subject: Not All The Reputation Will Be Diminished [print this page] Not all the reputation will be diminished
Someone points out that "The reputation of anyone who is subjected to media scrutiny will eventually be diminished." I dsagree.
The intensity of todays media coverage has been greatly magnified by the sheer number and types of media outlets that are available today. Intense competition for the most revealing photographs and the latest information on a subject has turned even minor media events into so-called "media frenzies". Reporters are forced by the nature of the competition to pry ever deeper for an angle on a story that no one else has been able to uncover. With this type of media coverage, it does become more and more likely that anyone who is subjected to it will have his or her reputation tarnished, as no individual is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. The advances in technology have made much information easily and instantaneously available. Technology has also made it easier to dig further than ever before into a persons past, increasing the possibility that the subjects reputation may be harmed.
The above statement is much too broad, however. "Anyone" covers all people all over the world. There are people whose reputations have only been enhanced by media scrutiny. There are also people whose reputations were already so poor that media scrutiny could not possibly diminish it any further. There may very well bea ball mill workerthat have done nothing wrong in the past, at least that can be discovered by the media, whose reputations could not be diminished by media scrutiny. To broadly state that "anyone" subjected to media coverage will have his or her status sullied implies that everyones reputation worldwide is susceptible to damage under any type of media scrutiny. What about children, particularly newborn children? What about those people whose past is entirely unknown?
Another problem with such a broad statement is that it does not define the particular level of media scrutiny. Certainly there are different levels of media coverage. Does merely the mention of ones name in a newspaper constitute media scrutiny? What about the coverage of a single event in someones life, for example a wedding or the birth of a baby? Is the media coverage of the heroic death of a firefighter or police officer in the line of duty ever going to diminish that persons reputation? It seems highly unlikely that in these examples, although these people may have been subjected to media scrutiny, these individuals reputations are undamaged and potentially enhanced by such exposure.
