The Power of the Media

The Power of the Media

How the establishment uses the press to control the narratives

    This will be my most controversial blog post. I will discuss how the government and the media work in lockstep to promote their agenda at that time. I want to express in this blog how the deep state uses their old buddy the media, to promote narratives at a point in time that fit into what their goal is during that period of time. The media promotes these ideas as "the truth", until their goal has been reached, and the "the truth" changes again when the opposite is needed to enforce the decisions. 

    How can the left back in the 1960s call for their support of free speech, anti war, anti establishment etc. And then you look at the left of the 2020s and they are calling for censorship, and have been favorable of various wars, and now are the definition of the establishment? How can this be? Well, the uncomfortable truth about politics is when you boil everything down to what the raw truth is to put it simply: politics is about advancing your values, your worldview, and your beliefs and about crushing the power of those who stand in the way. We can try and play the polite game of how it's about all these conflicting and complex constitutional arguments, and that CNN and NBC and the New York Times are trusted, and reliable, credible news stations, and so on. The vast majority of society is filled with two kinds of people. This is the sheep and the shepherds. 

    The sheep are the those who don't really think much about deeper or complex issues, they are more occupied and distracted by the NFL to look and see what their country and world is turning into. These are the people who have no problem reading the "experts" and the mainstream media sites, thinking they have a choice. Not even doing the ounce of effort to research and see that 90% of all media is owned by just 6 companies. The government doesn't even need to completely control the small amount of independent, critical thinkers that are willing to go against the establishment, because as long as they don't have a huge amount of support in society, they won't even know they are around. Most people either choose not to or are incapable of truly being free thinkers and so as long as they have food, clothing, and mass entertainment, they won't go questioning anything about their government.     

    The other group of people in society are the shepherds, these are those that may hold essentially any worldview, any religion, any ideology but they are trying to secure power for their side to have influence in the ways in which politics and their government is run. These are the people that can be on the right or the left or somewhere in between. 

    The media is and has always been the most powerful force of shaping public opinion ever. Sometimes I think I am in crazy land when if I just turn back the clock just a little over a year ago in the summer and fall of 2020 when you have prominent members of the establishment, maybe it was now Vice President Kamala Harris saying she wouldn't get the vaccine, or former Vice President Joe Biden said similar things. Among other prominent Democrats whether it be Illhan Omar, Andrew Cuomo, or various news commentators. The same people are able to say one thing and then completely changed their tune just a year later and nobody says anything. Dr. Fauci did the same thing when it came to masks. Back in early 2020 when COVID first started to spread, Fauci said that nobody needs to be wearing masks. And then five minutes later he's supporting government mandates for masks and vaccines. 

    Most Conservatives can notice the blatant hypocrisy from all these sources, and then they just laugh and act smug toward it. This is the biggest political mistake the right can make and if conservatives want any chance to turn this country and the West around they need to start paying attention to a larger problem that is going on. The establishment is able to get away with all this hypocrisy because the vast majority of people are not free thinkers, and they will listen to whoever is making the narrative. I know it is not polite to say that most people don't really critically think and they are mostly sheep that are more concerned about the next Marvel movie that is coming out, but it's the truth. The main takeaway I want to show from this blog is the power of the media and of the established institutions to craft and control the narratives. If I a Conservative were to appear on CNN, NBC, or write an article for the New York Times as an "expert" or an "advisor" and said exactly the opposite to what the establishment had been saying for months, people would go along with it, I firmly believe it. 

    We can clearly see the power of the media and we can also see from before that 6 companies control virtually all of the media in this control. And if all of them are conveying the same message, what do you think 95% of the general public will basically believe, teach, and follow? It doesn't really matter who's in office when the media are pushing propaganda and lies. 

 

 

Final Post

 Final Post: 

My Relationship With Technology

    The relationship with technology that I've had to understand for myself, in addition to the rest of my peers, is one that is unprecedented in human history. Never before did a generation grow up with technology this advanced, from a very young age. This is a generational problem that I think some older generations can try and understand, but experience is always the greatest teacher and so they can't know exactly how we feel. Technology in of itself is not evil, it is simply an extremely powerful tool that can become, and usually does become toxic with how the majority of our society uses it. It doesn't have to be this way though, and with a healthy balance we can use technology the correct way and it can benefit our lives greatly in the process. 

