Media manipulation, worse or not as bad as we think?

[Holdem]

Hey everyone. The reason for creating this thread is because I believe that the Media is corrupted, it's informational tailored to suit the viewpoint of governments and people o power.

I personally don't believe everything that anyone says, especially when the information comes from a "news source", which are all biased in someway shape or form. In my opinion, believing that news sources are "Reputable", that they just give information and aren't biased, is a very naive thing to think, though I may be wrong.

Through studying History and world events of the past thousands of years, I have started to notice "Patterns". A wise man once said "History repeats itself" and another said "Man is the only being that trips over the same rock time and time again".

I like information. The problem comes when the agencies that give us this information are biased to their country of origin and are manipulated in someway by such governments. The media has been a source of propaganda for governments since thousands of years ago in where governments would influence the opinion of the people by shaping a certain story a certain way or by preventing a certain story from getting to the masses. In my opinion, if you believe that your government no longer does these things because "We've evolved past that" then you're being Naive.

Fortunately for me, I have always been bilingual, speaking and writing both Spanish and English with ease, which has allowed me to access more information than most people, since Spanish and English are the two most widely available languages in the world. I have also lived in Spain, the UK and Australia, and traveled to several countries, having friends in many places. To me, it's scary to see how information changes depending on the source, even inside the same country different newspapers have different views and publish different stories based on their opinions, which completely destroys the principle of "Journalism", which is to bring information to the people, not opinions through tailored information. It's also very scary to see how the media uses certain terminology to scare people, to the point of subliminally making many people associate the word Islam or Muslim with something bad, for example.


Having run marketing campaigns in different countries for different blue-chip clients, ranging from Telecoms, Finance and Non for profits,  I am aware of the different techniques used by companies who's purpose is to influence your opinion.  It is very scary to see these techniques used in what is meant to be "Information", which in doing so they're actively admitting to wanting you to see their point of view, not have your own opinion. The question is, why? I'll let you have an opinion to that question.


Ever since we were born we were fed opinions, subliminally mostly. We didn't question it when we were young, when we saw the movies in which the US was always the good guys and Russia/China the bad guys. We didn't notice how war has been glorified to us, how we seem to believe that we are an "Example" for the world to follow as a "Modern society", yet all these opinions have molded us into what we are today. 

As said before, "History repeats itself", and having studied history I now see us in the same position we were when Hitler took over Germany, the same events are happening, the same hatred and fascism is sprouting in Europe. People are scared of so called "Terrorists", demanding more and more control over itself. A decaying economy that will most likely collapse soon and the call for "war" by it's citizens. I believe that if we continue down this path, we will soon find ourselves in a very dark path, and the media is paving it.

What's your opinion, what are your thoughts?

[Awestruck]

Knowledge is Power.

[Infernaw]

Just saying.

[Agorith]

The media has always been corrupt, it's basically been confirmed one event after the other for aslong as I know now.
Money equals power. Simple as that.

[Marty]

There's no such thing as freedom, there's no such thing as unbiased media. Everything that's reported is reported for a reason, even the sop stories in the dear Deirdre's...

Media is just another tool to control the masses and keep people either at ease or with something to fear. The most recent/best example I remember is when Bin Laden was killed. The media reported it...but along with it made out how because he was killed there would be more terror attacks etc....

[Baskingner]

I think you Guys are seeing too many conspiracies here... Media is not always used to control masses or force someones agenda, sometimes Media is just Media.. and nothing else.

[goigle!]

so bad, fucking a supporter bought the onion and started writing pro hilary articles :^)

[Holdem]

I think you Guys are seeing too many conspiracies here... Media is not always used to control masses or force someones agenda, sometimes Media is just Media.. and nothing else.

Of course it's not ALWAYS used this way, in the same way that a spoon isn't always used to eat/drink soup. However, it is in most cases, and it's not rocket science to see that the big name media news (FOX, CNN, BBC, RT, etc) will be biased to the country they're in generally speaking. All you have to do is read the same article from different news sources from different countries and you'll see how the information changes from source to source, quite scary.

[Baskingner]

Well of course. Everyone is biased, we all want to achieve our own goal and if we can manipulate people while doing so most people will taken that chance. What is more important is hoe you let that bias influence your actions. I personally feel that even though the news is biased they dont show an dishonest/manipulated truth to us. Ofcourse sometimes there are exceptions but i dont think its worth to sorry so much about.

[Joykill]

Biased ≠ an institution which is used to control the masses, let me remind you. You're making a connection between to unrelated 'symptoms' to form a diagnosis or conclusion.

I'm not saying that every media outlet is good, reliable or otherwise worth your eyes and clicks, but there certainly are good media outlets. Media is a very big thing indeed, so taking one word that covers literally hundreds of thousands+ organisations and calling it all a tool of the government to control the masses is wrong. You could start a media organization. Collect some writers, take some photos and write about it. That certainly isn't controlled by the government, but that doesn't mean what is written is either correct nor unbiased. 

Referring to the Hitler-like situation claim, I think that's straight up ridiculous. Call me brainwashed, controlled by the media, government, whatever, but I can't in any way recognize this. There are dictators all over the world, but claiming we're seeing the rise of an ultra-nationalistic, anti-Semetic, totalitarian, far-right regimes in Europe is, in my view, totally wrong. We've seen continued work and effort towards free speech and expression over the past 100 years. That is a thing only helping avoid the success of such regimes.

Easier than ever before you have the actual ability to get information from any place on earth, no matter your actual location. That's amazing.

And besides, where'd you get news if it weren't for the media? Should we just have none of that, all in the cause to avoid bias?