The media - The true downfall of our society

To what extent do the best selling UK newspapers cover stories related to serious issues? To what extent would you think that it is their role to do so? In your opinion does the tabloid media and 'low budget entertainment' (Reality shows, soaps) have too much power and influence in this country?

There is no doubt that the best selling newspapers in the UK pay very little attention to issues that would be classed as serious to any truly intellectual individual. The best selling newspaper in the UK, The Sun, is a prime example of this as most of the stories tend to be focused around gossip or celebrities. I find this dissapointing as this links directly to the last blog post of being informed of serious issues. Newspapers such as The Sun tend to ignore these serious issues due to the fact again that its target audience would find the issues tedious and hard to understand and above all not that enthralling to read. Most people who buy newspapers such as The Sun do not buy it because of its intellectual properties, they buy it to catch up on the gossip of the day or the week.

As for the role of the best selling UK newspapers producing articles or stories related to serious issues it is now becoming less and less of their role. For tabloid newspapers their main aim is to sell as many copies as possible and the modern day society is becoming less interested with important issues such as politics, the economy and the environment. I believe that in the near future, this pattern will continue and newspapers such as The Sun will keep selling more copies and the sale of broadsheet papers will decrease.

Low budget entertainment shows such as reality and soaps

Reality TV shows such as Big Brother and Im a celebrity get me out of here are truly just distractions from reality completely. Shows such as this have nothing to do with serious issues at all and in my opinion are only on because of the money that they generate, because of the power and influence that programs such as this have over the country, the viewing ratings for them sky rocket every time they are on each year. This means that annually these programs will be broadcasted every night for an extended period of time with the producers in the know that they will make big money from the viewing.

Soaps are also a major distraction from serious issues with many of the episodes having a storyline that is unrealistic leaving viewers constantly wondering what will happen in the next episode. Due to this, people will continue watching every episode to 'catch up' on what is happening in their fictional place? Yeah...... enough said! Whilst im on the subject of reality TV shows, next weekend, pick up the phone.... OLLY MURS TO WIN THE X FACTOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These sorts of programmes have way too much control over people in the UK and undoubtedly distract people from the serious issues that are needed to be put across to the members of the public. The tabloid newspapers are also not at all doing the correct thing in filling their pages with celebrity gossip but in their eyes they ARE doing the correct thing because they are selling more papers and therefore making more money. I feel that in the future the media will keep insisting on destroying the minds of the public with the main intention of money making, the serious issues will be slowly forgotton about.

The duty to be informed

To what extent do you think that it is your duty as a citizen to be 'informed'? Are you informed? How do you get to be informed about serious issues? To what extent do you think that you should leave the complicated decisions up to the others?

The main issue i feel that is needed to be raised from this question is the need in modern day society to be informed. I feel that modern day culture allows many people, especially the younger generation to feel bored by subjects such as science, politics and economics. As these are some of the hardest subjects to grasp they are also some of the most fundamental in the running of the country today. I dont feel it is our duty as such to be informed but i feel it is the duty of the government to inform, especially the younger generation on important issues that are often found tedious. Science, politics and economics all determine how successfully a country is run and can often be completley looked over due to its challenging concepts.

I think the younger generation are becoming more ignorant to the most important issues that the country and the world are facing. The typical youths of today are not informed well enough in lower schools about the issues that are going on in the world. Asking many teenagers if they regularly watched the news in this country is becoming more and more pointless by the day.

Climate change has been debated by many people, some say that it might not exist and that it is a government scam to get people to try and save the country money doing things such as recycling. However the current labour government do believe that climate change is happening but i also feel that many of the governments across the world including the U.K are not doing anywhere near enough to combat climate change.


I am informed by these serious issues mainly through the media. Watching the news frequently you see many stories that are science related dealing with important issues such as global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps. You also see many political debates on broadcasts such as 'question time'. And recently in the news during the countires economic downturn more focus is being brought on the economical side of the news.


As for leaving the important and complicated decisons to the others i feel will not solve the problem that is at the heart of the issue. Every member of the global society needs to be informed so that they could potentially be the members of the global community who could be making the decisions that could ultimately save the planet. The only real way that the world can deal with the problems is that everybody works together. Yes, i believe that for now the scientists should make the important decisions but then again that is there job and they specialise in different areas. However the younger generation of today are becoming less and less interested in scientific issues such as global warming, politics and the economical state of the country and this may lead to a shortage of people who are willing to dedicate their time to these issues in the future when we might be in need of the support most.


After all the idea of sustainable is meeting the needs of today without comprimising those of tomorrow, the ultimate goal should be to make the world aware of the problems that are to be faced in the future and to get more of the younger generation involved with the subjects that they might find uninteresting or uninspiring. If the scientists can meet the needs of today then im sure if the world worked together we could ensure that the needs of the future are met by the government informing people in the correct manner.

