"We Media" and Democracy - Stefanie Barnes

Over the six weeks off, and whilst the rest of my family were off on holiday, leaving me at home - a terrible idea on their half - to do my work. But whilst I was having an attempt at making something other than microwave meals, I had the T.V. on and which allowed me to catch up on the occurrences that was happening in England over the past few weeks. - I also got distracted and check my Facebook for any new updates and news which led to me setting the smoke alarm off and when I looked, I saw some things that stood out to me which is currently occurring or has occurred recently.

The first thing I heard about was the whole Calais and migrants issue which I listened to in depth, I heard it on the T.V. from a well-known organization that presents the news which is BBC - a trusted source for information as it is funded by the government and is for the public to keep up to date, like all news programmes. The news presented the event in a negative light though, not telling of the migrant’s side of the story till later news and after the stories of the children who had drowned trying to get away as well as the image of a father and his daughter crying as they were unable to get over here. The one I watched about this whole event gave the views of the public in England and as we're such a "rough and tough" country, as one man on the news had described; "we have no more room for the immigrants who are just here for our benefits system." Which I agreed with in some sense but I tried to see this in a better light and successfully did so when the news group interviewed some of the refugees and how they wanted to send the money over to their loved ones who are still in the war-torn country of Syria; this tugged at my heart strings and made me synpathize with the migrants, after all, to go to such lengths for the sake of their loved ones is simply one thing to admire about them and made me feel like I had to, as they say, “hand it to them” for going to such lengths. Yet it seemed that when there were interviews for those who are in other European countries, we were made out to be the bad guys as we weren't taking in as many immigrants as we "should do" - which was something that annoyed me a little. That being because we're such a small country compared to everywhere else, shove any more people on this country of ours and you'll have us fleeing to another country next. The news group did try to give both sides of the ordeal, or well, all three sides to it all as it was all pinned against Britain for quite a bit of the part, and interviewing a member of the public didn't exactly give us much of an ideal opinion from the rest of the public which I found to also be a bit wrong as the only ones in which the news group had interviewed were people who are very proud of this country and seem like the types who are quite stern with their opinions and will not falter away from what they think nor think about how they are presenting Britain.

A headline that popped up on my Facebook was one about a "giant tarantula sent in a parcel to a home in Bristol". This news stood out to me just because of how odd it sounded and was from a well-established news source but not one that I tend to go to when reading the news. I only read the headline of such a thing as at the time I was burning my food but I found it to be quite an amusing headline for such an odd story and I think that the writer intended to make it sound funny or wanted to pick out quite a funny story above all. Though despite how amusing it was, I did think it would be terrifying to say the least if something of the sorts happened to me as well and has definitely made me think of checking my post completely, especially any packages I order, gives me chills thinking it could happen anywhere, even in the UK. After trying to refind it, I found it to be only a slightly trusted source as they included quotes from others and it’s an establish news organisation.

Later, I scrolled through my newsfeed again, whilst eating my freshly burnt food and found only more headlines and another one that stood out the most was how a single SAS soldier had taken down 5 ISIS soldiers. This seemed to be a story that popped up a bit as well as shared by quite a few people on my friend list. I knew a lot of news about ISIS and the Jihadi before this had popped up in my newsfeed and knew many stories about such and have watched T.V. shows which have “taken the mic” out of them as there’s always some comedic value when T.V. shows end up taking a hold of a serious subject and making a joke out of this. Though this news story about the group and what has happened seemed to be a positive thing for us as it showed that an SAS can single handed take care of such a troublesome issue yet it also brings some negativity to it as whenever ISIS is mentioned then the news of how families with young kids travelling to go over and join the organization pop up which are quite negative to hear, especially one that popped up about a mother taking her young kids to join the group without the acknowledgement of the father or even with permission from him which lead to the news being broadcasted on T.V. about how the police were chasing them down before they reached the group. But going back to the news story I looked at, I looked into more detail about it instead of simply depending on the headline and gave a small nod to myself when reading about it as that sort of news is something you always want to hear, about the SAS taking care of 5 people from ISIS and not the other news story that I mentioned before. This news story was from a trusted news establishment and it is quite accurate with quotes from the person who had taken them down, obviously removing their names though to keep them safe as well as their loved ones but also the news site was BBC news, which is a government funded news broadcaster which means they are expected to give out news which is greatly accurate.