My initial thoughts and first response to How Canadians Communicate IV can be summarized under three different topics; how can news influence people’s lives and why they are not willing to pay for news, do people have enough trust in the news and what is the world look like after the last newspaper is read?
In general politicians are trying to control people's mind in order to achieve more power. One of the best ways to do so is to scare people about their future and to make them believe the politician have the solution! This is usually being done through media and by exaggerating -or even false- news! Therefore, what we hear on TV and generally in the news are some worrisome news that comes to us in different forms. For many people who are hearing and accepting the news without any research and without analyzing it, this is sufficient to vote for the politician who talks better! In this situation I do not see any reason for people to pay for the news. This is even more defendable when it comes to the younger generations. As it is stated in the book "how Canadian communicate" the young generation want the news fast, free and direct to the point. Moreover, with more available entertainment it is less likely that people are interested in politics or going out to vote. Therefore, the younger generation that has access to all these gadgets to play with are less likely to pay for news at all.
Beside the fact that there is less chance that people want to pay for news, people do not have a lot of trust in the news broadcasted by the media. Especially after 911 and the following wars that happened based on false news people have lost their trust in the media and the influence of the media might have drooped. This makes it even harder for media to sell news as one of their major products. In an attempt to better why the news industry may soon “sink like a stone”, I would like to examine one challenge the traditional media face; asking people to pay for news they receive. There are two possible viewpoints on why young people do not pay for news: either they do not feel that the news they would be paying for is worth the money they would spend and is not changing their lives in a good way, or they feel that they should not pay for one source of news when they can get a comparable substitute from a competing source because of lack of trust.
According to above-mentioned book " The stark reality today is that every medium is merging with every other medium, every medium is becoming every other medium, and all media are merging on the Internet. Most critically, a new generation of digital natives, those who have grown up with web-based media, is no longer subject to a top-down, command-and-control media system in which messages flow in only one direction." which makes it even more difficult for people to distinguish between the reality and false news. This might result in more people resulting their trust in what they receive from media and what they hear on the news.
News has direct effect on people's lives. David Tras and Christopher Waddel say in their book that " Once a trend or idea becomes firmly implanted within a culture, it is only a matter of time before it permeates and affects public policy." I believe people are more aware of this fact these days which makes them more cautious about what they hear. Having said that, I have a hard time to believe that this might make people to pay for the news. However, in some levels of the society or between highly educated people we might be able to find some cases that are willing to pay for news that are coming from a trusted sources.
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