Реферат: Роль СМИ в современном мире (The mass media in the life of Society)
<span Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-family:«Times New Roman»;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The mass mediain the life of Society.
<span Courier New";mso-bidi-font-family:«Times New Roman»; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">
Modern life is hardly possible without information. Of course friends& relatives keep us informed about what is happening in the world, but suchinformation is second-hand, & therefore is not at all reliable. It is themass media that provide us with first hand & reliable information.
The mass media plays an important role in our life. Millions of copiesof newspapers are printed in our country every day. The role of the press canhardly be overestimated, particularly at present. It keeps you informed in thelatest news, different events, home and foreign affairs, news of culture,science and engineering development. But publishing news is not the onlypurpose of the press. There are many other purposes, which can be achieved bythe press. It enriches our knowledge and broadens our outlook. The press shapespublic opinion, influences governmental policy, gives citizens a view of ourcountry and foreign countries as well. It performs a few functions: informative,entertaining, commercial & is addressed to people of different politicalviews & different stations in life. What is printed & what is not,largely depends on the publishers’ concert of news. There is a well-known jokecirculating among the publishers, which exactly defines their idea of news: “Ifa dog bites a man, that’s not news, but if a man bites a dog, that is news”. Inother words, news must be something unusual, unexpected, and sensational. Butwith many papers & magazines there exits a funny tradition to mystify theirregular readers with sensational & incredible stories, published on theirpages.
Everyone knows that we get a great amount of information by mass media,especially TV. TV now plays an important part in many people’s life. It is animmensely powerful medium, as it uses the most important from of communication,the visual image, it is essential for us to try to decide whether it is ablessing or a curse. It demands complete & silent attention. It is death toconversation & normal two-way contact between individuals. It makes passivenon-participating spectators of us all. We begin to forget how to occupy ourspare time. Now all our free time is given to television. Obviously TV has bothadvantages & disadvantages. But to the former outweigh the latter. Reallyif there is a TV set in your home all you’ve got to do is to turn a knob, or toturn over to another channel or to turn the sound up & down, &you seeplays, films, operas & shows of every kind, not to mention politicaldiscussions & the latest exciting football matches. TV, it is often said,keeps one informed about current events, allows one to follow the latestdevelopments in science & politics &offers an endless series ofprogrammes, which are both instructive & stimulating. The most distantcountries & the strangest customs are brought right into our sitting room.You can hardly find a corner where one cannot receive radio or TV broadcasts.Hundreds of stations speaking in every language of the world fill the air. Radio& TV-n are undoubtedly, the quickest means of spreading news &information. What a great amount of information we get! We watch TV to be wellinformed. It gives wonderful possibilities for education. There areconsiderable variety of programmers & we can select what we want to see: afilm or a play, sport programmes, the latest news and so on. We find itpleasant to sit in our armchairs and glue to our sets & little by littlepeople get accustomed to this mode of life & are cut off from the real world.
Another kind of link between the public & the media is advertising.The mass media helps us with information about new goods & services. Butsome people are tired of advertisements & don’t like to see their favouritefilms or programmes interrupted by them. I hope some way will be found to solvethis problem. For example, there are 2 organizations providing TV & radioservices in Great Britain. The BBC is state-funded & there is ABC on latelyno advertising in BBC programmes, & in the programmes of the IndependentTelevision, the advertising is also restricted.
As for me & my family, we like the programme “My family”, I think itis a very useful one, because it gives us many examples how to live, how to actin different situations. I watch this programme with admiration.
So to my opinion, I’ll be quick right to say that the volume ofinformation in the modern world is tremendous, that is why we should decide forour selves what is really necessary & what may some day appear to beuseless.