By Morten Roenberg and Martin Klint Hansen, WELLaarhus

The media is the glue that connects the constituents of our society. The government, businesses and individuals officially interact with each other through an intricate web of mass-media. Even so, there seems to be distortions in how the media on one side claims to speak the people's voice and, on the other side, throw themselves without contempt at a story that will make headlines, ignoring the effect on society.

Who controls the media?
The media must acknowledge the responsibility which pertains to its function. The media should not function as a second justice system or a revengeful mob. The individual may often be unaware of the fact that much media is owned by corporations who in turn might be slaves of Returns on Equity. But even in the case where the mass-media is independent of corporate financial goals, one must still be aware of what might motivate and drive many journalists. As many other human beings, the hope of self-realization may lead the journalist to put a slight twist on a story in order to make it more sensational.

Objectiveness and truthfulness a must
Journalists must acknowledge the importance of a strict objectiveness and truthfulness in their publications. Any example of not doing so may cause more harm than good. There is little doubt that journalists, of all people should be expected to distinguish between when they are portraying a story biased by their own beliefs and motivations, as opposed to when they are describing events from an unbiased, objective, point of view. There is little doubt that sensational stories sell more but then a clear distinction should be made between the less factious stories that sell more and the more objective stories that sell less.

The broader societal implications
The essence is that a story promoted and twisted with the sole purpose of selling more, or promoting the career of a journalist, may in fact not contribute to increasing the aggregate utility of our society, it may not help improve our standard of living and in some cases it may in fact destroy value.

Do journalists consider the implications of labeling an individual guilty when this is not the case?

Our law system does so; in fact it tries to minimize the probability of being sentenced if an individual is innocent.

This article aimed to question whether the media is fulfilling its responsibility towards the society in which it is engaged and whether we as individuals are critical enough towards information that we daily recognize as being objective and truthful.

The authors of this article do not believe that journalists are unethical individuals, but believe that a stricter focus and a greater responsibility should be placed on the mass-media organizations.