Whose World Is It Anyway? - I

A few minutes ago I finished reading this book – Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky. Well, one of the first things that struck me is the way he has described media’s role in disseminating information. First of all, the basics - Most of us know that newspapers do not earn a penny (relatively) form their readers i.e. from their actual sales. Instead, their cash cows are the big corporations and many small industries who advertise their products and services in their papers. The profitability of the papers, at least the mainstream ones, is directly proportional to the number of advertisements they get to advertise. And advertisements are going to knock on their doors only if their newspaper is widely circulated and read as well. So, looking at it from another perspective, any mainstream newspaper is basically selling its audience (readers) to all those big corporations, who pour huge money into the paper through advertisements. And because of this, they will never write anything malicious about those bigwigs, which could hurt the company’s image, simply because for the fear of losing a wealthy client. If they can’t write anything good about them, they will not write anything bad either. And the story is not very different when it comes to reporting of the political matters. They might be affiliated to some political party or the chief editor will be particularly inclined to one or to some ideology and then, the news you get is also polarized to some extent and the cover up is so subtle that you will hardly doubt the veracity of its contents.

Well, in the first place why do you need to know all what’s happening around your country or all over the world? Do you really care if there was an earthquake in Antarctica or if there was a war in some obscure country, say, Zaptanistan? Not unless if you were directly involved in some way or the other. Maybe you were a relative of someone fighting in the war, and then it might be a Zaptanistanian or someone from the opponent’s Army. And of course in the former case, all the big companies would be scared out of their wits if suddenly it was discovered that there were some real big oil wells in Antarctica and because of the earthquake, they have all been rendered economically unviable. Now pondering a little over this, you will realize that the oppressor (or the victor in fanciful terms) in the war will always try to control the information flow in such a way that its actions are going to appear justified. Then, it is immaterial if the Zaptanistanians’ casualty was in the order of hundreds and thousands. What does matter is the fact that the Oppressor’s forces were successfully able to thwart off the natives’ rebellion with an iron hand and that too for their own safety and well-being. This is what you will get in mainstream newspapers of the oppressor’s country or even in some papers from around the world, if the oppressor happened to be a world superpower. Now, who was to decide what was good for Zaptanistan, the Zaptanistanians or some outside bugger. The outside bugger came into picture because Zaptanistan was a rich country, rich in natural resources and it was doing nothing with them. Well, it was not doing anything with its natural resources because it decided not to but it didn’t mean that it was never going to and even if that was the case, that was nobody else’s business. But, Mr. Bugger is a benevolent man. He wants to develop not only his country but the entire world and sadly enough he’s the chosen one to carry out that mission. Here come the mainstream papers again. First of all, they have to be accurate enough, actually to the finest detail, about the economic or the natural resources of Zaptanistan, so that those figures might take Uncle Bugger’s fancy and he starts showing real albeit fake interest in the development of that tiny country. And now, they have to be inaccurate enough that too to the minutest detail, so that they could drum up enough support for Uncle Bugger’s imperialistic dreams. After all, Uncle Bugger is a democratic man and wants to keep everyone on his side by disseminating false information. So, apparently and invariably, we can see that every information or misinformation is to a large extent dependant on the economic factors. Like, if ever any potential oil well were to be discovered in Antarctica and an earthquake were to come there, I am sure the news is going to be absolute truth as then, it would be a matter of millions and billions of dollars.

To be contd..

Au revoir