    When I do some honest reflection about myself and my relationship with technology, I have not always had the same relationship. Depending on my life's present circumstances, I find the amount of online media I consume to fluctuate greatly. For example, if I have a lot of assignments due for my classes, I'll be on the internet much more doing research. While I'm doing honest research, the temptation to just start checking my YouTube feed, or social media, or the news is just a click away and it is very easy to fall into that trap. During times of my life where it is more essential to use technology, even for productive purposes, I find myself getting sucked into a loop of wasting a significant amount of time too.  

    Like I mentioned before, I believe that the issue with managing technology use is primarily for my generation (Gen-Z), simply because we have had an incredibly high level of technology since a very young age and it has been engrained into our lifestyles forever. It is almost hard to remember a time before the iPhone. When I look at the lives of my friends, I notice almost the same patterns that I see in my own life. I see and hear from them telling me similar stories about how their amount of use fluctuates based on other life circumstances. It is also so hard to deal with something like phone addiction because the way in which these social media platforms are designed to be addictive. 

    To sum everything up, I feel like my personal relationship with technology is not bad, but can definitely be improved upon. There are certain weeks and sometimes months where my technology use level I think is pretty healthy, and it is primarily being used to stay productive on my goals and what I need to get done. On the flip side, I would be dishonest if I were to try and pretend that I do fall into technology addiction from time to time. The compulsive urge to just scroll through the same three social media apps, even though I just did like 4 minutes ago, for no reason is something that does happen to me at times, and it is something I want to get under control as something like that is just merely a waste of time and energy.  

In The Age of AI

 In The Age of AI

    When we watched the Frontline documentary In the Age of AI, there were a lot of things I learned. Some of these things startled me and I am concerned about while others I think have potentially a lot of benefits to them in the future. The biggest things that stood out to me that I viewed as pros/benefits were that AI in the future will make connivence for little things so much easier. This was represented in many different forms such as ordering and paying for food, driving among many more. I think the future of self driving vehicles is something that has a lot of promise that definitely can make our highways safer and reduce the number of fatalities in this country. There is also a lot of evidence to support that AI will make cancer research more equipped to look for a cure and help to end deaths from that perspective too. One of the biggest concerns people have about AI is that it will take away jobs that currently are being done by humans, but there is a lot of conflicting data on this that suggests that while those jobs will be replaced, instead other jobs will be created that were not previously, causing a balancing act to occur. 

    There was also a lot in the documentary that made me scared about the future of AI. It was shown that in a very complex game, a machine was able to defeat the world's best player multiple times. This innovation shows that AI has the capability to at the very least rival and may even be at a higher level than human intelligence. It is also concerning as an American how China, who appears to be our greatest rival in the present and the future, will have the same AI technology as us by 2025 and will surpass us by 2030. China has also been able to use AI to turn their country into one that is full of complete surveillance with no privacy. This becomes even more frightening when the lack of privacy is paired with the social credit score concept that is also being rolled out in China too. The AI technology allows the government to track what is going on, and then use anything you may have said or done to be used against you to keep you in line with the narratives of the regime. 

    Overall, I view AI as more of a concern than one of promise and hope. While there are some potential, future benefits, I think that the future has more bad in store than good as of right now. That is not to say that it can't change, if our government was behaving as they are supposed to, AI could be a huge force for good, but unfortunately it appears much more likely to be used against their political enemies unjustly.

EOTO #4

 Confirmation Bias 

EOTO:

    While listening to other group members' presentation's, there was one topic that was addressed and taught in another group that caught my attention. It was on the topic of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out information that supports our pre-existing ideas. What we can boil down confirmation bias into, is the lack of critical thinking. We all have perceptions of the world, all of us, and it is very uncomfortable for any of us to think about the possibility that I could be wrong about something, perhaps even a core belief of mine. Contrary to the post modernist understanding of 'your truth' and 'my truth', which truth be told nobody actually believes once you start talking about serious topics, there is 'the truth' that is objectively and factually true. And oftentimes in society when two people have a staunch disagreement on core, important issues, we are sometimes afraid to go and truly explore those other opinions. Many times we are prone to just tune out any opposing arguments and can't wait to interject with our own beliefs before the other person can even finish. I believe that all of us do this to an extent, myself included, and while I believe it is important to truly trust and believe what you are saying, it is important that at least one point in your life you truly and unbiasedly as possible, looked at the raw evidence on a topic and came to a conclusion that is based in reality and not your own subjective desires. 

