Reaction Paper in English 2

Jay Ar O. Esencia BSBio(Gen.) 1

English 2-I4

Thesis Statement:

Mass media evolves in the life of individual nowadays, and its effects have the capacity of changing the human’s life.

A CRITIQUE OF THE CHILD OF MEDIA

The documentary film entitled “The Child of Media” narrated by Sr. Lucina Sarmiento, FSP shared the life’s experiences and insights of the new breed of people mutated to a world of mass media. It presented some statements and examples that described the effects brought by mass media. It showed how the people were involved and how their lives were changed due to increasing supremacy of media in the society. However, the documentary film elaborated some ideas which were considered agreeable or not for me as a viewer.

The first idea that I wanted to react on is the idea presented by Sr. Sarmiento, “media informs inaccurately.” I agree with this statement most of the time especially when I’m watching television news or reading newspapers and magazines. The news presented in the television or any forms of media were inaccurate because of the revisions done by the writers before they will publish it on newspapers and magazines or by the reporters before they will present it in the television and in radio. Some data were omitted because of these revisions. Also, the contents were accidentally or intentionally changed by the writer himself.

The second idea that I wanted to criticize is about the statement that media educates badly. We cannot deny the fact that there are many forms of media that affects the youth such as pornography. And it clearly indicates that media educates badly. But not most of the time we can say that media educates badly like for example the educational television or e-TV produced by ABS-CBN. It contains educational information in the field of Science and Technology, Mathematics, English, Values Formation, and Philippine History. This e-TV was distributed in most elementary schools nationwide and it was currently used by the elementary teachers as an educational tool for their pupils. This kind of promotion done by ABS-CBN was also permitted by Department of Education.

The third statement that I wanted to react on is the statement, “the child of media is a child of instant.” I strongly agree with that statement. Nowadays, many people were afraid of having effort or they don’t like to have effort while doing a work. They were not trained to effort so they were not involved in the process on how to do something. They do not know what to do during the times they are told to do something like cooking food for a family’s dinner. Instead, they will just go to a fast food restaurant to buy foods for dinner. Another one is the use of products which we considered instant such as instant noodles, instant coffee and canned goods. What we may not mindful of is that it contains some food additives like monosodium glutamate which may have negative side effects to our body. Sr. Sarmiento said, “how instant is an instant?” In my own opinion, it is like instant food goes to instant death.

The last idea I would like to criticize is the idea of Sr. Sarmiento’s definition of the two portraits of different generation. I strongly agree with her definition about the child of a book as a thinking child and the child of media as a feeling child. But I have something that I wanted to clarify; a book is a printed media and a form of media, isn’t it? How a book differs from media? How a child of a book differs from a child of media? I think there is a connection between the two. It is like media started even before there are no high-tech gadgets being introduced. It seems that a book is part of media evolution towards the humanity.

In summary, the ideas presented in the documentary film were considered true in the sense that we ourselves have been already affected by the massive influence of mass media. The ideas I criticized were just some of the points that took my attention and encouraged me to think critically. This reaction paper I made intends to point out flaw that I thought necessary to have valuable attention. It also aims to emphasize those ideas that clearly define the effects of mass media.