Power Types And Sites, The Media

EXPRESSION ORAL: power

Today, I am going to talk about the notion of power. First of all I’d like to give definition of this notion, power is one’s capacity to control and influence others. There are many kinds of power, political power, economical power, power within the family, but there is also what we call the “4rth pillar of the government” also known as the media. Today, the media has a very wide range of forms, from television, radio, newspaper and magazines to social media. So we could say that the media is “vital” in people’s everyday lives. This may lead us to ask the question: Who controls the media? I will be answering this question by studying different groups which control the media. To illustrate this, I have chosen 3 documents as seen in class; the first is a chart of the “social media landscape”, the second and third are both posters released by the organisation “Reporters without borders.

Millions of people today have Facebook or Twitter accounts, logging on to share personal news and photos; these ordinary people are helping to expand the media without knowing it, what they post could possibly have a huge impact, which we saw in the “Social Media Landscape” chart. This document shows us all the biggest social networking, publishing, buying and sharing websites and applications, and how they work together to create what we could consider a “Social Media Monster”. Journalists and reporters also have a high influence on the media, what they write in their articles could impact entire nations. This is why journalists must take a step back from their own opinions and make their articles as “neutral” as possible. So in a way, the common-man controls of the media, but usually confining to social media. Journalists also control the media, whose job it is to give solid, concrete facts and to let go of personal beliefs.

However, not all people have the freedom of sharing their own opinion, and not all journalists have full power over what they can write and publish. In some countries, such as China or dictatorships like Cuba or North Korea, the government is very strict when it comes to what its people can hear, read or see. Banning social media websites and arresting journalists for covering “risky” stories that could potentially give a negative image of the country. We have a perfect example of this in a poster published by the organisation “Reporters without Borders”, it’s headline reads “Some countries treat journalists like you treat a pen”, with a picture of a chewed up, broken, leaky pen. This organisation helps free imprisoned journalists around the world. Another example of this is the famous Australian journalist Peter Greste, sentenced to 7 years imprisonment in Egypt for having defamed Egypt. Big companies also have a power over the media in certain countries, paying off newspapers and television channels to promote their brands. This concept is also alluded to in another poster by “Reporters without Borders” with the slogan “silence kills democracy”. Businesses that “silence” reporters who give bad publicity are killing freedom of speech and democracy.

So we can say that there is a dominance when it comes to who controls the media, the people are controlled by journalists’ opinions, who are controlled by big companies, who are controlled by the government, and it isn’t always in that order.

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