     The major issue with something like confirmation bias is that it allows us to be very susceptible to propaganda. If we are taught, programmed, and conditioned from a young age to believe one thing and to ignore any other opinion(s), if we stay in our intellectual bubble, and do not and have not ever wandered outside of that, we will never come to find out that we could've been lied to our entire life and had a false sense of the world. This was a very interesting issue that another group presented on and I feel like this subject is something that needs to be addressed more in the mainstream dialogue, although I don't really see that as likely to happen considering that virtually all media and news outlets are in lockstep together with the same propaganda so, probably not going to happen unfortunately, but in a ideal world it should be.  

EOTO #3

 Sherman Anti-Trust Act and Section 230

    When looking at policies that affect the way we consume media, especially on the internet, it is very important to know and understand what the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and Section 230 mean for the internet, media, and information. 

    The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was designed to simply stop monopolies. This would be done by either breaking up existing monopolies or preventing future ones from forming. The law explicitly, "prohibits activities that restrict interstate commerce and competition in the marketplace." Congress has stated that they do view and treat the media differently under this Act and hold it to a different standard. 

    A case went before the Supreme Court in 1945 known as Associated Press v. United States. The Associated Press is a news organization and the Court found that Sherman Act prohibited the AP from putting various limits on new members in addition to also prohibiting the AP to sell news to non-members. The Court made this decision because they wanted to preserve the concept of "marketplace of ideas" which is basically the teaching that all views deserve a seat at the table and to deprive that is a form of censorship that the first amendment protects again. 

    Looking at the Sherman Act and the concepts the Court has presented through Associated Press v. United States, we can look at just how relevant and important these laws are today when examining the media in a modern context. The Sherman Act still protects against monopolies from staying or forming, an issue we can see right now when it comes to just a handful of companies controlling almost all of the news out there. We can see how the "marketplace of ideas" is under attack from big tech. Whether it be prominent conservative voices being kicked off platforms, or perhaps shadow banning the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 election.

    Now we look to the other part of the lesson, what is Section 230, and what does it mean in the modern context? To define it Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 says that, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." So Section 230 provides basic protections for people when they write something on the internet. For example there is no responsibility to those who write a blog or post a YouTube video, and what comments someone might leave on it etc. Those same protections are provided to the companies/platforms themselves.  

    There has been a growing movement from both those on the right and the left to repeal Section 230 for various reasons. For members of the conservative movement, such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, and others want to repeal Section 230 in response to growing amounts of online censorship from these tech giants and Section 230 currently provides them protection in the law. Hawley attempted an amendment to the Act back in June of 2019 called the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act. This amendment would've removed big tech companies immunity to censor those unless they can provide proof that the reason for censorship wasn't based on discrimination against mainly conservative voices. 

    There are also calls to end Section 230 for those on the left too, but for very different reasons.  Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut wants to repeal Section 230 to end protections of online firearm sales. Blumenthal attempt to add The Accountability for Online Firearms Marketplaces Act of 2021. So we can boil down the two sides and their reasons to get rid of Section 230 being completely different. Conservatives want to end censorship protections for giant tech companies while progressives want to restrict even more speech and activity online including the selling of firearms. There have been calls from other Democrats to repeal Section 230 for allowing content that is deemed to be "cause damage and injury". 

EOTO #2

 EOTO #2

Printing Press: 

    The Printing Press was a revolutionary invention that did truly create and inspire a whole new wave of technology that helped shape the world we live in today. The Printing Press was first experimented on in 1440 in France before it was brought and used in Germany. Prior to the press, the producing of books was not only very expensive but also very time consuming. Someone had to physically copy the books word for word in order to share the information that was in them. As the printing press' popularity and use of it began to grow around Europe, changes began to occur throughout the world. 

    Before the printing press, the Catholic church essentially had a monopoly on books and information. The majority of people could not read or write, but the clergy were and so people would go to the clergy because they could and the church would tell them only opinions or give them information that fit into the church's narrative and teachings. The printing press allowed for things like the Protestant Reformation, and its leaders like Martin Luther to use the printing press to help spread his ideas. 

    It was movements like the Protestant Reformation that were in a large part due to the printing press. Other ideas and movements also had help thanks to the printing press. The Renaissance was able to pick up because of the printing press. Some of the ancient writings of Plato and Aristotle among other ancient works, who helped build Western civilization, were able to be seen more and more due to the process of delivering information becoming quicker. As it was stated before, reproducing books prior to the printing press was a long and expensive process, but when the invention came along, it was much faster and much cheaper so ideas like the Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, modern science, and democracy and more were finally made possible because of the press. 

    In conclusion, the printing press was a groundbreaking invention not just for Europe but for the entire world. Revolutionary ideas were finally able to be widespread and led to the creation truly of modern news and the delivering of information while also helping to increase the desire to read and write. Without the printing press our world would look a whole lot different today. 

