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Reality or Perception

By: Matthew Alexander

I’d like to pose a question: what is ‘the media’ and what does it mean to you personally?

 

The most common answer is ‘TV, radio and newspapers’ or something along those lines. You wouldn’t be wrong, but it also means that you’re not looking closely or paying enough attention to what you are experiencing when consuming narratives and information.

 

It’s sort of like magic: it’s captivating and inspiring, sometimes terrifying and almost certainly thrilling. It draws your attention away from what is actually going on. If you peeked behind the veil, you’d see sleight of hand such as propaganda and hidden messages. You’d see everything you’re not supposed to be seeing… exciting, isn’t it?

 

 

The Matrix trilogy posed a really interesting idea about our reality: what we experience right now could possibly not be ‘true’ reality. Our ideals and personality might not even be our own, we could all be just a construct of someone else’s reality. Media portrays an image that’s attractive and ideal, it’s satisfying in a way because we consume media with such a lustful attitude and pursue this pleasure relentlessly. Why? Simply because the media told us to.

 

Your perception of media has already been altered because I’m telling you to change it. It’s scary to believe that simple text, squiggly lines, can change your outlook on reality. All because I’m communicating a message to you, whether I’m being factual or not. To answer my own question, media is simply a tool for communication. The message that I’m communicating should be what you pay close attention to.

The news we consume every day is no exception. Just because it’s ‘factual’ does not mean it’s devoid of hidden messages. The way we construct news is to entertain and inform citizens of what’s going on in their country, yet the way the facts are set up will in itself create a new ‘reality’.

 

We can look at what’s going on in the world today and compare it to the news we are shown. How many know about the civil war in the Ukraine and the Russians invading Crimea? Compare your answer to how many people know about Oscar Pistorius’ extremely thick-accented court translator.

We can look at what’s going on in the world today and compare it to the news we are shown. How many know about the civil war in the Ukraine and the Russians invading Crimea? Compare your answer to how many people know about Oscar Pistorius’ extremely thick-accented court translator.

 

By nature, we are not solitary creatures. We long for a place to belong, for those that we call ‘our own’ and so we accept those ideals and those messages because we seek ‘all-knowing’ knowledge that, in my opinion, we are not ready for.

I believe that the reason we’re not ready for such knowledge is because of our base

nature to act instinctively instead of intellectually. In this case, patience is key.

We lack the patience to understand what we absorb from media. Nonetheless,

transparency is required, which brings me to our Protection of State Information

bill that is currently being contested. Chapter five, sub-section 13 part one states that: “Subject to section 3, any head of an organ of state may classify or reclassify state information using the classification levels set out in section 12. This means that any senior government official may control what you know about the happenings of your nation. Part five states: “When state information is categorised as classified, all individual items of information that fall within a classified category are deemed to be classified,” meaning that any document or piece of text, footage and sound can be deemed ‘classified’.

It should worry you that our leaders could silence those who speak out about their corruption and misdeeds. It’s ironic how we all rely on media for the knowledge we gain but that we as a nation, or the non-journalists among us, care so little about this war against a threatening piece of legislation.

 

Malcolm X once said, “The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent look guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” If that doesn’t move you, then you need to sit down and think deeply about how your strings are pulled every day.

“I am by no means a preacher or a saint, merely a sinner like you, I am also the reason you are who you are” - Media

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