19a

Recording 19a

Good morning, my name is Dan Taylor and I’m Professor of Sociology here at Manly University.

Our modern society often prides itself on its free press and, with access to the Internet and cable television the news is broadcast 24 hours a day.

However, we have just completed a study which reveals that the general public is increasingly ill-informed today.

For this project we compiled a list of what we considered to be the most significant current affairs stories and then we assessed how these stories were reported by newspapers and radio and television networks.

Alarmingly, we found that as many as 25 significant new stories were either under-reported or omitted from the news altogether.

It would seem that the media today seeks to entertain rather than inform the public. I defined censorship is anything which interferes with the free flow of information in our society.

And this would seem to be what tabloid journalism is doing. They are effectively censoring important news stories on the basis that they may not be interesting or entertaining enough.

One example is the widening gap between the rich and the poor. This is a major problem in big cities today and yet you are unlikely to find a reference to it in any news headlines.

Instead, you’re more likely to find stories about the latest celebrity, with important new content relegated to the back pages.