“And let me tell you something, people are driving across that border with tons, tons, hear me, tons of everything from by products for methamphetamine to cocaine to heroin and it's all coming up through corrupt Mexico." 

I want you to guess; was this said by Joe Biden or Donald Trump? Well those who thought Trump, you’re wrong. This was President elect Joe Biden in 2006 while arguing that US needs a fence at the US-Mexico border. Yet, why did we think Trump? It’s because the media chooses to not divulge information that doesn’t promote a certain agenda. The media always depicts Trump as a racist, rude and horrible person. Does the media ever tell us about the horrid things Joe Biden has done? For example, he voted in favour for the 2003 Iraq invasion, and made the Ukrainian government fire a prosecutor who dug up dirt against him? Biden threatened to withdraw over 1 billion dollars of foreign aid to Ukraine in order to secure his son’s job. Donald Trump’s government is the only entity highlighting these very serious crimes, and also have credible evidence to back them. If the media were truly to be open and transparent about all candidates, voting trends will significantly change. The media simply chooses to conceal these facts and buries them underground. 

George Orwell wrote in his famous book, 1984 “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”. He was, in essence, predicting the future and modern-day media. The media has so much power to the point that it can alter any part of history it chooses to and we will believe what we are shown. This is clearly manipulation.

The media tends to ignore the facts and especially western media are biased towards their respective ideologies. Mainstream US based media is up in arms about the oppressive dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq and how he hung and killed people, but does the American media ever consider the hundreds of thousands people killed in Iraq as a result of the war? Does the US based media ever even acknowledge that Iraq took the permission of US to invade Kuwait? I’d think not.

A similar pattern can be seen in how Muslims are characterized around the world, particularly in the west. Any tragedy around the world when committed by a Muslim is an act of terrorism and the individual is termed terrorist right away however, if it the same act is committed by a non-Muslim, particularly a white person, they are usually portrayed as a lone wolf or mentally deranged or a socially isolated individual – someone suffering from a variety of mental illnesses. How is that fair? That media’s goal is to influence us to the point where we are not allowed to form own opinions and generate the same opinion as its own.

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” (George Orwell)

A documentary primarily about Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, The Revolution Will Not be Televised shows how the media manipulates us. While there were protests going on for and against Hugo Chavez, the biased US and Europe based media showed pro Chaves protestors shooting  anti-Chavez protestors from the top of a bridge. The objective was to create hate, accuse Chavez of killing innocent people without showing the entire picture. However, this was not true. Another camera angle showed that those protestors were shooting into empty streets and not at any person. The US administration wanted Chavez gone and the media abused selected footage to make Chavez look bad. When people of Venezuela found this out, it turned out to be a key turning point towards building Chavez support. 

Why did the media depict Hugo Chavez, as a war mongering, horrible person when he was the exact opposite, while depicting George Bush as an American hero, who at that point in time had unlawfully and unjustly invaded Afghanistan, invaded Iraq and had killed a leader unfairly who kept his people safe from terrorists, all in the name of “ the war on terror”. The Bush administration violated multiple international laws, yet no one seems to care, but everyone the same people become social justice warriors when it comes to other so called cruel and oppressive dictators. 

Noam Chomsky, a very notable and well known American academic and activist has pointed out and recognized that the media is essentially tasked with manipulation. He drafted "10 strategies of manipulation" by the media, the main one being “the strategy of distraction”, which means flooding continuous distractions and providing insignificant information instead of providing the correct information. Another one is “using emotions”, which basically manipulates the viewer emotionally .The last is  “Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity”, which intends to keep the public incapable of understanding the technologies and methods the media uses to control the public. Keep in mind, these strategies were written over 30 years ago, and unfortunately the media still uses these strategies today. In his book, Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky also argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion".

Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder who revealed top secrets about the US government’s horrifying lists of war crimes, also agrees that media causes major conflicts and ignorance. “Nearly every war that has started in the last 50 years has been a result of media lies”. The media could have prevented war if they had not reprinted government propaganda. Ignorance is our number one enemy, and who promotes it? Media. 

On the subject of manipulation and ignorance, I’d like to talk about movies, TV shows, and social media. Though media is the biggest source of manipulation, movies, TV shows and social media are also forwarding a particular agenda. Movies, especially those on biographies which are full of propaganda. One example is a movie about Winston Churchill by a British Director. The movie was praised, and the content of the movie was about all the good things Churchill had done, and hence after watching the movie people had more respect for him. This influences people’s opinion because the movie portrays him as a brave, good person, whereas he wasn’t, and people haven’t seen it from other perspectives. The movie didn’t even bother acknowledging, yet alone elaborating on his racist characteristics, and how he refused to help the Indians, and literally manufactured the Bengal Famine, which killed over 2.5 million people in Bengal alone.

What is the solution? Well, I don’t think the media will acknowledge the fact that they do manipulate people and spread misinformation, so the only solution is for people around the world to be educated and always keep “what the media says may not always be true” in their minds. This issue is a big one, and the first step towards the world being truly educated is to spread the word about this pressing issue. 

The media will never die, it’s everyone’s source of information .It won’t die down in popularity. It has been around for the longest time, but like banana skins, the media has decayed and gotten worse over time. The media has always been a tool of propaganda, but information has never spread as fast as it does today. Now, I ask you this; read multiple books to expand your knowledge, read multiple perspectives to see their point of view, don’t always believe what the media says and don’t believe in their overexaggerated headlines. I wrote this essay was because I wanted to atleast try to make a difference in your lives and change your perspective on what you think about the media.

Finally before I finish, my message for all of you is to step up, always educate yourself before believing facts provided by all forms of media and most importantly never stop learning.