“The media should be blamed for its unhealthy paparazzi culture and going to the extreme for sensational news, how far do you agree?”
I agree mostly. Of course I have read sensational news; on Yahoo, MSN, the search engine's start page always has news with catchy titles. About sex, money, beauty, common attention-pullers.
The media, as described by Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh, is "judge, jury and prosecution". I think that means the media likes to find stories and judge the celebrity in question based on the story. Journalists are good at manipulating words. And at first exaggeration and such made the people want to read more. But they did not mind because celebs are high-profile people and royals are important people, and people high on the social strata are known to have little privacy.
The thing about the news media is that everyone can sell the same story, but how many can make it delicious? Take for example the phone-hacking scandal from the News of the World, the British public have shown their disgust over the stories of the murdered girl or dead soldiers. But before NotW got busted, Britons were still reading their paper. How could you mask the moral scent of such a filthy act? Through the power to give the public their articles with your say as final. And authoritative.
I think in Singapore our media is honest enough, although being government controlled, enough is debatable. But in other countries like Britain, independent press has caused this unhealthy culture.
But the public has to be blamed too. This massive invasion of privacy is also caused by photojournalists, or citizens with a camera phone. For example, STOMP, Singapore's gossip portal has its articles in the "Singapore Seen" section collated from pictures taken by the public. Its that kind of kiasuness, or want of censorship, when everyone wants that kick from an exposé . The media is more like the headquarters.
On its own, without demand from readers, the news media would not have such underhanded means to create supply. So the public is fueling the sins of the media.
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