Lack of Trust in the Media during the Swine Flu Pandemic of 2009 Research Paper

Lack of Trust in the Media during the Swine Flu Pandemic of 2009 - Research Paper Example If one doesn’t hear of any news in the media today, then it probably didn’t happen anywhere since the media are today as close to the society as every person is close to one another. While the media has acted as a great eye opener in various regions concerning various issues happening in the society, in some cases, it has acted as a center for deceptions leading people away from what the real fact is. This is when the process of information gathering and communications coupled with a lot of biases based on the real content of the matter. Gelders, Bouckaert, & van Ruler, (2007) define communication simply as the passage of information from one person to another and from place to place usually through a medium. The main content of the whole process is the message borne and the way it is delivered to the persons targeted. The entire process is a closed cycle comprising of basically four components; the sender, the recipient, the message itself and the channel used in trans ferring the message from one person or region to another. The content, urgency and the privacy of the information being passed across is highly dependent on the type of information/ message being transmitted. Mostly, information passed to the public has no privacy issues and is relevant to the time and the event of the time The media personnel have the freedom to reach and access information on any issue in any region of the earth making them the closest neighbor to any person everywhere on the earth’s surface. There has been a rising trend in the number of media houses in the world today as the number of consumes of their information increases over time and space. This has led to rapid competition of the various media houses represented everywhere on earth in terms of the greatest and most interesting news aired by them based on different topics. While some media houses have the capability to reach the international community with their news on a daily basis, some have conce ntrated on local news which they disseminate to the society around them. International news houses have a larger area of coverage and the information they pass has a wide array of audience and sources. Due to this, it is therefore very important that the most accurate information on various issues of life is passed to the right people at the right time. Hathi, (2009) asserts that his level of trust that the people nest on the media today is far much greater than it was before as public awareness and the rise in demand for knowledge increases over time and space. The rise in the level of public awareness on various matters of the society has increased due to the advances in technological development in various societies. Technology has as well played a very integral role in determining who gets what information at what time and in which region. Without technology, the work of passing information on a wide array of events and issues would not be easy as the information may be slow on transit or reach the intended persons when too late to generate any necessary immediate response. According to Congressional Management Foundation, (2008), the accuracy of the media is judged based on the content of the information, the timeliness and its regional access measured by the number of people listening to and receiving the news being passed across. H1N1, commonly referred to as ‘swine flu’ is a viral disease which spreads very fast over time and spac