Misinformation and disinformation, and bias and pure arrogance infecting the global media world it’s high time we worked, at least, to save the young from being led astray and ending up with the wrong picture of the world they live in. They have to be set free from fairy tales they are growing up listening even in present days and encouraged to place themselves on the right path.
I personally am not comfortable with the way they are trying to comment on international issues. The problem is few of us do our homework when it comes to international current affairs. So for such people anything that appears in the giants of the media industry is true. No room for second guessing. Who are you to negate the TV talk show hosts who made quite a name for themselves over the years? Hey, if they say it happened, it happened.
Simple, wouldn’t you say? But not so fast. Just browse other TV stations and try to listen to how the same news items are treated by the anchors and the show hosts and you’d realize how even the mainstream media is being politicized and radicalized. Even talk of fairness and balance which dominated media talk in the past are no more heard loud and clear.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that truth and facts are subjective. It’s all about goals and beliefs of the individual organizations and the people who run them much of the time behind the scenes. As mentioned fairness and balance don’t lead the treatment and presentation of what’s actually going on all over the place. Beliefs and goals of the individuals and goals of those own the media organizations come first. If the bombs and missiles fall on this side or that side the news is presented from the vantage point of the wishes of the owners of the organizations. Yes, the media industry is in deep trouble. Trouble in the sense that most aren’t actually run by the media people themselves but by the largely invisible owners, advertisers and the like. Hey, you can’t lose your advertisers by reporting some event as it actually happens since that might hurt the interests of the advertisers. It’s all about the money.
There are tons of fairy tales when we talk about what goes all over the place. Somewhere down the line we have formed opinions which largely aren’t informed by the real facts on the ground but by the biased input of initial news sources which have their own interests.
So I think we have to worry about how our youngsters get their information. The social media is an entire disaster when it comes to searching for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The social media is about subscriptions and views only. That’s where the money is! So to attract more views and initially much more income it is important to present and analyze the news in ways that would attract more views. So why should anyone go only for the raw facts as they happened and be viewed by a few scores of thousands when a little editing and bending of the facts here and there would attract even millions of more views! It’s all about the money.
The global media these days mainstream or online, is nothing but a mammoth industry going to where the money is and doing whatever is necessary to ensure the coffers are bursting and shareholders, where there are some, are happy! How about that! You might say what about the politics? Well, hasn’t even politics on the global level become about where the money is! Elections in many so-called democracies being funded by the billionaires and millionaires even politics seems to have become all about where the money is. So policies and have to be thought and rethought in ways where the funding organizations and individual will have the last laugh.
With all these happening we have to especially work on our youngsters so that they’d not be misled and carried by the wrong and dangerous boats to the wrong and dangerous ports. I have to say the way the media largely treats important global issues is far from satisfactory. Look at the two trouble spots that are affecting much of the word directly or indirectly, the Ukraine-Russia and the Israeli-Palestine wars.
Thousands are losing their lives, tens of thousands are being rendered invalid by horrendous injuries; entire towns and cities are being laid to dust by thousands of bombs and missiles; the world is being treated to scenes which seem to have come from old reels of the back and white era the only difference being this time they’re in color. Scenes of war a destruction that were supposed to be of past ages fill the TV screens.
I feel the young should get the chance to have a general knowledge of what’s actually happening in these places, because whether we like it or not we too are affected directly or indirectly. It is not about only the present times; it’s also about the future which the young should own. But the way we are narrating and trying to analyze the most important current events heavily lacks in the hard facts and tends to tilt towards things that are nothing more than fairy tales. So the young are subjected to social media sensationalism and unfortunately see things the way they see the latest blockbuster on Netflix or elsewhere. They should be aware in what way those event affects us and how we could save ourselves from being entangled in the misinformation quagmire.
By the way once in a while we are subjected to the opinions of ‘experts’ in current affairs. Well, we’ve to give credit to those who really make sense of events. While they have a long way to go in making any difference on our understandings at least they tray and three cheers for their efforts. But that’s not always the case. There are also some who could talk for hours and at the end you, the audience, is forced to ask, “What the hell has the guy been saying?” It could be that bad!
So, as the kind of boats the young board matter, it is up to society to make sure they embark on the right ones!
Ephrem Endale
Contributer
The Ethiopian Herald May 12/2024