The media is subservient to the happenings of the world, and there are major events that happen over the years that can be considered turning points in the way the media world spins.
Between 1914 and 1918, World War 1 contributed a lot for newspapers as more and more people wanted to stay abreast with happenings in Europe and sales experienced an unprecedented spike.
World War 2, from 1939 to 1945, became the era of the radio as people tuned in live to listen to the famous broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow narrate the bombing of London.
The Vietnam War, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, was really the boom of photojournalism as pictorial news magazines made their mark in the world.
The first Gulf War in Iraq occurring from 1990 to 1991 was the era of television news as we saw how 24 hour news channels fed live broadcasts of bombings into people's living rooms.
The next major incident that happened changing the face of media was the 9/11 terrorists' attack on the World Trade Centre in New York City.
Traditional media like newspapers, television and radio were almost totally ignored as people turned online to the Internet to get immediate alerts of what was unfolding in New York.
That was the tipping point for the online news, and twenty plus years on since that day, the Internet is now the main source of news for the world community.
In fact, traditional news outlets such as newspapers are suffering so much from the switch in audience's habits that they are facing a major financial crisis and many have even closed shop.
And now it looks like the media world is facing another tipping point that is going to change the way the world community consumes their news and information and of how news organisations will create their content.
This will be the time when established news media organisations will have their legitimacy challenged as they are pitted with conspiracy theories that are spread online by the public.
It gets quite difficult to differentiate between the credible and the implausible as it isn't difficult to design a site and write something that sounds legit.
Plus the fact that the public seems to be more gullible and susceptible to all kinds of unconfirmed information when it is online just make things more complicated.
Of course it's been in the works for quite a while now - how online media has become a nest of conspiracy theories, false information and one-sided agenda-filled news.
But the mysterious and unprecedented disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on 8 March has become the nudge that has made the balance tip over the edge for that long drop down.
With the entire world's attention now on the story, it seems that any information that is considered to be confirmed by the authorities is now untrustworthy and even the slightest inconsistency will be fodder for accusations and speculations.
The legit media organisations are so desperate in wanting to keep the story alive that they have resorted to digging deep into the bottom of the barrel for content that it can be quite difficult to differentiate between them and the implausible ones.
All kinds of experts and sources whether credible or not are unearthed just so there can be a discussion of what could have happened, no matter how plausible or remote the chances of it happening may be.
But it can't be helped because of how the information has been so slow in coming out. Whether it is a deliberate cover up or because the findings are genuinely difficult to obtain by the authorities, we really can't be sure.
Now, as the whole story has already dragged on for a month (and it looks like it might go on for so much longer), we can also really only just go with the flow and see how the media will try to keep it alive.
As far as the media is concerned, this will be the era of how the media will attempt to create substantial content out of the limited trickling of unsubstantial information. This will either make or break the credibility and integrity of the industry.
Zan Azlee
Thu Apr 10 2014
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