In my BC253 class, we recently viewed an episode of a show called "Max Headroom." The episode we watched showed a group of terrorists in cohorts with a news station in order to boost the ratings, and gain more money for all involved. It really showed the impact that the news could have (and in some cases does have) on the world.
Along the same lines, it also shows the importance of keeping the media relatively honest - if the media actually did conspire with terrorists, what could happen? In television today, the ratings are all powerful; however, how much sacrifice is too much? Are we sacrificing our morals, innocence, and humanity for the sake of ratings and monetary gain?
For example, when I was watching the news the other day, I saw footage of a woman who had been poisoned, supposedly by her husband. They showed video of her dead body on the news, in the middle of the day, no less, all the while mentioning that her own family could not watch this footage. How is that necessary? I am not saying that our media would go as far as to kill a woman on the air, as they did in the episode of Max Headroom. Max Headroom shows a "worst case scenario" of what our media could potentially become, if we continue to value the ratings over the people who are watching.
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