托福独立写作：媒体类话题

话题分类：媒体类话题

　　考题回忆：

　　Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Nowadays the media (TV, newspaper, Internet) are less concerned about the accuracy of news than in the past, and the incorrect information may cause problems to the public.

　　解题思路：

　　Agree

　　1. Media focus too much on the timeliness of the news report.

　　2. Media want to attract more audience by using sensational headlines.

　　3. This may breed rumors and reinforce stereotypes.

　　参考范文：

　　For decades, people have been getting news about the world via newspapers, radio and TV. Recently, they have even be given a new choice– the internet, which allows even quicker spread of information. However, despite the rapid development of modern media, the information they provide is less accurate than before, and such inaccuracy has led to a series of problems.

　　One of the reasons why media nowadays are less concerned with accuracy is their ardent focus on timeliness, a quality deemed most important by readers today. Not long ago, people were content with obtaining information on incidents that happened several days if not weeks ago; these days, however, they are not satisfied with a time lag of hours. This means that journalists or correspondents are often not granted with enough time to take a deep look into the news event or to conduct a thorough investigation into the matter before publishing it. In this case, it really poses a challenge to keep the content accurate. For example, news today can be as short as several words, which is then developed into a full-length passage. However, for those readers who have only got the chance to read the first draft, the information they derive from the report can hardly be called accurate.

　　Another reason is that media nowadays want to attract more audience by using sensational headlines. Again, as the users today value efficiency more than anything else, they will not linger on any piece of news for more than a few seconds. More often than not, it is the sensational headlines that have successfully lured the readers to click on the news report and read on. In order to pander to the customers, the news agencies have no choice but to exaggerate the information or distort the truth a bit. In contrast, news reports in the past were comparatively fewer, and readers those days tended to take hours to read every article in a newspaper. The news agencies had to win their customers via quality content, rather than eye-catching headlines and fabricated stories.

　　Actually, the inaccuracy of information provided by today’s media has given rise to some problems. One negative result is that news these days may breed rumors. For example, one report which linked a stampede with a promotion strategy of a bar had fueled a great many rumors about the stampede being caused by greedy people competing to get banknotes handed out by that bar. The fact, however, was that these two incidents had no causal relation. Another consequence is that biased news tends to reinforce stereotypes. This often comes with news that labels people and social groups. A typical example is the negative image of mothers-in-law, who are portrayed by some biased news as money worshiping and snobbish. Problems like these could have been avoided if the report had been more accurate.

　　In conclusion, news nowadays are indeed less accurate than before, and this has lead to some problems like rampant rumors and reinforced stereotypes.