The Propagandised Nature of the Media

The media is the most powerful organisation which has a big impact on the social construction of news topics. The importance of the news media in framing the public understanding of social problems is widely recognised and has been greatly documented.  It has been suggested that there is a broad correspondence between the images of news stories and articulated in the news media and the interpretation of this.  As a result, the media presentation of information reinforces the social construction of fear and anxiety within the general population.

However, this is not a positive thing for society. 

The media serves an ideological function in order that this societal institution can support the laws created by the government.  Yet, this can be seen to be problematic as laws and how they are represented and enforced are susceptible to change.  The primary issue here is that the media portrays what it believes to be of importance to the viewing public.  The media and the state have a vested interest in amplifying certain public views which are the cause of anxiety.  This anxiety deflects attention away from the rich and powerful whom are portraying a propagandised perspective of world news, and gives the state an excuse to introduce new laws and controls to “protect” its people.  This leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy as the amplification spiral of the media sees people as passive dupes.  The audience are injected with a message and they simply respond.

Therefore, this means that news outlets can claim to be against one thing, but are not in support of the alternative, which makes such reporting contradictory.  Whilst the media is supposed to be free from political bias, the lack of acknowledgment of alternative perspectives means that their reporting is not getting to the root of all the problems, which disenchants the viewer from the reality of the horrors across the globe.  However, every news channel has their own agenda on what they deem to be of importance in accordance to their political alignment.  News editors of the media have learnt that the fanning up of moral indignation and increased human suffering is a remarkable commercial success because media reports are driven by the desire for greater readership. 

Ultimately, the propagandised nature of the media means that it is very difficult to distinguish the truth from the lies used to influence the audience.

If you cannot see how senseless the propaganda of the media is, then evidently you have been indoctrinated by their attempt to turn the public into unsuspecting viewers, willing to accept anything thrown at them via mainstream media channels.  The media is, quite literally, today’s opiate of the masses.