More and more people today give up newspapers and TV and turn to the Internet for news about the world. I think this trend is both positive and negative.
On the one hand, news from the Internet can be spread at fast speed and large scale. With the Internet, people from any corner of the world can have quick access to what is going on in all places, ranging from big cities such as New York and Shanghai, to some remote villages in Africa. This is an advantage that traditional media such as newspapers and TV do not enjoy.
On the other hand, self-media news is more likely to mislead readers. The news obtained from the internet is more narrow and shorter than that obtained from newspapers, magazines and television programmes, and therefore the coverage and description of what happened may be inaccurate, thus causing the reader to have an incomplete understanding of the whole event, even misleading. The Internet is a platform where almost anyone can publish information, and some news outlets may not have the full picture. Instead, newspapers could run longer, more in-depth feature articles for the full reader. Traditional media have a very strict censorship system, which avoids the spread of one-sided and false information.
In my view, though getting news through the Internet may involve certain problems, especially in terms of its accuracy and objectivity, its speed and scale are the advantages that we can never disregard. Turning to the Internet for news is perhaps an irreversible trend and a positive development as well today in a society that emphasizes Information effectiveness. Consequently, the government should make rules to improve the quality of online news, and we should also sharpen our eyes and learn to discern real news from fake ones.