. Other thing is that it was a politically design campaign for PiS and people there ware used.

    2. I like TVN24 but it is obvious for me that this station supports PO.


    3. Because people don't understand how economical processes work and don't have any idea what public debt is. That is why politics wont to focus their attention on simple things which involve emotions.

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  10. 1. it is a failed example of negotiation but it is something that was destined to happen as we have a wide spread of arguments over the topic of legalizing some drugs.
    2. Probably TVN Turbo.
    3. They are not willing to let lose control by sharing the power of being totally free with us.

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  11. 1. Both sides made so many mistakes that I don't even know where to start writing about them...
    2. I like "Rzeczpospolita" newspaper and www. I often watch TVN24 but some shows - like for example "Szkło kontatktowe" are far too much supporting for PO.
    3. It isn't something typically Polish - whenever I talk with my foreign friends I feel like it's "normal" everywhere - sometimes it's even much worse.

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