Life is full of power plays, any time there is a situation where two or more parties have an imbalance of power there is bound to be a power play with the more powerful party doing what they can to hold on to that power. When we think of power plays we often think about power struggles between people; however, we don’t often think about the power struggle between the people and the media. The power play going on between people and the media is a never ending one as each who truly holds said power is ambiguous. The mainstream media is responsible for informing people on the issues and events going on in the world. They are responsible for helping people form opinions and without them people would lack knowledge on the things going on around them. Due to this the media has power over people because whatever it says is what people will believe. It has to power withhold vital information or purposely misrepresent facts in order to further agendas. However, the media is not a person or even one organization it is made up of a series of organizations that are meant to provide people information about the things that are going on in the world, but above all these organizations are businesses. Like any business the media’s main goal is to make money and the easiest to make money is to give people what they want. In this case the people become the ones with the power because whatever they want is what the media will give them, so if people react more to news about celebrities then the mainstream media will focus on that. If certain organization is not giving the people what they want, then they always have the choice of seeking out the information from another organization. The balance of power between people and the media is constantly changing and hard to define. It is nearly impossible to tell whether we have the power over the media or it has the power over us.
Elviris Rodriguez
I strongly agree with E.Rodriguez, media is which have that authority to show whatever, whenever, where ever it wants. It follows the culture and moulds into it because this is its business. If it doesn’t adopts the latest things it won’t remain lucrative. But there is something that media also blackmails famous figures in society. Media has that power to window dress anything and general public will blindly trust it. Actually, sometimes media cross its boundaries by showing some personal things which aren’t appropriate to show and become part of privacy issues. Overall, this shouldn’t be ignored that media too have some limits.
While I do agree with the point that media has a lot of authority over the general public and can say what it wants to influence the public it is also true that there are a multitude of different media sources out there that anyone can access. This allows a person to have more then one source of information which lessons the authority of media and increases the authority of the person who is looking at the information.
I agree with you on the fact that the people with more power will do anything possible to secure their authority and place. Alisha has talked about the power play she witnessed in the work force with the employer threatening the employee with unemployment if they do not comply with the employers demands. Another good point you brought up would be the whether or not the media has power over the people or if the people have power over them. The media is supposed to be dutiful in their task to report the news and educate the people but then they can always pick and choose what to show and how they will get their message across.
-Sumaiyah Ali
You make a lot of really good points that I agree with. The media has so much power over the opinions of people and what information they are led to believe. Something as simple as the cropping of a photo or ending a video segment early can lead people to believe something entirely different than what actually happened. Which is why when you mention that the media is in fact a business it’s alarming that these media sources are potentially more focused on monetary gains than providing the truth. While the existence of various news sources helps to alleviate some of this issue, this is not a realistic scenario for certain countries where the news is provided by a singular source and no alternate options exist, leading to a nation guided by propaganda.
Matthew Epstein