24/7 news media

Both article, “Conflict and control: The war in Afghanistan and the 24-hour news cycle” and “Live TV and Bloodless deaths: War, infotainment and 24/7 news” reflect the same issue, constantly generating media, with different perspectives. Kieran Baker, the author of “Conflict and control: The war in Afghanistan and the 24-hour news cycle,” approached the writing as a diary while Daya Kishan Thussu, the author of “Live TV and bloodless deaths: War, infotainment and 24/7 news” approach it more informative and factual.

Baker as a journalist expressed her feelings and personal experiences in Afghanistan. Baker’s approach was a lot easier for readers to understand her feelings and her sentiments based on what she saw and what she heard in the country. “My most vivid memory if of a boy, maybe eleven or twelve, coming up to me and asking if I could teach him English. He said that he had had to learn in secret with a woman teacher and when I asked him how life was here in Heart, he just looked at me with desperate eyes,” makes us understand the author as a person. She had to go to Afghanistan with other journalists because audience’s longing to see the real Afghanistan in a fearful situation. With her sharing her little stories in Afghanistan enables readers be more emotional and sympathetic.

Thussu’s approach was slightly different from Baker’s approach. Thussu helped us understand the situation more objectively as a reader. Thussu criticized the trend of news being ongoing for 24/7. Readers are not necessarily able to understand the situation emotionally but it has more information, which complete the Baker’s diary-style journal article. Thussu effectively expresses how it is very stressful to live report. “The pressure to be first with the news can create a tendency among news channels to sacrifice depth in favour of the widest and quickest reach of live news to an increasingly heterogeneous audience,” clearly states how the tendency of being fast and competitive news channel completely destroys quality of the news. However, the tendency of readers or watchers to seek for the channel that can bring information as quick as possible is inevitable. As a viewer, it is unavoidable to search for the news that can provide information as quick and much as possible because we cannot in reality watch what happens all around the world, which possibly affects us indirectly.

What Thussu claims is true that viewers seek progressively more theatrical news and that is why sometimes news can be not as factual as it should be. Viewers are getting increasingly dull to dramatic stories. War is one of the most dramatic stories in the world and viewers do desire to see thrilling pictures. Thussu states that “war on television that have emerged over the last decade of war reporting, which demonstrate the tendency of sing entertainment formats: video/computer-game style images of surgical strikes by ‘intelligent’ weaponry; arresting graphics and satellite pictures.” War is depicted as a movie somewhere in the world for viewers outside of the country holding the war. Baker’s writing efficaciously allowed us to understand the disastrous effects of war more emotionally while Thussu enabled us to see the reality of possibly of low-quality news due to the viewers’ desire.