The Mass Media
News travel faster today than ever before. We see, hear and read more about world events than any other generation in history. Radio, newspapers, TV - nobody can live without them. But today also the Internet has become very important for business. The mass media play an immensely important part in modern society as a source of information and entertainment. In former times people generally found out what was happening in the world via the press, nowadays the main sources of information for most of us are TV, radio and the internet.
But what is the media?
Media is the plural of medium, which means a channel through which information is transmitted. But that's not very exact. It doesn't tell us what kind of channel or what kind of information. For example: are TV advertisements a part of the media? Some people say yes, others say no. And what about films, novels or songs? If you include all of them, a list of the media looks like this: advertising, book publishing, cinema, newspapers, magazines and comics, radio, TV, video. But if you limit your definition of information to facts, the list becomes shorter: The Press, Radio and TV.
These are the news media which tell us, day by day, what's happening in the world.
How free is the media?
Well - it varies from country to country. In some cases there are very few limits on what journalists can report. Other governments are slightly less liberal. And then there's a third group of countries which control their media very strictly. In cases like this, broadcasters and journalists who break the law are frequently sent to prison or sometimes even killed e.
g. in Serbia-Montenegro, the Iran and the Ukraine.
What is news and how is it collected?
Several factors make a good newspaper story. First - obviously- it must be NEW. But since TV can react so quickly, this is often a problem for newspapers. They usually respond to it in one of these ways:
Ü By providing extra detail, comment or background information
Ü By finding a new angle on the day's major stories
Ü Or by printing completely different stories which TV doesn't broadcast
But the stories also have to be dramatic, because people don't want to read about ordinary, everyday life.
Because of this, many stories involve some kind of conflict and danger. This is one reason why such a lot of news seem to be bad news. Next, there's human interest. People are interested in other people - particularly lives of pop stars, actors, politicians and royalty - all appear regularly in certain newspapers.
Newspapers
Newspapers came into being in the 16th or the 17th century. The first newspaper known was published in 1605 in Wolfsburg, Germany.
One of the oldest newspaper knows is the "The Times" from London, it was first published in 1748. Very important German newspapers are "FAZ", "SZ", and "NZZ". Newspapers international very important are "NYT" and "Washington Post" in the USA, the "Corriere della Sera" in Italia and "Le Mond" and "Liberation" in France.
In Austria the most important newspapers are "The Standard" and "Die Presse". But "Die Kronen Zeitung" is read by more people than "TS" and "DP" together.
Various facts influenced the genesis of newspapers.
A very important one was the invention of the book printing by Gutenberg with moveable letters made of lead. This made it possible to publish regularly information for a higher number of people at a lower price.
Two factors influenced the progress of newspapers:
Ü The central position of cities for important post- and trade ways that provides always news.
Ü More people went to school and so there were not so many illiterates.
There are different forms of newspapers:
® Daily newspapers which are published every day, some times not on Sundays.
® Weekly newspapers which are published once a week.
® And tabloid newspapers which are published regularly e. g. twice a month or once a month,. Tabloid newspapers are for example "Die Bild Zeitung" in Germany, "Täglich Alles" in Austria. This newspapers report about national and sometimes international popular people for example actors, pop stars, royalty and so on in an extreme way. Not everything you can read there is 100 per cent true.
For more than three centuries newspapers had the monopole of publishing current political and society news.
But then first the radio, then television and last the internet came into being.
The Radio
A revolutionary change in our way of life came with the development of the radio. From 1920 onward it became a fad everywhere. By the end of the 30's there was a wireless set in nearly every home and people began to turn to the radio for information and entertainment. Today we have transistors, sometimes combined with cassettes or CD-players, which provide us with non-stop programmes. We can choose between broadcasts, of high cultural value, regional programmes of strong local interest, and popular music, sport and hourly new broadcasts.
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