THE TWIN ROLE OF THE MEDIA;WAHT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE MEDIA

The mass media are mechanical devices that transmits messages to large anonymous of people. The media does not include TV, Radio and Newspaper alone, but also the people, policies and the organizational structure that contributes to production. There’s no doubt that without the media in today’s world, man would still be living in the Stone Age surrounded with no information about his environment. The emergence of the media especially from the Guttenberg’s era has led to massive transformation and evolutions around the world. Can you imagine a world without social media, radio or television?

The plays an important role in every fabric of our society from politics, gender, economic, cultural to entertainment.
The media has been able to take on the role of professional intellectuals, providing energy for social movements and helping create awareness. Imagine what would have happened without the media?
The media explain legal and economic jargons to the ordinary audience/viewer/readers to appreciate and understand complex issues.

The media also sets the agenda and mobilizes people for developmental actions thus, playing central role in achieving development goals in every country. The media indeed is vital institution for societal change, policy formation, teaching, learning, promotion of culture, alienation of negative culture.

These are all vital functions every Nation needs its media to carry-out for national development and societal progress. Despite these roles however, the media plays another role in a subtle yet impactful in terms of its outcome and effects on the people.

The media plays a role as a major institutions in the economic and political fabric of our society. This the philosophical underpinnings of the media houses. The political and economic philosophy of a media house determines how it influences its audience towards a particular arrangements. In Ghana for example, almost all the media houses are align to liberal policies of governance and politics and thus, they tend to have sympathy for the NPP party. This can partly be attributed to the repeal of the criminal libel law by the Kuffour administration that led to the spread of many media houses. This philosophies influence the media to support the political establishments and neglect the subalterns to whom the media is suppose to represent.

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The Media also plays a double role of serving as a vehicle for advertisers by linking the world of production to the world of consumption. The media has become part of the global economy where there’s no moral in the conducting of business. Audience has become a commodity for the media housed instead of being a source of value. Audience are package and sold to advertisers on news-hour and this has become hypodermic needle effect on the audience thus, promoting consumerism of goods that ordinarily would not purchase. Media owners and advertisers are those who control whatever we watch and perceive the world to be to the extent of telling us what to think about even in your little corner. This has helped the oligarchs and profiteering conglomerates to milk the system and control information flow. There are several scandals we do not hear because it is about high profile personalities and if published, would not benefits the profiteers.

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In essence, the media has become a guard dog for the ruling class reverberating their whimsies instead of serving as a watchdog for the public. You need to know that the media is not there to serve you with news alone, but there are several politics at play even before a news item is broadcast to you. The media is highly influence by it's advertisers, owners, ideologies of the media, as well as the power structures within the media house itself. The media today, has become much powerful and thus, needs to be scrutinize and looked at again in-terms of their role of serving the people or the political establishments.