Media hint

IntroductionMedia has always been in the forefront as a radical vox all over the world, and naturally, it has invited the wrath of all the regimes autocratic and democratic alike. Among the media types, the broadcast media, particularly television has suffered the greatest suppression, whether it is in the Europe, the Americas, Africa or in the East. The most recent example comes from Pakistan, a Muslim nation in South Asia, where the armed services ruler Parvez Mushrraf had shut down the television stations soon after he suspended the constitution and imposed emergency.Broadcasting the transmitting of programmes to be heard simultaneously by an indefinitely large number of people is a social invention, not a technical one. (Curran J. & Seaton J., 2003). Television is perhaps the only modern media that had played a dual role, as a voice of the radical opinion and as a media of propaganda. The emergence of the global television has made revolts of the people and radical opinion in any part of the world irrepressible. This has always made headaches for the control elites to respond in the same manner, to use television itself in order to suppress the opinion.Revolt against televisionIncidents of revolt against television as a mirror of the truth drop occurred before the advent of the satellite television, where the regimes controlled the broadcasting system. The history can be traced from the wide spread information suppression and the iron curtain that characterised the erstwhile Soviet regime. Later we numerous incidents around the world, mostly in autocracies where the official television run by the regime, disseminated the news suppressing any otherwise viewpoint. This has occurred in Iraq, in other states of the Middle East like Saudi Arabia, Iran and mostly many of the Muslim Sheikdoms.Suppression, ideology and television dialogue has the decentness to define, persuade, inform and to disinform. An analysis of communication at the level of club and nation is obliged to recognise that truth is not necessarily separated from falsehood rather, the process of propaganda blurs the elements in order to be persuasive. Taylor (1986) puts the matter succinctlyCommunication with a view to persuasion is an inherent human quality. I can take place in a private conversation or a mass rally, in a church or cinema, as well as on a battlefield. It can manifest itself in the form of a statue or building, a coin or painting, a flag or a postage stamp. To the above list Taylor adds speech sermons,songs, art, radio waves, television pictures.Whether they cultivate between individuals or people in millions, the task of the analyst remains the same to investigate the intent of the act of communication and the ways in which members of the think audience respond to that communication. It is arguable that most mass communication, whether it is a party political broadcast, the TV news, a pop song, a soap opera or sitcom is in some way or another, t o a greater or a lesser extent is an exercise in propaganda. (Bagdikian A.,1987)Thompson identifies four forms of power exercised in society- economic, political, coercive and symbolic. Economic power emanates from the possession of wealth or the means by which wealth is generated political power rests in decision making arising from being in a position of elected, appointed or inherited authority coercive power springs from the use of, or potential use of, first-rate strength. Other classifications include position, resource, and charismatic power each overlapping with Thompsons categories and each one somehow connected with communication processes.Yet the media have never been all separate from or independent of the forces which create them and which in turn they shape and influence. They work as Thompson points out, within institutional frame works. As such, they operate as cultural apparatus, part of the machinery of state or of most powerful interest groups within the state. Historically media have more than oft served as the voice of the powerful than of the people. They have been classified by Althusser as one of the prime Ideological State Apparatuses, along with religion, family structures ad education that is, they are crucially important impart for the transmission of rules of conduct in society the guardians of a cultures dominant norms and values. They play a part in all power forms, including in a contributory sense coercive power.The Chinese revoltThe memorable television images that emanated from Beijing on June 4, 1989 indicated to viewers that the chinawares revolutionary activity had been efficaciously extinguished. The military show of force at Tiananmen Square preserved the political authority of Deng Ziaoping and the Chinese Communist Party for the short term. Following the historic ternary Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee meeting of the CCP in December 1978- a satellite based national television system was made a leave priority for achieving a wide range of propagandist objectives.Television was peaking as a communications medium in China during the troubled 1980s and had itself become a significant symbol of the national modernization. By the middle of the decade nearly e rattling urban household had bought a television receiver. But when push came to shove, televised reports of the military invasion of the student-worker encampment at Tiananmen Square were not transmitted in China. While the rest of the world tuned in to pictures of courageous students, intellectuals, and workers standing up to sentient being force of tanks and the political power of ageing bureaucrats, Chinese television viewers saw very different visuals and accounts of the tragic events in the capital city, and even those images came very late. Television had been forcibly restored to its original place as a blatant propaganda device.By managing television coverage of the brutal crackdown and subsequently constructing a mass ive propaganda onslaught, Chinese governing body officials hoped to re-establish social stability, reassert the place of the CCP as the nations legitimate political authority, and minimize ideological damage brought by the economic, political, cultural and social stresses that China experienced in the late 1980s.Why television news is so fearful? the other side of television newsThe research of the Glasgow University Media Group has been very controversial since the issuance of Bad News in 1976, as well as the subject of a great deal of criticism, not least from the journalists and broadcasters. Bad News was concern with the television coverage of industrial relations in 1975. the GUMGs analysis of the television news led it to conclude that viewers had been given misleading word-painting of industrial disputes, a portrayal that distorted the real situation.The groups work continued with More Bad News in 1980, which examined the language employ to describe the two sides in ind ustrial disputes. The descriptions attached to management were such that they persuaded the audience of the rightness of the management position against demands made by the unions. Trowler (1996) has produced an excellent compendium of the major findings of their studies.The vocabulary of broadcast news is biased against specific groups and this bias structures the listeners perspective. Stories are selectively report. The effects of strikes are reported more often than the causes of strikes. The visuals used are again selective and help to structure the message being put across. The tactics of the protestors are reported more often than their viewpoints, especially when the tactics are deemed antisocial.There is a hierarchy of access to the media, so the voices we mainly get to hear are those of experts, specialist and the establishment. News is reported from a particular ideological position. The media set the schedule for debate they tell us what to think about. They also act as gatekeepers, thus excluding some stories and including others. This rationale of these findings can be applied not only in bit the bad news by television but also in fighting an anti-people regime and sometimes in propaganda. This has been the mainstay in most of the democratic nations around the world. Even the Gulf War telecast by the CNN fits to this agenda. (Jones M. and Jones E. 1997)ConclusionTelevision of course is itself an tyrannical institution of sorts, one that articulates confidently and widely. Critics in all societies around the world, complain that the medium has the power to serve the interest of its owners by creating a narrow agenda and monopolizing public opinion, that it debases culture, and that it nearly mesmerizes viewers psychologically. Thus it has invited suppression around the nations.ReferenceCurran J. and Seaton J. (2003) Power without responsibility The press, broadcasting and new media in Britain, London Routledge. Boyd-Baret et.al. (ed). (1997) M edia in global background A reader, New York Arnold. Philip.M.Taylor M.P. (1986) Munitions of the mind A history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present day, New York Arnold Thompson J.B. (2002) The media and modernity A social theory of media, London sharp Jones M. and Jones E. (1997) Mass Media, London Macmillan. Bagdikian A. (1987). The Media Monopoly, Massachusetts Beacon Press.