Wait, You Don't Really Care, Do You?

Discourse, from the Latin discursus, is defined by Wikipedia as the written or spoken communication or debate. How then can we relate that to a discourse community. Simple: a discourse community is a group of people who discuss and debate on certain issues. In our class we have been focusing solely upon debate through news. But how can we be sure that the debates and communications are truthful? How can we trust the author who writes for our behalf, so that we may know the news of today?

One way is to take into consideration the amount of popularity the blog/news site has. Most of the time, but not all, the website’s popularity may be a good indication of how much viewers trust what they are reading. Of course, there are instances in which viewers are seeking out the bizarre and potentially untrue, like for instance in the tabloids. But, I believe it is safe to say that a viewer would not be inclined to trust a site if its main heading was that aliens landed on the planet or of what color underwear your favorite celebrity was wearing. Usually we would uphold the idea that celebrity news and world news are mutually exclusive.

So, what do we care? Well, we wonder at how accurate our news coverage is, and we wish it to be strictly facts. We even seek out the author’s background: prior work, knowledge about the field of study, and the like. However, we seek out the controversial headlines. Each of us is drawn towards the upsetting. An example is an article in Big Government entitled, “Rush or Reverend Al?...Will the Real Racist Please Stand Up?” I was drawn toward reading this article. Why? Because the title hinted at a very controversial subject, controversial and thereby entertaining.

Thus, I wonder if it really does matter that a news source be truthful. Would we care if the author of a tabloid had gone to prison for four years, or would that just add to the effect? Yet, we couldn’t stand the idea that a reporter for a strictly news source had even thought about putting his beliefs into a news story. Why?