It has been two weeks since the terrible massacre that took away 32 lives. Many related issues have surfaced since then, for example, racial discrimination, censorship, immigration. However, the issue that I am touching on is gun control. This incident has once again put the limelight on ‘gun laws’ in America.

If you are an American citizen who is 18 years old or older, mentally stable and do not have a criminal record, congratulations. You are officially legal to purchase a gun. This is according to the laws in America whereby its stand is that the possession of guns is for self-defense. This is getting a little too ridiculous. Imagine, as you walk down the street of America, practically everyone that you have walked past having a gun in their possession. Freaky, isn’t it? There is no doubt that a gun by one’s side can bring much assurance to him or her. But is there such a need? Is there such a need for such extreme laws? The lax law of possession of guns has finally taken its toll. With the Virginia Tech shooting in mind, one would reflect back and question, ‘if perhaps the gun laws are stricter, Cho would not have a chance to purchase the guns, preventing the dreadful massacre.’ If guns are banned in the first place, people will also be able to live in assurance that the people around them do not possess such a dangerous weapon. Doesn’t this beat worrying about people having guns as everyone does not possess them?

Finally, in view of the Virginia Tech shooting, Virginia’s governor has said that he might be able to ‘close the loophole that allowed Seung-Hui Cho to buy the guns he used to kill 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus.’ It is sad that something dreadful like the loss of lives has to happen before action is taken. Not only so, at several Boston-area colleges, campus police are renewing calls to be allowed to carry arms in the aftermath of the mass shootings at Virginia Tech. One distinct difference between Singapore and America is that rarely do people die of gunshots which make it a safer place to live in as compared to American whereby guns are rampant.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/28/campus_police_renew_call_to_carry_arms/

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/24/virginiatechshooting/main2721802.shtml

Nowadays, the mass media do not report the news; they make the news.Discuss this with references to recent events.

Mass media reaches out to everyone. It has branched out into different means of communication, such as television, radio, newspapers, magazine and many more. Therefore, mass media has a huge impact on everyone’s life and affects every single one’s life in one way or another. To everyone, mass media has been THE source of information on issues happening around the world. However, recently, this image of mass media has been scrutinized. The idea of bias media is gradually rising among free societies. It seems as though now, rivalry between rival media companies have placed economic interest before reporting the real news which have been their motto.


There are quite a few recent events to back up this rising trend of media bias. The capture of British sailors by the Iranians has caused quite an uproar in the country. A first hand exclusive account of the whole ordeal would have brought much revenue and exposure to the mass media company that has brought over the rights. When the sailors were finally released from Iran, Defence Secretary Des Browne allowed the sailors to sell their accounts. Various TV stations offered huge sums of money to get the exclusive rights. One sailor, Faye Turney sold her account to ITV1’s Tonight with Trevor Macdonald and Sun newspaper. The amount she earned because of this ordeal is reportedly 6 digit sum.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6537555.stm

Another issue is about NBC putting their trademark logo on the videos and photos that were given by the Virginia Tech mass murderer. Even though NBC did not do anything additional to the videos and photos given, they gave the citizens something to vent their anger on. This is similar to the Al- Jazeera. These bunch of terrorist do the same thing, by showing the world videos to terrorize the people. In this case, the NBC is using the same tactic. Just to boost their sales, they can actually not think about how the families of the victims or the families of the suspect would feel if they see the videos on national television. Is the mass media going to be that unfeeling and insensitive to the feelings of the people and continue reporting such news just to obtain the profits?

http://www.aim.org/aim_column/5399_0_3_0_C/

Another case of mass media making the news instead of reporting the news is whereby they totally missed the complete story on the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. There were concrete evidence suggesting the bombing that killed 168 innocent American men, women, and children had been ordered by Saddam Hussein—then in power in Iraq, and possibly with the help of other Middle East terrorists. However, the mass media covered it up as there were political issues involved.

http://www.aim.org/aim_report/5408_0_4_0_C/
The above three examples are just the pick from many more such cases. It is saddening to know how the mass media has reduced from an ideal source of facts and reliable information with integrity to desperate reporting of stories to boost their sales.

1. “YouTube has no ethics, it's been created for the sole purpose of entertainment and money.” Do you agree?



As much as I love YouTube, I have to sadly admit that Youtube has no ethics, it’s been created for the sole purpose of entertainment and money. Youtube is a popular video sharing website that allows users to upload videos, view videos and share videos. Not only so, it still allows users to comment on the videos, to give ratings on the video. YouTube is also extremely user-friendly and has a wide variety of genres of videos, ranging from Japanese anime to self-directed videos. Furthermore, YouTube has absolutely no restrictions on the video content that is being uploaded by its users unless another viewer has viewed the content and flagged it as inappropriate then will YouTube interfere and ban the user.

Due to the wide variety of videos being uploaded on YouTube, it has attracted quite a number of netizens especially teenagers who spend most of their leisure time on the computer. As the restrictions are pretty liberal, these teenagers can be exposed to inappropriate content like extreme violence, pornography. This is causing an increase in the number of juvenile crimes and juvenile delinquents as the wrong values are being taught here. In this case here, shouldn’t YouTube screen what the users upload before actually allowing millions of teenagers all over the world to view it to prevent underage people to view such content? But no, YouTube only takes action when other users have flagged the video as inappropriate content. That is probably only after a period of time and I wonder how many teenagers have viewed that particular video. It is not a small matter as it can lead to social problems like pornography addiction, which can affect a teenager pretty badly and might even be a problem till his or her adult life. The effects can be damaging.

Besides this issue, another is the infringement on copyright. YouTube is currently facing a civil lawsuit against them by Viacom for unauthorized video clips. They have demanded $1 billion copyright lawsuit. “Before that they demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips from its website, and since that time the company has uncovered more than 50,000 additional unauthorized clips.” (http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070313/viacom_youtube_lawsuit.html?.v=19). It seems as though YouTube does not care about its surroundings. An infringement of copyright can cost the jobs of many whereby people no longer purchase television shows to watch and instead just catch it a few days later.

However, YouTube is not all that bad either whereby some videos are of good use. For example, there is this whole range of self directed videos about this father taking care of his autistic son and it shows people about how autistic children are and how to take care of them.

It is obvious now that YouTube is created for the sole entertainment and money as they would have taken more precautions to prevent explicit content videos to be uploaded. But instead, they would only take action after other users has flagged it as inappropriate.