You come home from a long day at work, exhausted, and
collapse in a giant heap on the mangy couch you found on the street. You
breathe a sigh of relief and switch on the box television, suddenly sad that
you cannot a newer flatter model. Static appears at first, but then clears out
to show the well-dressed, perfect looking news-anchor. “BREAKING NEWS” was
spelled across the top of the screen in big, blue and flashing capital letters.
The camera zoomed into the face of the news anchor while she began reporting, “Breaking
news at Channel 11 News headquarters. Earlier this evening, U.S. air troopers
bombed a building suspected to house the terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden. It
was found that Bin Laden was not there, but he had been. The search continues,
while U.S. troops prepare to move into enemy territory and find the terrorist
who initiated the cricis that killed our loved ones. Stay tuned for updates.”
You mute the volume as the channel goes to ads, and think with hatred of the
criminal Bin Laden. “We should just have bombed the whole country to get him,
he killed our civilians!” Though you did not know anyone personally who died in
9/11, you felt a lot of anger towards those who killed innocent Americans.
That was a fake story, from a fake
day, though it does represent some realistic events. 9/11 was caused by
terrorists, not Afghanistan. The U.S. declared war on Afghanistan, not only the
terrorists. Millions upon millions of INNOCENT Afghans died in this war. The
amount of people that died in 9/11 was a miniscule number compared to those who
died in Afghanistan. The Channel 11 News failed to mention any of these facts. They
just portrayed Afghanistan as a war-torn area, where everyone is a potential
terrorist. Imagine someone who only watches Channel 11 news and does not check
to make sure that they are telling accurate information. They would be
misinformed citizens due to the news stories that manipulate them by excluding some
facts and exaggerating others.
Only 32 percent of American citizens
trust the media (Bernstein). It is quite sad when you think about it. If only
the media stated the whole truth instead of the half-truth that it uses to
manipulate viewers. Trust has become a problem in the United States, and the
deficiency starts with the manipulation of others using stories.
Stories have existed for a long
time, for as long as humans have existed for all we know. They have been used to
understand human complexity, to entertain children and adults alike, to inform,
and sadly, they have also been used to manipulate. The telling of stories first
started as oral story-telling. When humans learned how to write, stories began
being copied down into books. We
know now that stories, though they are beautiful and creative, also have the
power to change the mind. A good story can be the basis of claims and dreams.
President Trump, for example, told a simple yet straightforward story; “Let
America be great again.” Some speculate that this story may have won him the
election. Stories can change our view on anything basically, as they make us
understand and reflect. In a way, all stories have the potential to change a
reader’s view. It is when changing the reader’s view serves ulterior motives or
becomes harmful, that stories become a problem.