Diffusion of Innovations

 Diffusion of Innovation Theory 

Gay Marriage: 

    There are some ideas that at one point in time seem unthinkable to become mainstream and accepted. Some of these ideas and concepts retain the stigma associated with them while others will surprising gain public support and become first tolerated, then accepted, and then celebrated as a part of mainstream society and public dialogue. Using the diffusion of innovation theory, the theory can apply to inventions such as social media, the internet, and the iPhone. While the theory can also be applied and used to study difference in public opinion such as women's suffrage, abortion, and what I am going to discuss here: gay marriage.

    Looking at Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation theory, essentially teaches that over time the general public become more and more accepting of certain inventions or public opinions. The timeline in order goes from the pioneer phase, to the early adopters, to the early majority, to the late majority, and concludes with the laggard phase. The model is pretty clear that over time, what is once thought to not be acceptable slowly picks up steam within the public to where eventually becomes not only a tolerated as a fringe position but will eventually become so mainstream and accepted that it will be controversial to oppose which was unthinkable in the same society just a few years prior. 

    When looking at the category of gay marriage, public opinion on the subject has basically inverted since the mid 1990s when looking at a poll conducted by gallup. When Americans were asked their opinion on whether or not gay marriage should be viewed as equal and the same to traditional marriage in the context of the law back in 1996, only 27% had support compared to 68% that disagreed. In 2020 when the same question was asked, only 31% opposed while 67% approved. This is nearly a complete inversion of public opinion in less than 25 years. The American public's opinion on this issue has completely shifted in only a couple of generations time, how did this happen?

    

 To go back to how we got here, we need to look at who supported these issues during the pioneer phase. In the early 1960s, all 50 states still had at least some form of what was known as "sodomy laws" in place. The goal of sodomy laws was mainly to restrict and prohibit mainly homosexual sexual acts. The first state to repeal these laws was Illinois back in 1962. This wasn't just simply laws not acknowledging or acceptance gay marriage, these were laws to restrict and prohibit homosexual behavior and acts, an unthinkable standard by the logic of today. 

    Something to keep in mind is that the laws of any society, whether it be America or anywhere else, essentially reflect the values and morals of that society. When we go back to the founding days of America and look up until just a few decades ago, America was overwhelming a religious, Christian country and our laws represented the shared worldview we had at the time. We can see this through the topic of homosexuality. The traditional, conservative, Christian understanding of homosexuality views it as something that should not be promoted and definitely not celebrated in society. Traditional Christianity views sex and more specifically marriage between a man and a woman only and they reject any variation of that, including homosexuality . 

    As Christianity has been on a rapid decline in America, but also in the West more broadly, those beliefs and values are being replaced instead with a secular, atheistic culture that idolizes the material world and self interest over traditional virtues. 

    Now that we have all of this context, we can bring the diffusion of innovations theory back to this subject and can see what factors have propelled the radical change in public perception of homosexuality in just a few decades. We can see that probably the biggest factor is a decline in traditional worldview (Christianity), in addition to the gradual increase of acceptance by academia and entertainment. 

        Homosexuality was viewed, not just by a few fundamentalist groups in the deep south, but by a large amount of Americans as a mental disorder. Even according to the American Psychiatric Association. Homosexuality was on their list of mental illnesses until 1973 it was finally removed. 

    You can also observe throughout time how homosexuality was viewed and treated in the entertainment world by Hollywood. A short lived, ABC, sitcom called "The Corner Bar" back in 1972 is known to be TV's first gay, recurring character. Considering that the vast majority of states still had sodomy laws in place in 1972, I would infer that this was highly controversial for the time and perhaps one of the reasons the show was short lived, due to public backlash. We can see this becoming more and more mainstream overtime when we see one of the most popular sitcoms of all time Friends, in the mid 1990s was able to depict a homosexual wedding between two women without the huge amount of backlash. 

    A combination of a decline in traditional, Christian virtues in addition to a gradual acceptance of homosexuality from academia and entertainment has led to the vast majority of Americans not only tolerating or even accepting homosexuality but celebrating it. We can even see that right after the Supreme Court's 2015 decision, Obergefell v. Hodges where the Court ruled that the fundamental right to marry is given to homosexuals, from a federal level. Public opinion was already in favor of gay marriage prior to the decision, but we can see a huge spike in acceptance right after the decision too. In 2015, 60% of Americans supported gay marriage, compared to just 37% who didn't. Just one year later those numbers shifted to 67% to 31%! 

