A note to our Messiahs in the Media.
The build-up to the US presidential election is arguably one of the most theatrical circuses (or so I have been made to believe)in the past few months.For many aficionados of the legend entitled 'The American Dream ', we have been held to the jugular as we watch the thespians audition for the lead role in the most recent edition of the ' 1776' blockbuster 'The White House '. Surprisingly, the chronicle of these crisscross episodes become a penumbra of reality if one fails to acknowledge the coup de theatre that now befogs the playground and which the prompters have resultantly exploited to give us a bogus plot. What should have been considered as the nugatory prattling of Mr. Donald Trump now seems to be the embroidered cauldron we now must feed from.
The 'Trumpalization'of America by the media is an insight into how the media advertently hectors us into assuming implausible positions through their excruciating penchant for greasing the decrepit feet of capitalism.
In John Myles's 'Bourdieu Language and the Media's he posits clearly that the enhanced role of quotidian journalism transcends traditional news delivery.
'It is in this context that the city press and media's role in plan-
ning has been enhanced as it increasingly takes over the role of
communicating planning issues to the wider public.'
A cursory look at the congenital hue and cry for press freedom will appear as the flagellation of a Messiah in his Odyssey towards saving the hoi polloi (I am not against press freedom) On a second look however,one realizes that the media already has an enhanced role as a corollary of its well-worn romance with urban growth coalitions and 'technocrats’. Most media houses (print and broadcast media) now work assiduously to expand readership base,(which apologists will riposte to claim deserves an applause) as a conscious desire to be inclusive in its approach, the flip side of this seemingly overwhelming altruism is however the pernicious drive towards aggrandizement which makes them mortgage ideology and content for patters that will subsequently bolster their 'relevance ' .
I must quickly note that the proclivity of the media towards deifying financial whizzkids and embossing balderdash might be
considered as the ineluctable offshoot of a society whose sense of propriety is engrained in pop culture. The resulting index is a media rife with stories of 'who's sleeping with who ', who bought what, who divorced who ' giving the audience a bowdlerised version of the truth.
The 'Trumpalisation' of America is one of the many cases where the media has advertently misrepresented democratic choices, kowtowing to the choices made at their political trysts and enforcing it on the public.
Asserting it’s role as a 'watchdog 'of democracy and it’s obvious ability of enabling spectacle, the media transmogrifies stories stymying real contents and forcing those who have fall short of their greasy grace to grease their palms and salvage their names.
In Bertolt Brecht’s 'The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum’, The bias of the media in reportage is understudied as the major headlines had already passed their verdict ahead of the court process, labelling Katharina as the cutthroat apparently because the victim was one of their 'own’.
The recent release of one the abducted Chibok girls was met with glee,the media also seemed to have been lost in the euphoria of this triumph, that it displayed it’s ineptitude by constantly referring to the predator and rapist as Amina’s 'husband ' and allowing itself to be the curators of the spectacle, that the government made of it. Critics were however apt enough to notice this overgeneralised Vulgate of the media,but the question is,whats the fate of the man who can’t read between the lines and whose only modicum of hope for truth is hinged on the altruism of the media .
In Conclusion, one cannot detach the media from their capitalistic endeavours,attention should however be paid to little details that subtly creep into the minds of the readers through an holistic commitment to getting the people informed rather than consistently associating itself with the neo-liberal discourses, that aim at ripping the populace of whatever strands of right to self-determination they have.
