I call for all my friends and well-wishers to go through my latest write up on the Media..........
It is perhaps the everlasting greed of people for possessing enormous wealth which has given rise to the demand for the corporate world endlessly trying to grab media. The economy of the world has been growing each year, and so do the corporate world. And a few of the world population can be the privileged ones to be the owner of the overall wealth. But the problem is that the rich do not know what to do with the wealth they possess other than to use up lots of it to make sure it stays in their families. But in the long run, the ruthless reality of the social stratification is making an incessant gap between the rich and the poor. The administrators of the corporate world are not leaving any stone unturned to legitimize their assets by means of media they own in defence of their economic, political, and social stance.
Just a few questions can help us assume a pragmatic view of the media as controlled and manipulated. What is the nature of the media in a political system? How do the media function in the capitalist democracy? How is the corporate world connected to the media? How do the media work in favour of the elite class of the society by manifesting propaganda to manipulate public opinion? Certainly these questions can lead us to delve deep into the deformation in the guise of authenticity. In a country, particularly in a democratic country when the population cannot be forced to be in a common line with the interest of the ruler class, then the states run by the elite class make every attempt to subject the mass people to more subtle forms of ideological control. Media in every aspect should be democratized to get the population to take active part in social and political life. The state can look forward to taking this initiative to democratize the media along with the initiatives to develop more democratic institutions in the country.
I can put forth my argument here claiming that apart from playing an overseer role, the free press very often work in favour of those in power. In most of the cases the major media one way or another are corporations. In other words, media are the substitute for the corporations projected to deal in privileged elites to other business. Media keep hold of a very high connection, and it is on the rise over and over. It has been a very pervasive event that the personnel occupying white-collar positions in the media somehow belong to the identical privileged social nobility. And this elite class may be expected to share the perception, objective, and mind-set of their associates reproducing their own class interests as well. The journalists coming into this system are unlikely to curve their path if not they go with the same ideological pressure by internalizing the standards. In the event of doing otherwise, they are to be discarded.
The citizens may take on a course of intellectual resistance to shield themselves from the propaganda that the media predominantly speak of to help the ruling elite manipulate public opinion to serve their overall interest and to make them survive. There has always been a connection between democracy and media. If media can work independently, democracy of the state can be saved, and if the state ensures the presence of democracy and practices democracy, it triggers scope for the media to work from the impersonalised perspective. But there emerges the problem when the elite capitalists try to gain favour from the democratic rights in order to bring them unbridled financial gain. They, in that case, resort to manufacturing public consent in favour of their stance to materialize their ulterior motive. It is now a conspicuous fact that the elite own and control the media since the media play the imperative role to introduce new ideas and facts to the people ignorant of those facts and ideas. Media has, thus, undertaken the responsibility to sell propaganda and implant it in the public mind-set to provide the elite class with the life force.
Besides, the role of media is replete with hypocrisy since the media for its interest take a biased position to embody partial and subjective news to serve the client elite classes and states. For instance, if the Israelis invade the neighbouring countries, it is reasonable pursuit, but if the Taliban militant group conduct military operation to defend against the foreign military force, it is incursion and insists on reprisal. A trivial sum of disagreement is to be tolerated to make a display that the state and its agencies are liberal enough when confronted by the media, and it seemingly implies that the media are working with sheer independence to cause public to think that media by no means are influenced and prejudiced. Media keep up two aspects or components – domestic and international. To maintain its domestic or internal aspects, the media manipulate public opinion on behalf of the policy adopted by the government to legitimize the dominating role of the government and the state. The international aspect complies with the maintenance of the polygonal global trade to show a good image of the state and the government functioning within the universal capitalist system. The role in both the cases proves subjective as well.
One of the vital aspects of the media being the domestic or internal constituent intimidates public opinion in favour of the dominating policy set by the ruling elite, or the government, or the capitalist nobility. The media, as a consequence, exert a sinister and deceitful influence to develop a passive and subservient public mind in order to flatter the capitalist elite. This shortcoming of the media lies buried in the very capitalist system, and these shortcomings need to be changed structurally to democratize the course of ideas and information. What is more important to contemplate is that the media under the stern supervision of the elite class sketch the outline of argument so that the more crucial and essential issues of policy are never raised before the public. To speak frankly, it may be stated that the media monopolize the notions and mind-set of the mass people to refrain them from penetrating the issues related to the social, economic, and political system they are in.
Not only that, the economically powerful countries constantly strive to attribute their version of democracy to other nations knowing that it will at the end of the day benefit them. In doing so, they initially resort to the media to give a clean image of them to the global community, and subsequently they do not even have a second thought to carry out an outright illicit incursion to the countries full of natural resources. And today it is no more an obscured fact that media are the integral part of the government. The genres of media coming to the limelight in the course of a particular government are surely to be patronized by that very government. Once they have become the agents of the government complying with it, they are never seen raising questions about the policy of the government that it is served by. And Bangladesh proves no exception to that cliché.
Media allegedly hatch anomalous news to startle people to draw their heed to the media, but the media itself is seen finally conceiving enterprise to refute or prove false the very aberrant news presented by the media which people starts believing gradually. They, the media or the elite, play the role of a pioneer or harbinger by sweeping the abnormal news off from the public mind, for they want a clean image. The democracy we are practicing today is the elitist version of democracy hatched by the media working in support of the elite class.
That the media is systematically manipulated may have turned comprehensible to all in my effort of writing this article. No one is interested to speak of this reality owing to the fact that each of them is contented to have their opinions outlined in favour of his or her stance, if they are pleased socially and economically in particular. We can no longer lose sight of this issue, for the capitalist elite are ever ready there to come up with their propagandas to make us fool for the next century.
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