    I think in the context of diffusion of innovations theory, we are just about in the laggard phase on the issue of gay marriage and I believe a combination of a decline of a traditional worldview, a gradual increase in exposure through entertainment, and an acceptance from academia, have paved the way for the issue of gay marriage and homosexuality in general to undertake a huge public opinion change in just a few decades. 

 

 

Privacy

 Privacy 

   

 The issue of privacy and online surveillance is a fairly new issue in the modern context of the world we live in. The internet provided a way for big tech companies and different governments to work together to spy on their own people all under the guise of "public safety". Something that did not previously exist until a couple decades ago was the issue of the digital footprint or digital tattoo. A digital footprint is essential a tattoo or a record of however an individual has interacted on the internet, in the past or present. Anything that was said, posted, or searched by you online is a part of your digital tattoo and that will never go away. This is an issue that affects nearly all of us in America as we know that 93% of all Americans adults in 2021 use the internet. 

    

    If we had a competent government that actually had the best interests of the American people at heart, they would sign and enforce laws restricting this surveillance. But instead they are doing the exact opposite by working with these companies to steal our data to have more knowledge and control about their own people. Legislation such as the Patriot Act that was signed in 2001 by the Bush administration that used the tragedy of 9/11 as an excuse by exploiting the fear of the American people to justify spying on innocent people all under the guise of "counterterrorism". What our government actually should be doing is to make surveillance of those without a warrant straight up illegal and force these tech companies to delete data on anyone that has no record in the eyes of the court. 

    One of the best things we can do to help stop, or at the very least reduce, this surveillance is to force the government, even local governments to start taking measures against this. We already know that many local police departments keep records of people indefinitely if people are able to influence local governments to stop their collection of our information the tide can be turned to eventually lobbying the state and potentially federal governments to put a stop to this. Before any legislation is passed though, we can still take measures to protect ourselves. First off we can just be more cautious about whatever we say, post, or even search online and realize that somewhere, somebody working for a company is collecting that information. We can also invest in a VPN (virtual privacy network) which helps to protect our data which leads to a lower risk of identity theft. 

    This issue of surveillance by big tech and the government is unprecedented in human history. A lot of damage has been done to our way of life because of this, but we are still able to make changes if we united together on this issue and actively seek to help protect not only ourselves but also the general public as well. 

AntiWar

 Anti War Voices and The Mainstream

    The United States was founded upon a country that should be neutral if at all possible regarding war and foreign affairs. This was the America that our founders envisioned for us to follow and preserve. Whether it be in George Washington's farewell address where he made it clear where he stood, believing that America should be cautious against entangling ourselves in any foreign conflict. Alexander Hamilton, who edited Washington's farewell speech both agreed that "Interweaving our destiny" (with others) would lead to "entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice." This sentiment remained strong several decades as John Quincy Adams our 6th President, when he spoke to Congress on July 4th, 1821 and stated, (America) "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." 

    It is safe to say that the America envisioned and designed by our founders is far different from the one we know today. America has entangled herself in many foreign affairs that would make many of the founders sick to hear about. For as long as I have been alive, the United States has been involved still in several wars, many of them in the Middle East as well as other places. 

    Many of our leaders have unethically used various events as justification for going in to places we have no business being in to start conflicts for their own gain, at the expense of our soldiers, their civilizations (sometimes women and children), our economy and our domestic peace. Events such as 9/11 have been used as an excuse to go into these places. For example, when President Bush invaded Iraq in early 2003 he claimed it was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction that their leaders had and were prepared to use against the US and our allies. This was merely another excuse for the US to start a war that we had no real reason of being there. It is clear that the Bush administration was not being honest about why we went into Iraq when the real reason was it was an easy way to steal the oil that the country was rich in. 

    The US has sadly had a history of trying to silence those with antiwar sentiment. Woodrow Wilson, who is so far the worst President in our history, had laws passed by Congress to make criticizing the government and their involvement during World War I, illegal! This goes back more than 100 years. The government has been trying to silence antiwar voices because it goes against the narrative that big brother, I mean government, is here to help. They want us to believe that the reason so many people in the Middle East and other countries hate the United States of America is because we're "free" and they're not. This completely ignores the fact that all of this war propaganda has been used as justification for the US to be the world's police to promote our modern, liberal utopia on the rest of the world whether they like it or not. Anti-war voices go against the narrative that the government has our best interests at hand instead of being a corrupt swamp full of war mongers who are as corrupt as possible and benefit off of the destruction of their society as well as ours.