The Power of The Media
He who controls the media controls the opinions of the masses. He who controls the opinions of the masses controls the world. This is a phrase that has been on my mind a lot lately.
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses” — Malcolm X. A man, who by no doubt is very divisive but none can doubt his greatness and his significance in the history of the civil rights movement in the United States.
It is nothing short of remarkable to me that he said this back in 1965. Fifty-Eight years ago. I cannot even begin to imagine the scope or the reach of the media back then, but one thing I know is that it is nothing but a drop in the bucket of the power the media holds today.
If he thought the media was the most powerful entity in the world back in 1965, then I shudder to hear his thoughts on the current state of things and the power the media holds today.
Setting aside the immense growth of the media in the last few decades, social media has also given rise to other forms of media and news sources. YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Podcasts, Instagram…We live in a time of information overload and constant media news, information, and manipulation.
There are various forms of this: A direct manipulation from the media to mold your opinions into what they want you to believe. A collection of content creators on the internet harnessing and convoluting an opinion and everyone else jumping on the bandwagon. Or silencing and controlling who gets to speak.
A quote from one of my favorite shows, Mad Men, “If you don’t like what is being said, change the conversation.” This is one of my all-time favorite quotes and I see it relate to real-life situations more times than I’d like.
I try to stay away from political conversations as much as I can, but I’d be lying to myself if I excluded this from this essay as this situation made this quote ring in my head over and over again throughout the entire situation. When Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem at football games. Now, it must be said that I am not the biggest football fan and hardly pay attention to the NFL whatsoever. As a result, there are numerous narratives on his motivations to do what he did. I cannot speak to any of those as I wasn’t following the NFL during this time. What I can however speak on, is the conversation that took place afterward. What I found the most fascinating about that situation was the swift narrative shift. Whatever you believe the true motivations behind his actions, we can all agree that Colin Kaepernick took the knee as a form of protest against police brutality against minorities in the United States of America. That was the purpose of it. That was the protest. But in the spirit of not having that conversation, I saw the dialogue shift from “A protest against police brutality” to a “disrespect for the troops.” “Disrespect for the country and the flag.” If you do not like what is being said, change the conversation. This was one of the swiftest changes or rather shifting of a conversation that I had experienced. It was more prevalent to me because it was on the forefront of my mind, and I could see the conversation shifting from day to day, and by the end of the day, the conversation had changed. Once that happens, the power of your conversation has been lost as the reason for it to begin with has been hijacked. Once hijacked, you’ve lost the power to tell your story or control the narrative. The conversation has been taken from you and it’s time to move on. I have seen this happen in so many instances.
It’s funny because when you listen to people who criticize his taking the knee, everyone speaks with the same bullet points. Because whether you like it or not, or choose to believe and accept it; your opinions were hijacked and controlled by the media. And come Monday morning when you go to work, you spew the new narrative and conversation that was put out there to control the narrative. And that is an example of the power of the media.
Another example, and this one I expect many people to disagree with me on, is the ending and final season of Game of Thrones. Now, I must say, this is a show that has a huge place in my heart. By the time this show came out in 2011, I had never gone out of my way to read any books, ever. This show, however, gripped me like none has before or after. I found myself binging through all 5 books within a month, in the summer of 2013. I didn’t stop there. I had discovered a whole new world that I could throw myself into and consume. Since then I’ve gone on to read well over 100 fantasy books as well as other genres as well. I soon picked up writing after that, and hence this piece. I say all this to convey my love for the show and the series as a whole, and the impact it had on me.
When the final season came out, I had begun to fall out of love with the series. Particularly the last two seasons. For the final episode, I was in Germany for a friend’s wedding and subscribed to Sky Box to be able to watch it live. I woke up at 3 AM to watch it as it aired. And as it ended, I was left feeling numb and underwhelmed. My thoughts “Oh well, they didn’t quite stick the landing but what a run.” My buddy, Jon, who was on the trip with me shared similar sentiments when he watched it the next morning.
I proceeded to continue on my tour of Europe for the next couple of weeks and had a grand old time. Coming back home, and speaking to friends and acquaintances, I found the collective outrage on the final season of the show. And all that outrage was directed at the two showrunners, David Benioff and Daniel Weiss.
“They just wanted to be done with the show.”
“They should’ve handed it off to someone else”
“They just wanted to go do their Star Wars shows”
“HBO and George wanted many more seasons”
The first thing I observed from all the outrage was that everyone had the same exact five or six bullet points. But the more interesting observation regarding the outrage was where it came from. My friends who stayed off the internet seemed disappointed but not outraged at the ending. My friends and colleagues who spent time on social media or reading entertainment articles all shared a collective outrage. It seems pretty interesting to me that there was a split on people’s reaction to it, based on their relationship with modern media, the internet.
