The introduction of this writing has a strong impact: “I’m paid to deceive”, “I cheat, bribe, and connive”. However, it was somehow unsurprising that there is a media manipulator. Are we really not aware of it? Or are we just having so much fun that we don’t care enough to be bothered about it? Blogs are one of the easiest ways to control the news. It doesn’t require connection, money, nor footsteps to follow, which is why bloggers have an easy start compared to other writers. This means that the bloggers have more opportunities to manipulate the story like how the writer quoted “manipulated this attention …went from nothing to something”. I believe this reveals the intimidating nature of the media and internet as it has immense power to control the crowd.
In order to maintain this power, online publications compete fiercely to get the stories first. It doesn’t matter if the news is accurate or not, it just has to be new. Furthermore, it is essential to have uploads regularly in a given time period – preferably several times a day – to not lose the audience. They even have a tight timeline which seems essential but puts a lot of pressure on creators – which might be another reason why blogs sometimes lie. Having a timeline might be because there are so many options available, as in blogs, to the audience since people easily start blogging. Hence, bloggers are desperate to get as much traffic as possible since traffic equals monetary profit. Upon this, I understand why bloggers consider viewership important, but I don’t agree with their methods. It seems superficial how they disregard accuracy. “You can trade up the chain for charity … or to create violence, hatred, and, even incidentally, death”. Hence, as an audience, we shouldn’t take this matter lightly. The Internet needs to distinguish between fake and truth when the boundary gets blurred, especially in blogs. This brings back to my previous questions. Are we really not conscious of it? Why do we choose to ignore it? What can we do to change this?