Claim It is no longer possible for a society to regard any living man or woman as a hero Reason The reputation of anyone who is subjected to media scrutiny will eventually be diminished

Role models functions as a valuable and indispensible component of the balanced development of a society, especially in this digit era of rapid advancement in technology and communication methods leading to more and more information previously unknown exposed to the general public. Indeed, along with the boom of media, particularly the internet media, celebrities who subjected to media scrutiny are likely going to suffer more intense scrutiny than before through the disclosure of their personal information. Nevertheless, to purport that the reputation of anyone who suffered the media scrutiny will definitely be diminished is to present an overly simplistic view.

It is true that with fast development of mass media, the extent and quality of reports about celebrity news appears especially inordinate today. Consequently, scandals and other negative news about public figures previously unknown get more chance to come to the masses. Due to people’s attention are focused more easily on these celebrity news rather than those social issues in economy or politic, some arguers claim that under this intense scrutiny of media nobody’s reputation could escape from destroying.

To further illustrate their position, the proponents may take some cases for example, such as the Wikileaks. Wikileaks is a website through which a tremendous amount of scandals have been exposed to the public all over the world. Information disclosed by Wikileaks reveals the masses a genuine and dark operation of the governments by exposing details about officials’ conversations and documents. Obviously, in this case the internet media played an absolutely passive role in the maintaining of government image, because large private conversation details were showed which contained many unpleasant personal assessments and view points.

At first glance, the statement above appears to be somewhat convincing, but further reflection reveals that it omits some substantial concerns that should be addressed, thus not cogent enough. In this argument, only reports and news about public figures’ passive image are taken into consideration, while positive information ought to be considered equally. Let us consider the wealthy person Bill Gates. Not only are his tremendous amounts of money and successful company available in the newspaper, but his charitable institution is reported and disseminated through the mass media.

Finally, whether the reputation and image of a person will be damaged by media scrutiny or not should be considered on circumstances, not principles alone. The careful scrutiny will only provides us with more available messages and details about a person, after all the judgment and evaluation are made by ourselves. Regardless of the positive reports about figures, to conclude that media scrutiny will only be destructive on anyone is unjustifiable.

There is a famous Chinese idiom underscoring the importance of a full analysis, “three men touching an elephant”, which tells that each one of them touched a body part of an elephant but failed to regard the elephant as an ensemble. By the same token, the balance between accepting both positive reports and passive scandals will ultimately serve to draw the correct conclusion.