issue60 谢谢g友耐心修改修改

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TOPIC: ISSUE60 - "The media-and society in general-mistakenly expect an individual to speak for a particular group, whether or not that individual truly represents the views of the entire group."
WORDS: 644          TIME: 0:45:00          DATE: 2007-8-15

In such a society stating efficiency and effectiveness, trying to find one individual to stand for a particular group is reasonable, with the purpose of getting an immediate but also common response on one subject. Though such method has its merits to some extent, personally, I agree with the speaker that most of the time, such expectance is mistaken. Instead, the media -and society in general should enlarge the number rather than one individual to get a better comprehensive and through opinion which represent the whole group.

To begin with, the method in this topic is born with the development of the society, asking for efficiency and effectiveness, and has its merits sometimes. Efficiency along with effectiveness are the aim of modern society, through every sphere of the society, from schools to companies, to governments, results of intensified competition. In such an environment, people are eager to get a quick answer to different questions, such phenomenon is exaggerated by information highway: the Internet, cellphones. To provide the public with the latest information, crucial for success in competition, the media-and society in general-struggle for the quickest way, putting the exactness and reliability in an second place. Then facing the big population of one group, they wish to pick out one individual to truly speak out the views of the entire group. Admittedly, such method has its merits when the question is only about the common condition in the group, questions that almost everyone agree with the answer, for example, how often they rest in a week, whether the working condition is nice, how much their salary is. Generally speaking, the correspondents can find satisfying answers to such questions.

However, more often than not, such methods are not reliable. For one thing, not every question the media feel curious is so simple that members of the group will agree with. Take the hot issue--Clone technique for example. You can hardly find two persons holding the same attitude, due to their different moral and ethics value as well as their preference to the science and technology. For another, one person is not enough to represent the general three groups on one issue. When coming to a complex topic, generally, there are three opinions: approving, disapproving, and different (or having no idea). In such a situation, it seems ridiculous to wish one individual holding three attitudes for one question. Consequently, such method loses a larger picture.

Then, is there a better way to reach the goal of efficiency and effectiveness? There should be some compromise between the thorough interviewing every member for his/her opinion and choosing one individual for the whole group. On one hand, it is not practical to ask every member's opinion with a large group. Given the correspondent wishes to find some view in a large company or factory with more than 100 members, if he/she determines to get everyone's opinion, result is his/her work losing value as one character of news is in time, or his/her boss is unsatisfied with his/her efficiency, therefore has no tend to increase his/her salary, or promote his/her position. On other hand, though opinions are different in one group, we audiences are not interested in pouring our dear time into the details of each individual, again, efficiency is important.

Then what to do? According to the theory of statistics, the media can randomly choose samples of a suitable size to represent the group. The size of the sample is determined by the size of the group. Given there are 100 people, generally speaking, a sample of 30 interviewers is appropriate. Also, the size can be altered according to the purpose of the survey. Say, if the media wants to represent the three general opinion: approving, disapproving, and indifference, maybe three people is enough.

All in all, though the media is pursuing efficiency, one individual is far from enough in many cases.
虽然最近在追求长结尾和长开头，这个时间不够，未能如愿！！！