Good news is bad news and bad news is good news, newsmen often say to one another. And when you look at the media it's only too easy to see what they mean. A dictionary definition of the media is mass communication, e.g. the press, television, radio. The media sees its main purpose as giving the public news. Naturally to provide the public with news, the media has first to gather it. The whole function and purpose of the media, then, seems to depend on the word 'news', but more important, on how the word is interpreted. The media like any big business venture today is an extremely competitive world of its own. In providing material for its public it has constantly to make sure it serves the right diet. No public will waste time on your paper or your TV channel otherwise. The sad truth is that there seems only one way to catch an audience—hit them right between the eyes. What started as a mild tap has now become a sledgehammer blow that goes by the name of sensationalism. A reporter chooses—has to choose—a news story because of its sensation value. The young inexperienced cub reporter rings his editor about a car crash. He starts to explain the details to him but the experienced editor asks the cub one question: 'Anyone killed?' and to himself he thinks, why do we offer jobs to children? One may accuse newsman of cynicism but they will quickly remind you of the hard facts of survival in the world of the media. The favorite words the newspaper placards in the streets bombard the public with are, 'Surprise, Sensation, Drama, Shock'. You wonder, when the papers batter the public with dramas and sensations day after day, that they haven't put an end to sensation long ago. As a regular newspaper reader you also thank Heavens for the light relief of the strips. Turn finally from them to what is referred to laughingly as 'steam radio', in order to show its relative antiquity. This for many millions of people is the only live contact they have with the outside world that tightly or wrongly they have been led to believe they should have contact with. It's extremely hard of course to see why, when for the most part its news services bring them tragedy, disaster, heartbreak, other people's misfortunes—in a word, trouble. What again becomes quickly apparent is that a man's job depends on sensationalism, and we are asked to excuse him for this. Perhaps the media hasn't quite grown up and we should congratulate it on getting this far. The year 2000 may see great changes in the way news is presented to us. Again, who knows, it might even get worse—if such a thing is possible. Perish the thought! According to the passage which is most important?