Daily Times

The ultimate objective of the media has become to control the minds of the masses ideologically. Media promotes ideologies that favour imperialism, capitalism, racism, sectarianism, sexism, militarism, authoritarian violence, vigilantism, and anti-working class antagonism.

Ideological control is deliberately constructed by bourgeois and petit-bourgeois intellectuals, which then is propagated by the mass media (print, radio, television, cinema, Internet). Hence, because the bourgeoisie own the media, as a social class, they can select, determine, and publish the economic, social, religious and cultural concepts that constitute the established status quo, which are the formal doctrines that serves their interests as the ruling class of the society.

Moreover, because the working class own no mass communications media, they are overwhelmed by the bourgeoisie?s cultural hegemony, and, because they have no intellectuals of their own, they adopt the imposed bourgeois worldview (Weltanschauung), which thus constitutes a false consciousness about their own economic exploitation by the strata of the upper classes; with that false awareness the working class lose their social and political, economic and cultural independence as a social class.

In today’s globalised, interconnected and service-dominant economy, the pressure to create compelling, distinctive and meaningful engagements with customers and consumers is becoming challenging in the world. The people are not stupid but they are misinformed and deceived by the mass media.

In mass media, truth is not based on clarity but on repetition. An assumption repeated more than three times becomes a reality.

In today’s globalised, interconnected and service-dominant economy, the pressure to create compelling, distinctive and meaningful engagements with consumers is becoming challenging. The people are not stupid but they are being misinformed and deceived by mass media

Media has become the most profitable industry in Pakistan. It has forgotten its real role of educating the masses and is being controlled by the corporate and industrialists. The purpose of the this new mass media has become to keep the real information away from the public. Media houses often willingly censor real information because the owners of the media houses are members of the political elite themselves and therefore, share the goals and outcomes of those leaders. Profit ranks higher than truth telling in the minds of media owners and many of their employees.

The important thing is to understand that media is just a delivery system for ads. The only programming that really matters to those in power is advertisements. The success of a show is not measured by how good it is: as how is a success if the people who watched it go and buy the products that were advertised.

If something you thought to be true were not true, when would you want to know about it? In today’s world, with all the financial information from the media, radio, TV and websites, the truth can be redefined and actually be transformed into something that is not true. Simply put, if you repeat something over and over again, it will be perceived as being fact. Media houses use these tactics when marketing their products.

Politicians have mastered the art of double talk, misstatements, misinformation and repeated lies. They are under the delusion that we continue to believe them, and they have the mistaken impression that we really need them. The media feeds us a relentless amount of garbage. The truth has become nothing more than people giving their opinions, and trying to shape society to their image, of course.

A myth is sort of funny. It is an idea that can be proven somewhat true on one hand and proven false on another. Typically, myths will occur when the results are not predictable by fact. Fact can become myth as new things are discovered and learned, just as myth can become a fact with the discovery of more information.

Mankind knows a lot about what it thinks it knows, and knows very little about everything else. Hence, it took man a very long time to get over the idea that the earth was not flat. I am afraid that we are going to have to get over a lot of other things we think are true, but again, that is just my opinion. When it comes to myth, one’s opinion may become more compelling than actual facts involved. Someone declaring that a newborn baby is ugly will never convince the mother of that baby that her child is ugly, even though in a cute sort of way, it is. Myth is something that can be argued with a combination of fact and opinion. Whether it is true or not is in the eye of the beholder. There are number of factors which create myths in media to simply control the minds of the masses.

Some journalists in Pakistani media have no sense of responsibility and failed to differentiate between government interests and state interests and mostly score their own goals. That gives the fuel to the anti-Pakistan international media abroad and in neighboring countries. It is not sure if anyone of them have ever called the news editors of the famous news channels to confirm the sources of their stories? It is them who snow ball the enemy propaganda?

Pakistani media need media education and understanding of psychological warfare before they given information. Obviously this cannot happen overnight but one has to start from somewhere.

When we look at the talk shows they are again based on daily events and current affairs both guests and anchors/presenters shout at each other to humiliate each other. All this has created a noisy atmosphere where everyone is shouting and no one is listening. It seems viewers have also developed a tendency to high pitch debates, shouting and screaming. Almost all the political parties have men and women with high pitched tones and they shout at each other to entertain the public.

Sadly people feel very happy when low level police official is caught in corruption of humiliated by a corrupt politician on live TV programs. It is because they are the one who humiliate them in the police stations, government offices, and on the roads. It is them who are pleasing their masters. All the above events cover the 24 hours slot of a Pakistani TV channel.

‘A half-truth is a whole lie.’ Yiddish proverb

The writer is PhD Scholar in Media and Crime and can be reached at fastian.mentor@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, April 27^th 2018.