5/11 The bias caused by word choice and photo manipulation

Though today's class, we watched a news video by BBC explaining what is happening between Israel and Palestine. The news media included irrelevant words to express Palestine to give bad impressions towards the country while empathizing Israel's innocence when the reality is actually the opposite. I thought that it was an extremely unfair and vicious action done by the news station. However, I also wondered why the Americans supports Isarels as much. In addition, since America is an central country in the world, many countries who have relationships with the country including Japan, seems to be on isarels side as well. I thought this was a huge problems, since it means that the truth will be hidden throughout numerous countries, making it more and more difficult for people to understand the truth. In addition, I acknowledged that perhaps our class is one of the minorities who know.

Besides the video, we also saw how the media manipulated photos to change the impressions towards people and happenings. Since I often use photoshop and similar tools to create videos and posts, the topic felt very familiar for me. In addition, I was surprised by how much these tools can work positive or negative due to how people use it. I wondered wether the results of the american elections would have changed if such manipulated/caculated photos were extracted from the media. Such photo manipulations may have positive effects especially when it comes to supporting a intelligent leader. However, I strongly oppose using it for bias or to empathize fake information. For instance, such as the photoshop photo with the same man being manipulated; Such fake and deceiving manipulations should not be allowed. Overall, as one of the people among using these photoshop tools, I understood the risks of editing photos, and felt the responsibility to create unharmful/unbiased photo creations.