Model Essay

It has often been said that 'Good news is bad news' because it does not sell newspapers. A radio station that once decided to present only good news soon found that it had gone out of business for lack of listeners. Bad news on the other hand is so common that in order to cope with it, we often simply ignore it. We have become immune to bad news and the newspapers and radio stations are aware of this.

While newspapers and TV stations may aim to report world events accurately, be they natural or human disasters, political events or the horrors 'of war, it is also true that their main objective is to sell newspapers and attract listeners and viewers to their stations. For this reaason TV and radio stations attempt to reflect the flavour of their station by providing news broadcasts tailor-made to . suit their listeners' preferences. Programmes specialising in pop music or TV soap operas focus more on local news, home issues and up-to-date traffic reports. The more serious stations and newspapers like to provide ‘so called’ objective news reports with editorial comment aimed at analysing the situation.

If it is true, then, that newspapers and TV stations are tailoring their news to their readers' and viewers' requirements: how can they possibly be reporting real world events in an honest and objective light? Many radio and TV stations do, in fact, report items of good news but they no longer call this news. They refer to these as human interest stories and package them in programmes specialising, for instance, in consumer affairs or local issues. Good news now comes to us in the form of documentaries: the fight against children's cancer or AIDS, or the latest developments in the fight to save the planet from environmental pollution.






Computers are a relatively new invention. The first computers were built fifty years ago and it is only in the last thirty or so years that their influence has affected our everyday life. Personal computers were introduced as recently as the early eighties. In this short time they have made a tremendous impact on our lives. We are now so dependent on computers that it is hard to imagine what things would be like today without them. You have only got to go into a bank when their main computer is broken to appreciate the chaos that would: occur if computers were suddenly removed world-wide.

In the future computers will be used to create bigger and even more sophisticated computers. The prospects for this are quite alarming. They will be so complex that no individual could hope to understand how they work. They will bring a lot of benefits but they will also increase the potential for unimaginable chaos. They will, for example, be able to fly planes and they will be able to co-ordinate the movements of several planes in the vicinity of an airport. Providing all the computers are working correctly nothing can go wrong. If one small program fails - disaster.

There is a certain inevitability that technology will progress and become increasingly complex. We should, however, ensure that we are still in a position where we are able to control technology. It will be all too easy to suddenly discover that technology is controlling us. By then it might be too late. I believe that it is very important to be suspicious of the benefits that computers will bring and to make sure that we never become totally dependent on a completely technological world.