Anup Shah's Analysis

The media is a tool used to manipulate the opinions of other people who choose to gorge on what those who distribute media put out on a silver platter. As a result, public opinion is simply what the people who control the media want the public to think. Allen Ginsberg elaborates, “whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture”, which in it’s own right may seem quite absurd. Yet, for example, American children are raised believing in American ideology. American parents, which are influenced by the American government, represent control over media distribution whilst the children follow like a herd of sheep in a pasture. In just one or two generations the average American child may grow up believing communism is the ideal way to …show more content…
Information is wet clay that is molded and morphed into what distributors of culture forming media want to be seen. For instance, Anup Shah discusses public manipulation by stating, “The US Bush administration has ‘aggressively’ used public relations to prepackage news.” (Anup Shah, 1). In an effort to manipulate the public, the Bush administration changed the news which, in effect, changed the viewer's reality. Shah then goes on to say, “These segments have reached millions. This benefits both the government and the broadcasters.” (Anup Shah, 1). Any government that has this power exposes the weakness and vulnerability of humanity. A person is just another ant whose life revolves around the ideology that he is a tool that is used, morphed, and discarded like an old rusty hammer. People, especially those who reside in democratic states, believe their lives are their own with few boundaries, a blank slate even. In truth, that blank slate is smothered with grey blotches of what a government wants a person to be. Governments know of this phenomenon and they do take advantage of this. As a result, a population's public opinion, which is influenced by governmental bias, ultimately becomes that society’s culture. Governments do this because they not only know it will work effectively, but it solidifies their power as …show more content…
As it seems, cultural change from an individual's perspective might seem sluggish or even stagnant. The reality is quite the contrary, culture is a rapidly evolving force through any society. Governments may see this as an opportunity to expand their own federal power. An incredible, yet worrisome example of this phenomenon is the state of Oceania in George Orwell's novel, 1984. Oceania’s government, referred to as “The Party”, was able to grasp hold of it’s peoples previous cultural traditions and exploited every opportunity they could in order to morph Oceania’s culture into what The Party desired. This gave The Party an unquantifiable amount of power and wealth which further developed cultural change. To quote George Orwell “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.” (Orwell, 338). In just over a generation, the regime had turned the every day 1940’s democratic man into a full fledged marxist controlling them like a blind puppet. The ability to control the media is typically a slow process so governments and news broadcasters rely on the people they manipulate to manipulate other people like a virus spreading through a

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