'An Inconvenient Truth'

To what extent do you think this was deserved? Having watched this film in class did you feel that your opinion (or perhaps the opinion of others) to the issue of climate change could be positively influenced? What did you think of this film? Was it effective?



The nobel peace prize in 2007 was awarded to Al Gore and i believe it was a deserved acheivement on the whole. The film 'An Inconvenient Truth' opened the publics eyes to the true dangers that lie ahead for the globe if humans contuinue to act in the way in which they are, emitting high levels of carbon into the atmosphere. After watching 'An Inconvenient Truth' i came to realise that it was indeed effective in raising peoples awareness due to the fact that the explanation of each issue backed up with evidence he had found that linked the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to the global temperature was accurate and easy to follow. However i feel that the film was extremely directed to make climate change the biggest of the worlds problems. I do believe that climate change is happening to an extent and partly due to human activity but there are also many other important issues in the world at the moment such as the access to clean water that that needs to be a higher priority:



Causes of Poverty
Author and Page information
by Anup Shah

1. Almost half the world — over 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.


2. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.


3. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.


4. Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.


5. 1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).
http://www.globalissues.org/issue/2/causes-of-poverty



To me all of these stats are more important issues that need to be seen to before trying to combat climate change. I believe that issues happening in the world NOW need to be dealt with before we can start thinking about the future years to come. We cant save all of the problems as a global community but we can definetly go a little further to help people who arnt as wealthy as ourselves. The stat that less than one per cent of what the world spends on weapons is needed to put every single child in the world through schooling is sickening. If the world were to spare just a little bit of money it would make such a differnece to those in poorer parts of the world that need it most. Instead we are spending ridiculous amounts of money on an issue which ultimately cant be stopped. However global warming and climate change could pose a massive threat to the future inhabitants of the world:



http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/actonco2/home/climate-change-the-facts/Rising-temperatures-and-the-greenhouse-effect.html

This tells us that over the last 100 years the Earth has warmed by 0.74 degrees, sea levels have risen and drought, floods and forest fires are becoming more frequent and devastating many peoples lives. The change in temperature may not seem a lot but even 1 degree change in the Earths temperature could see sea levels rising uncontrollably and would make many countries that inhabit numerous people impossible to live in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldives#Environmental_issues



The Maldives are a country that is currently facing the problem that if sea levels continue to rise, with the majority of their islands only being a mere 1.5 metres over sea level making them the lowest in the world, it will threaten their existance. The Maldives are also one of the countries who were seriously affected by the boxing day tsunami and left many people homeless as well as causing terrible damage to the natural environment. This is just one of the many examples of the problems that climate change could cause and Al Gore putting this message across to people will have seemed worthy of being awarded the nobel peace prize.

Overall the film 'An Inconvenient Truth' did deserve to win the nobel peace prize but it did not change my opinion on climate change. I still realise that climate change is an important issue to deal with but i have always felt that there are many other issues mainly to do with poverty such as access to clean water, sanitation, healthing systems and educational stability that need to be dealt with quicker. It was overall an effective film and could easily have a positive influence on the way people see the future of the Earth. People realise after watching this film how big climate change is as an issue and can try themselves to reduce their emissions to save many parts of the world that will not exist any more, due to the melting of the polar ice caps and rise in global flooding.

What actions could you (in theory) undertake that would improve the 'sustainability' of your lifestyle? What might be preventing you from doing these?

What actions could you (in theory) undertake that would improve the 'sustainability' of your lifestyle? What might be preventing you from doing these?

As sustainability can have many definitions i will look at it from the way i was taught through school. If you look at sustainability from the point of view that i see it from it means ' meeting the needs of today, without comprimising the needs of tomorrow'.
I think this can be looked at as an effective way of describing sustainability during the opening weeks of the module as it creates a general overview of what the idea or plan is for something to be created sustainably. The idea behind sustainability, taken from the dictionary seems to be driven by the word maintained.

Referring back to the question and analysing the meaning of sustainability i could undertake many actions that in theory could improve the sustainability of my lifestyle and many things could potentially pose a threat in me continuing in my lifestyle.

One of the actions i could undertake that would improve the sustainability of my lifestyle is continue playing football for my local teams and continue trying to keep healthy by regularly visiting the gym. As i found out when i was younger though, injuries can prevent me from doing this and therefore affected the sustainability of the lifestyle i had when i was younger. After numerous hamstring and knee problems i could no longer play football every weekend for my local team and had many years out of the game, thus losing a certain degree of fitness and sharpness of the technique that comes whilst playing football.

Another one of the actions i could undertake that would improve the sustainability of my life is to have a healthy balanced diet. This is important as it could potentially maintain your body during the years in which you need your body maintained the most, in the later years of your life. Things that prevent me in particular from doing this is usually places like Mc Donalds, KFC and Burger King!