Detecting Media Tendency

In scope of journalistic, Information serving have to utilize what is called perspective. In easy way,
this perspective are able to be explored by using well-known keywords 5W1H; what, when,
where, why, who, and how. Even, the article producer may use only one concept, for example,
in ‘what’ perspective that the article only describe what is going on. This use of perspective also
reflect the tendency of media, whether the media support an issue or not. This would be
dangerous if the media is too partial, for example, to the government, in which the media will
only produce excellent works of them, yet the negative event would be hidden by still
surrounding the information with the good ones. This kind of strategy might work in the past
when mainstream media was the only source for citizen to gain information, so it was easy for
media to play with people paradigm. However, in this era, so many sources if information can be
reached by utilizing internet to clarify and compare spreaded discourse. In this case, there is a
need for people to know how to detect media tendency to filter the information as proper
knowledge to consume, for example for printed or online discourse, by seeing the use of diction
and comparing the discourse to other media.
In linguistic and Journalistic approach, there is an interesting convention that when someone
produce idea by using language (written or oral), the production of diction will be, consciously or
unconsciously, influenced by personal thinking system called ‘ideology’. If the media have good
sentiment, for example, to the president, or even in more severe way, the media is politically
related to president, it will produce diction that lift the government’s image up. They might use
positive words or phrases to build good-looking statement, such as ‘this smart president, even if
has really hectic presidential schedule, still has time to have good chit-chat with family’, ‘this clear
government run the governance truly well’, and so on.
Another way to detect media tendency is comparing with another media. It still uses previous
principle of linguistic and journalistic When media X state ‘the president built 100 km highway’
will sounds different to media Y stating ‘the president known as an expert in field of infrastructure
has built 100 km highway to prop up citizen economical needs’. Even if the case are the same,
the serving methods are different, that media X only tell what the president do, while media Y
highlight the eminence of the actor and add positive purpose of the event. It seems likely that
media Y is in president side while another try to be in objective path.
It is clear that production of discourse is based on interest of its media. Consequently, people
need to be insightful to detect in filter information as knowledge consumption. In this era of free
speech, listeners and readers need to be careful about what they hear and read.
Fauzan Novaldy Pratama