Media Today… A Mind Manipulation

There is a famous dictum by Malcolm X that, “The media is a powerful entity on Earth.
They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and
that is power because they control the minds of the masses.” It can let you believe a
single lie because a lie spoken 100 times becomes greater than a truth. It can tempt
you to buy a product even you don’t need it. It can even manipulate your way of
thinking. Then, what is media? Media refers to the communication channels in which
we share and get information. It includes magazines, physical and online newspapers,
televisions, radios, cell phones and other devices used for communication.

In the old days, media had a few threats to fear but today’s generation, nothing can
escape exaggeration, distortion and fabrication. This is possible because of the word
internet. The world is at the tip of our fingers. With just one click, we can already access
to various information without going outside our rooms. Self-promotion, spreading
information whether it’s fake or true via social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram,
Youtube and other platforms has recently provided as an alternative to the traditional
way of receiving information. The idea of creating and selecting the kind of information
has steadily become more attractive that make us more hooked in using our gadgets.

Observe the people around you. We often see people chatting face to face. Everyone
keeps looking at their screens even they are talking or walking down the stairs. Everyone
walks with their heads down and no one sees how beautiful the sky is. There’s a saying
that “Whoever controls the media, controls the people.”The media has a big impact on
society, whether it is negative or positive. We are like puppets waiting for our string to be
pulled or like a robots waiting to be programmed. Everyone is in on the game. The lure
of infinitely scrolling feeds and refresh to update is too appealing for anyone to resist.
When everyone is running the same path, the line between the real and the fake
becomes indistinguishable.

The philosophy of Plutarch which is to be a good role model best apply in this topic it is
because everyone seems getting lost on who to follow. Lots of people who were
idolized by many. Some were good some were not. Plutarch’s philosophy encouraged
us to have a good role model where we can imitate and emulate his/her good deeds.
Role models have an astounding effect on the lives of young people in our society. A role model has the
ability to shape the views, ideals, and actions of a young person. Role models help youth to discover
how they wish to become in the future. The influence that role models have over young people is
tremendous. It is important for role models to be positive and responsible in instilling good morals and
values because future generations are directly dependent on the role models of today. Each of us can
be a controller in media because we can share any information and without realizing
that we can be a good role model to others.

Another Philosopher is
In conclusion, the effects of media manipulation on society as a whole are so vast that we may not be
currently comprehending the whole picture. But, if we know that media manipulation has an adverse
effect on those who participate in the making of reality shows, leads viewers towards dangerous
situations without educating them properly, twists the truth so that it deliberately propagates specific
political agendas through news and entertainment programs alike, and promotes obesity and related
disease through unhealthy promotional advertising, why are we continuing to allow ourselves to lose
touch with reality? At what point do we stand up and demand reform–or, will we just sit idly by and
allow ourselves and each other to continue to be brainwashed every time we turn on the television? It
seems as though the powers that be, those who can afford to pay for production and advertising, are
not looking out for the general welfare of society as a whole. Contrarily, we have allowed for
corporations to become more important than people because we allow them to direct our attention
towards the things that make them more money while at the expense of our health, knowledge, and
integrity. While on one hand we are evolutionarily progressing towards the expansion of knowledge
through our scientific pursuits as a species, we may also be regressing in our ability as a species to
discern facts from fiction.

It is my hope that we turn our attention towards this issue and proactively take back our right to
information–our right to accurate information, to be exact. Perhaps we could reform reality television so
that a disclaimer might always be shown, explaining that what we are seeing is actually entertainment.
We could follow Cody Lundin’s phrasing and call survival reality shows “survival entertainment.” The
simple wording that we use may be all that needs to change. We could call the news what it is–news
opinion, entertainment, or Republican entertainment. We could call reality television what it is–reality
entertainment. When a network says a thing is fact and has no meter with which to measure its
accuracy, we are allowing that network to lie to us. We are allowing television programming to literally
program us. As the great jazz musician Miles Davis once wrote, “knowledge is freedom, and ignorance is
slavery” (Davis, 1989). Let us, as human beings who all deserve to be free, put a stop to the media’s
enslavement of our minds. Let us seek out truth in everything.