Monday, May 21, 2018

Getting The Best Out Of Arab News Sites

By Kathleen Fisher


Information helps color how a person sees the world. No one lives in a bubble where information is unnecessary. As such, people often follow and keep up with the hat happens during the day. But the source of this news varies from person to person and from medium to medium, and one such source is Arab news sites.

As naturally curious as people so often are, the news plays a vital role in everyday society. The right story can totally change the way a person sees the world, change a whole outlook on life. Keeping up with everything going on in society also keeps the mind active, perfect for curious minds.

Town used to have criers, who would stand about in public and proclaim the news. Then the printing press was invented and mass literature became feasible, leading to the birth of newspapers. Then radio waves were harnessed, leading to radio broadcaster. Then there were the anchormen of television. But a new generation embraced a different medium, the internet.

There is no way to understate the importance of empathy, not just in journalism, but also in life. Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings or the emotions of another person. When delivering the bulletins, there must be some degree of empathy in order to fully understand a story. The objective truth provides only a surface level understanding of a story. Because people so often act out of emotion, being able to understand the underlying emotional cause of a story, paired with the objective truth, provides a deeper, more meaningful understanding of any narrative.

Newsmen can be split up into two camps, journalists and pundits. The latter often claims to be the former and the former is often accused of being the latter. The terms are so often used interchangeably, but the two are vastly different from each other even if there is some overlap. For starters, journalists seek out the truth, for a journalist, the objective is the truth. A pundit meanwhile cares more about a narrative, to make the audience lean a certain way, the truth is incidental to a pundit, the reaction of an audience is the objective.

All too often, stories get spread without facts being checked. When people share fake stories, it erodes trust, not just in the media institutions, but also in the world in general. Fake stories also perpetuate any ingrained prejudices that some people may already have.

Information can be limited in some parts of the world. All too often, stories from certain parts of the world wind up being about some new terrorist attack. While there are parts of the Middle East that are lousy with terrorism, there are also parts of it that are stable and even prosperous, more so than some parts of the west.

A free press is the only real press. If it is not free, then it is not press, it is propaganda. Information must be made free and those freedoms should not be limited in order to protect those in power. There must always be those who speak the truth to power.

There are benefits to questioning the media, as fake news is everywhere. But no one lives in a vacuum where information is unnecessary. The trick is to find a trustworthy source.




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