Can the media ever be relied upon to convey the truth?

Can the media ever be relied upon to convey the truth? Discuss this in the light of the arguments raised in this article and substantiate your arguments with your own examples.

From the article, it seems as though that media should never be trusted to convey the truth. However, I think this is only true to a certain extent.

In the article, it is stated that the media publish articles according to the 3 'P's, Popularity, Prejudice and Profit, with Profit being the most important. It also provided several examples such as the exaggeration of facts by corporate-controlled news media on the Iraqi war to boost profits. Another instance is that interviews carried out by reporters are usually edited before publishing, unless the interviews are aired live. All these showed that medias are willing to publish articles as long as it is advantageous to them, such as giving them higher profit or higher popularity. Also from the article, it also showed the presence of bribery in the cases of Armstrong Williams being paid $240,000 and Maggie Gallagher being paid $21,500 for publishing articles that aided in the actions of the briber. All of the above illustrate the inability to rely on the media to convey the truth. Not only these, the article even showed the lack of truthfulness in the media by stating that “ in today’s America, people who want real news or honest criticism are better served by not watching “news” programs at all.”

However, I think that the media can be relied on to convey the truth to a certain extent.

One instance would be that if a media source keeps on portraying unreliable information about news, people can compare the news with other sources of information. When it is eventually shown that the media source has a poor reputation of providing false information to the public, this will in fact reduce the number of subscribers to that source of news, hence reducing profit. Thus, news provider is unlikely to provide untruthful news. Ultimately, what media sources are demanding for is higher profit.