Assignment #2

I think that the state of media is as really as bleak as it is portrayed in the movie. Nowadays I think the mass media is controlled by big corporation behind the scene and also the government. Sometimes things that should be the headline are pulled down by such some “unknown” forces. There was once news about Samsung which was pulled down from the main. It was about Samsung workers getting cancers from the materials they worked with. And it was pulled down from the headline. I think this kind of bleak media existed since the big corporation and Korean government appeared. I personally think that Korean mass media was controlled ever since after the Korean War. It was controlled by the dictator Park Jung Hee, and Jun Doo Hwan. They restricted the freedom of speech which obviously led to the fact that the media would have been bleak. Writers who tried to write the truth would not be safe and even if it was written it would be bleached. Governments would not like people to know about everything they do would they? It is not like that everyone likes to tell their top secret out and they probably would do anything to stop their secrets from getting out. Also the big companies would not like their stories getting published in the front cover of newspapers if it is something that can attack their companies financially and damage their image. Such as the case of Samsung I had shown above. They had removed it from the headline and made the news become a small article. I think this occurred as people got greedy and as it became to modern times. People wasn’t used to believe everything they saw, but as people got used to more information they got used to believing everything they read. Also as people got greedier since the society became a free economy, they started to want more profit and in order to earn money they had to do ‘dirty things’. Companies did immoral things in order to make more profit and news paper or broadcasting companies got money from these companies so they will not broadcast it. So it is not just society’s fault but faults of people. I think that everyone is responsible for the media becoming like that. If people weren’t greedy these kinds of thing would not have happened.

In order to achieve true democracy in mass media, I think people need to not think about the profit they will earn but the good things will do to society. People need to feel the importance of the truth without getting censored or being bleached by some corporation or government. This can only be started from changing the thinking of people who have only thought about themselves.