Our goal should be to know what is happening throughout the world instead of just celebrity and presidential gossip. Not only does the public need to demand a shift in media attention, but publications should take it on themselves to uphold integrity in their papers or magazines.
In February of this year, Russia invaded Ukraine. While this is now common knowledge, the coverage of this invasion was not adequately emphasized by the media. This may seem like a large claim to make. Maybe I didn’t read The New York Times on Feb. 28, or maybe I don’t consistently watch the evening news, but I have found major problems with the coverage and the focus of the articles written about the invasion.
In a recent article, The New York Times focused less on the status of the invasion and more about how President Barack Obama is handling the situation. While this is an important conversation, there was nothing more that day about the invasion. And this is a recurring problem. I have found more online coverage of the crisis from sources in the UK than in the United States. On March 23, an article in The Guardian focused on how “Russian troops gathering on the border with eastern Ukraine may be poised to invade.” The majority of the article focuses on the facts, but the last two paragraphs talk about Romney’s opinion on what Obama should or should not do. Romney claims Obama could have done more to persuade Russia not to annex Crimea. By throwing this curveball, The Guardian takes away from what the article should be focusing on.
The media is convinced that making a profit should be its focus while writing articles. Every publication has its own bias about what is important to report and how to report it, but in the past 20 years, I believe there has been an increase on the focus of selling stories instead of just telling them. Comments about the growing obsolescence of print publications are constantly circulating. Whether or not we stop using print as a news source, it is important to recognize that the media should treat the public fairly and with the least amount of deception possible. I do believe there is a time and a place for selling solely to make money — Us Weekly and Teen Vogue are perfect examples — but it is important to recognize these flaws among newspapers and magazines. We should be concerned with this, but more than that, we should want to understand the current state of Russia and Ukraine.
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