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(TALKZIMBABWE) Zimbabwe online media and 'the manufacture of consent'

Zimbabwe online media and 'the manufacture of consent'
Philip Murombedzi
Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:21:00 +0000

WALTER Lippman coined the phrase “the manufacture of consent”, which he said could be construed as a means of population control. Lippman’s concept is applicable today considering the status of the media, especially Zimbabwean online media.

We have seen a mushrooming of online publications on Zimbabwe in the past year. These publications most times play a crucial role in clarifying principles and motives of Government and opposition policy to the public, and enhances the role of the population in the formulation of policy, or if not formulation, in shaping the direction of that policy.

I am sure many politicians in both Zanu PF and the MDC and policy makers log onto these sites and the accompanying forums to gauge public opinion.

The internet is clearly one of the most powerful information tools in society today; it is, for most of the public, the ultimate source of all their information. The structure of the media will therefore have fundamental implications for the political and cultural orientation of the public.

Online publications are very relevant. They have already started competing with major print newspapers for an audience, but they differ over the degree to which they limit the public’s understanding of current affairs and the overall consequences of this. Online media is a business, just like any other business, competing for revenue from ads and clicks.

Such competition has at times taken objectivity aware from reporting and replaced it with sensationalism, twisting of facts and sometimes outright lying to get that catchy headline and the inside story. Inevitably those who control the media also control the thinking processes of the public, whose appetite for news has been made insatiable by this sensationalism, twisting of facts and lying.

In 2001 when John Sway retired from the New York Times he made an interesting statement:

“The business of a journalist now is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, fall at the feet of Mammon and sell himself for his daily bread. We are tools, vessels of rich men behind the scenes, we are jumping jacks.

“They pull the strings; we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are the properties of these men. We are intellectual prostitutes,” he added.

No one could have summed it better than Sway.

As each reporter on Zimbabwe today reads this statement, they should ask themselves this question: “Am I really reporting the truth and nothing but the truth, or am I just trying to advance a particular opinion that will make me popular with my boss and readers of my story? Am I deliberately misinforming the public to advance an opinion — selling oneself for daily bread? Am I a jumping jack or a strong, learned man who stands by the truth?”

The beauty of the internet today is that there is a vast catalogue of articles and those who are jumping jacks today might not have the luxury of changing their positions in the future as records are kept via a viral link: where publishing, republishing and archiving of articles occurs.

I have seen many journalists’ “talents, possibilities and lives become the properties of these men” — rich controlling men.

These are the journalists who afford acres of space to the Barack Obama inauguration and completely ignore the thousands of Palestinian deaths in Gaza.

The banning of journalists and reporters on the Gaza strip slips the attention of the mass media — the same media that is being banned. This defies logic and is incomprehensible. Even the usually caustic online media fails to report that; but finds the Obama inauguration interesting. The question we, therefore, have to ask is: “Who controls what is televised, printed and published?”

The public can be excused from this manipulation. They are consumers of what is dished to them. Journalists should waken up to the power of propaganda. They know propaganda. They have studied propaganda and mass manipulation, so how can they become the victim as well?

Today we lament the death of vigorous independent and critical media. Most of the media lacks a strong ethic of searching for the truth.

The public has been left poisoned, uninformed and with what one writer called “systematically incorrect perspectives on the world”.

As I prepare to take over a managing editor role in one online publication, I vow to state “the truth and nothing but the truth” regardless of what pressures emanate therefrom. Those pressures can only reinforce the fact that those who do not want to tell the truth are indeed “destroying the truth, lying outright, to pervert, to vilify, and are falling at the feet of Mammon and selling themselves for their daily bread”, but still have the audacity to call themselves mothers or fathers in their households.

Labels: MEDIA, NEOCOLONIALISM

posted by MrK @ 8:40 PM