Manipulating TV news

Abstract

Media is the means of communication that teaches or influence people widely. Media does not only create news but they create news with a message. However currently it is impossible to find any news without biasness. This puts a heavy responsibility on TV news to adhere to the laws enacted upon the media. The fact that media tends to telecast news as exciting stories through political biasness, exaggerating the violent activities of the country, the omission of information and racism are often criticized. Research have been conducted on the responsibility of the media in presenting news to the general public. According to these research generally media should attempt to weigh ethical obligations of accuracy in order to fulfill the necessity of competitive reporting. Therefore this research intends to analyze popularity as a main reason for the above discussed matter and present it as the research gap of the study. Accordingly the research will use the viewpoint that “popularity” is the main objective of news media in broadcasting their news. In this study, we focus on analyzing the Sri Lankan television channels’ quest for popularity results the lack of reliability of news broadcasting. Content analysis and video based questionnaire are identified as more appropriate methods. We intend at capturing three important aspects, politics, excess depiction of violence and racism as tools to gain popularity. This research proves that TV news must be honest towards their efforts and should not have any concealed purpose in presenting news.