Media Background As USESCO insists, Freedom of expression is a fundamental element of the universal declaration of Human rights (2008, p. 3).

Media plays an instrumental role in expressing and communicating the publics view. It has redefined the human race after its existence since the 15th century (Fang, 2008, para. 1). On the contrary, media boosted its capability in the 20th century war after the invention of radio and television. Given that the introduction of the internet within the 90s has certainly busted the percipience and the presentation of reality among the masses. Perception and Reality The world was flat for everyone before Christopher Columbus discovered it was round in 1452 (Shearer & Shearer, 1998, para. 1). It was the reality and the fact at that time. No one perceived that it could be round as the world to our sight seems flat and no one opposed. As character Chistof in the Hollywood movie, Truman show, (1998) we accept the reality of the world with which we are presented. As a matter of fact, media plays a vital role in presenting the world surrounding us, thus it has an enormous impact of how we perceive the reality. How media operates Walter Lippmann mentioned in his book, public opinion that every organization are better sources of information. Therefore as they have a huge control over the access of facts, they can conceal the information by not telling about it. He named this feature the Manufacture of consent and further defined the concept that it can be modified to a huge extend. In fact he states that the phenomenon is useful in a democratic society. It ought to be died by now but it has only survived because now, it is based on analysis rather than in the rule of thumb. These necessary illusions are essential to the public (1922) Noam Chomsky famous as the most important intellectual alive along with his fellow co-Author Edward S. Herman, entitled their book Manufacturing consent after referring to Lippmanns work in which both authors along with crucial observations, introduced the propaganda model. This model consists of 5 media filters explained below. It is important to learn about the first three filters to have a better understanding of how media works.

Ownership Ownership of the media does take over content of the media and often eludes the interests of the public towards the interests of the dominant ownership. John Pilgar was a well-known journalist who worked for a paper famous for its enrichment of average people called the mirror for 20 years. After the dominant cooperate owner Robert Maxwell took over. Soon the approach of the paper changed and after 18 months, Pilgar was fired. As we also could observe, almost all of our telecasting companies are owned either by government or well-known businessman. Are our perceptions are either by the government or a well-known businessman. Are our perceptions on the happenings with the country focused on the true reality? (Chomsky & Herman, 1988). Advertising The only income generator of the media industry is by advertising. If companies refuses advertise, it would lead to failure of the channel or publisher and soon the news would get shut down. The advertising companies are often the dominant companies or the so called elites of the society. They would encourage the media to promote their interests so the peoples opinion us soon disappeared. In the US, a study which held on 1992 found the advertisers tries to interfere the content of newspapers. (Cromwell, 2002) Sourcing Almost all the companies of media seek information from major sources of information (Cromwell, 2002). This helps to shape the perceptions of the public to a limited perceptions of reality as no other angle of the stories are taken into account. In Maldives, the government television TVM depended its news on Reuters on external affairs. Media perception of Beauty In the more developed countries the ideal female physique as shown by the media has become thinner within the past 40 years or so. The average fashion model is 23% thinner than an average model now though it was only up to 8 X twenty-five years ago. A review of series of studies named The effect of experimental presentation of thin media images an on body satisfaction concluded that the body images of people were impressively negative after seeing thin media images. A research held by Harvard University observed the effects of media on women. Before

television arrived in 1995, the ideal body weight was high. As a matter of fact, Fijians believed that weight loss is an issue if concern. Yet well after three years from the introduction of television, 12.7% to 29.2% of the subjects of the research confirmed themselves of being too big or fat. This clearly demonstrates that exposure to media showing attractive females results to adapt specially womens perception of their body. This is also referred as the contrast effect (Sigman, 2010). Stereotyping in media Stereotyping is very common in media today. Stereotyping is judging individuals or group without knowing them. Mostly stereotypes are often accounted by Racial, Sexual and gender remarks (your Dictionary, 2013). Most of the movies, Tv programs among others, portraits the stereotypes as they have been famous. Such as all Muslims are terrorist, all Jesus are greedy, all Asians are good at math etc. Eg:- media often depictures men as string, hard hearted, having a nice car with two woman besides him and being very athletic as ideal. They fail to portray men with loving and caring to the families are not fit to be portrayed as () ideal characteristic of men, stereotypes such as this are negative because it shapes the ideologies of the public to one direction so the public would prejudice the given stereotypes. This would lead to numerous discomforts. Sports and media. Unlike other prospective, the percipience in reality of sports is very much limited to one main reality. This is insofar as there is only one ultimate reality and it is the reality of the results of a match or confrontation. In every bout, the result is only either a win, loss or a draw. Moreover the result is also measured numerically for an example, Real Madrid won against Barcelona, 2 goals to 1. As there is only one way of determining the results the chances of perceiving other views are negligible. However, as in other fields, media influences the minds of the masses to perceive the events of sports. Nowadays it seems that the 4th time Ballen d or award winner and the Barcelonas striker Lionel Messi and the Portuguese and Real Madrids midfielder Cristiano Ronaldo are at competition with each other. It is undisputable that both the players playing in rival clubs are indeed the best footballers on the surface of the earth. Both of them stresses that they play for the benefit of their tem as it is a team sport. More importantly, Messi denies the

competition and claims that anything that happens comes from the media, the papers, who want to duel between us (ESPN, 2012, p .3). Newsworthiness Media often alters its prospective to other directions simply by hiding certain events which they consider unworthy for the news and presents other useless information or news as newsworthy. This way the public becomes more aware of what the media presents and tends to forget what is being untold. As a matter of fact, these news is mostly of the interests of the elites or the owners of big coorporations (Cyber Ollege Internet Compus, 2012). Although news worthiness depends on certain factors such as timeless, proximity, conflict, human interest and consequences most of the times the worthy news seems to be neglected by the mainstream media. A study undertaken by a group known as If Americans knew showed significant imbalance in the reporting deaths of Palestine and Israel; children in 2004 by the media. Although the number of deaths in 2004 from conflicts result t o have 179 Palestine and only 8 Israeli children the associated press confirmed the exact opposite. They reported 113% of Israeli Children deaths only 15% of the Palestine childrens death. This clearly shows how much media can after the reality (If Americans Knew , 2006). Vocabulary of media If you look closely, you would identify that media has its own use of vocabulary while referring certain events or such. This proves the viewers a different outline of the news other than the reality. To understand this better, take a look at how the media displays the Palestine and Israel conflict in terms of use of media vocabulary. You would be shocked to find that the media is so biased on the Israeli side that they refer the Israeli side with some lenient words although it actually is a military occupation, media tells that it is Israeli settlement accruing in the west bank and the Gaza strip. Moreover, Palestines are stereotyped as terrorist, or stone thrower while Israeli attacks are regarded as acts of self-defense or for economic or security measures these careful terminologies provokes the mind of the public to be based as they are blind to the hidden reality.

Conclusion As the media industry is growing and broadening, it takes own its own perception of the reality. New ways of media is continuously sweeping into the public. The most recent form of media is the social media. With the information and exposition of internet has lead everyone to be part of the media via social media websites such as facebook, twitter among others. So it is vital for us to clarity every information we get from the media. It is compulsory to check both the sides of then story In order to gain a proper prospective of the reality. We need to avoid being victims of hidden messages, hidden worthy stories. Stereotypes portrayed in the media, vocabularies provoked so that we get the maximum understanding of all the matters.