It would seem that on the internet, people expressed their opinions, disappointments, and frustrations on the ending. These feelings then accumulated and merged into one big ball of outrage that everyone consumed and took on with them. Everyone shared the same exact bullet points in their shared collective outrage. This was no controlled media coercion. People egging each other on until everyone has one mass opinion, that is extremely blown out of proportion.
The show Game of Thrones was created by David Benioff and Daniel Weiss adapting the book, A Song of Ice and Fire. They created a show that made even people who considered themselves too cool for fantasy into hardcore fans. It became one of the, if not the biggest pop culture source out there for a decade. You might have never seen an episode but you know phrases like Khaleesi, the Red Wedding, and such. The show went on to be the most successful and critically acclaimed show in the history of television shows. But a collective outrage spawned from the internet at the showrunners, resulted in them being all but canceled by people on the very same internet. They became the butt of many jokes. These men created the most critically acclaimed show till date. Game of Thrones is not the first show to have a bad ending. Not the first popular show’s ending to be a letdown nor the most disappointing ending to a show. I remember the ending to Lost being one of the most anticlimactic endings I have ever seen. Or the ending to Dexter. Imagine if social media was huge at the end of Lost, those showrunners might have been canceled as well.
My last example, I never gave much thought to until recently. “He who controls the media controls the opinions of the masses.” Regardless of what side of the political aisle you stand on, Twitter taking away the ability of Donald Trump was quite a big move. It wasn’t something I paid close attention to back then. Looking back, however, I do believe it is a terrible precedent to set. As I mentioned above, I am a fan of the series, A Song of Ice and Fire. One of the quotes from the books that I like is thus: “When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” Coming across this recently took me back to the pandemic when the president was silenced and kicked off Twitter. I’m not saying I agree with everything or anything he was saying. Yet, the problem in doing this is thus. There are two sides that represent two different views of a conversation. A platform, one of the most powerful and popular platforms in the world, Twitter made the decision to silence one side of that conversation. Stating that he was giving out incorrect information. Which perhaps he was.
The issue here, however, is that you henceforth have taken the power away from the people. The people can listen to both sides of the conversation and choose to make whatever decisions they choose to. But when you silence one part of the conversation and leave the mic open for only one side to speak, you have hence taken the power away from the people to make their own decisions and tried to skew the conversation so the audience only listens to and believes what you want them to. That is even more dangerous than one side saying things that are incorrect. At least people have the freedom to listen to and believe what they want to believe. That is their right at the end of the day.
Looking further and further back into history, I see numerous examples of people taking control of narratives to help skew conversations and opinions of the masses. When you hear of conquerors from ancient times, you hear of men such as Alexander of Macedon or Julio Cesar, the first emperor of Rome. What both men had in common, aside from being both great military tacticians, was taking control of their own narratives. Alexander famously had with him writers and singers on his excavations to speak on his conquests. This resulted in stories of him traveling across the land favorably in what could be well-considered propaganda.
Julio Cesar, who looked to Alexander as an example, took it one step further and wrote an autobiography on his conquests. Among other things, one would assume that this helped spread his legend as he took full control of his own narrative and spread stories of his own legend. Now, there are several reasons these men are remembered over two thousand years after their deaths. But then taking control of their own narratives went a long way in cementing their favorable legacies in history. Even though there are other men in history, even more modern history, who have done just as much, if not more than the men above. But unlike the aforementioned, they failed to control their narratives, their achievements have gone by the wayside in history.
In conclusion, do I have a solution to the influence of the media on controlling the narratives and our opinions? Is there a way we can mitigate this? Or are we doomed to fall deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole until we end up in a situation not too far removed from the future predicted in George Orwell’s masterpiece, 1984? “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell.
It is important that we take a step back and ask ourselves. Why do I believe this? Why do I feel so strongly about this? Was this my opinion or do I believe this because that guy I trust said it? “John Oliver shares my political views so I shall agree and believe all his stories” Or “Tucker Carlson shares my views so I will take everything he says as gospel.” “Or this Youtube page I like gave an explanation on why Marvel is “woke” now and they suck so I guess I no longer like the Marvel movies and they all suck now”.
Take a step back, breathe, reevaluate, and form your own opinions. That is the most important thing I hope people take from this. Stay a little less connected, and remove yourself from the shared opinion of the internet when you can.
I’ll end this with the full quote from The Autobiography of Malcolm X:
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” — Full quote. Malcolm X
