Oral Presentation Feedback

[Hala119]

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Author Steven Brill once said, “when it comes to arrogance, power and lack of accountability, journalists are the only people on the planet who make lawyers look good." Why, you may ask? Well, I’m about to tell you. Before you question me, no, I won’t be slandering against journalists. Who, or should I say, what I’m more concerned about, and what you should be too, is the media. The media is not what you think it is. It is not just the memes you scroll through Instagram to find. It is not just not those filtered photographs your friends post for the likes. And it is definitely not just an avenue where you can call or text or livestream with your friends. It is, however, a platform used to control you. It pays advertising companies with the information they get from hacking into your privacy to influence your opinion on a particular issue. It provides a false representation of a news event to put forward their own political agenda during a time where the issue is magnified. Not only that, but it influences you. How? It’s obvious, isn’t it? The way you dress, eat, what music you listen to. Where do you think it all comes from? You don’t just discover it magically. Sure, it’s not all bad, but it’s not all good either. We need to make a change. We need to set boundaries. It’s just like someone breaking into your house and stealing your money. If that doesn’t worry you, then maybe this will. 

Talk to your friends about taking a trip to England and get an ad the next day? Well, it’s not as uncommon as you think. The most important thing you need to know is that Facebook, a social-networking media platform, spends quarterly $16.91 billion (December 2018) on advertising revenue, according to the company. That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Money, money and, you guessed it, money. That’s what Facebook cares about. A lot of you know that much of the news you read on Facebook as you scroll through your feed is forged. It may come as a shock to you that many people actually believe everything they read online. You want to know about how bad the media spreads fake news? We all know about the anti-vaccine epidemic. While I’m not here to debouche against their arguments, I will point out that they base much of their debates on misinformation. You know what helps them? You guessed right again! Facebook. Did you know that Facebook once helped a fake news article spread dangerous misinformation about the flu vaccine in 2018, where they claimed an unnamed “CDC doctor” said the flu outbreak is being caused by the flu vaccine itself. This is the vaccine-causing-autism argument all over again. We all know how that turned out: the media once again fools ignorant commonplace members of society into believing vaccines are bad for you, when we all know the benefits outweigh the risks. Don’t you think we should be concerned over this? I know we all enjoy scrolling through second-hand memes that probably originated from Reddit or Tumblr, but why don’t we just go to those sites who don’t try to manipulate us instead? Facebook can do this because we allow it to. The media can do this because we allow it to. Isn’t it time to make a change?

A change from what, you may ask. Well, we all know how the media isn’t what it should be. I think you can agree with me when I say, as Will Rogers, an American humourist and actor quoted, “all I know is just what I read in the papers.” I want to let you in on a little secret about newspaper articles: they practise a little technique called ‘framing.’ It means exactly what it sounds like: the process by which an issue portrayed in news media is inputted or left out. What if I told you that it can happen to any one of us, in our own neighbourhoods, no less? You can see by this headline that this Palestinian girl, Aiia Maasarwe, who was killed near a tram stop in Bundoora, is labelled an ‘Israeli student.’ Are we really going to sit here and let this young girl’s identity be taken away from her, the only thing that she can hold onto after her death? The media has gone too far, we can all agree. If this isn’t enough to convince you that the media should have some sort of regulation, then look at this photograph. Seems like a legitimate portrayal of a British soldier doing a good deed, right? Urging Iraqi citizens to seek cover. Wrong. If you look at these two images here, you can see that the photojournalist, Brian Waksi, has combined them to ‘improve’ the composition. He was fired. I mean, of course he was, right? This type of manipulation is highly problematic. It is not a fashion magazine. It is the job of the news to present the truth, not represent it. To not only provide a false presentation of a news event but to put forward his own political agenda during a time where the issue is magnified? How are we supposed to trust the media if they are manipulating us like this? If you’re still clinging to the hope that, at the end of the day, they have genuine intentions, you’re not going to like what I say next.

The media affects what we do and who we are as people. We all have social media: Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram. The media influences everything from what we eat, where we go on vacation, where we live, and who we vote for. Think about it. I want you do something for me. Think about the music you listen to: an artist, a style, a genre. You got it? Now, keep that in your mind. Close your eyes for a second and imagine the kind of clothing you wear to an outing, a party, for instance. Don’t they correlate? From what I’ve seen, and I think you guys have, too, music does affect what we wear. Jean jackets with patches: punk. Sparkly attire: pop. Ripped jeans: rock. The list goes on and on. In fact, Youngjoo Na and Tove Agnhage conducted a study that appeared in the International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology. They found that the correlation between fashion and music is very strong and, in fact, the two are thought of as a singular concept. Does that come as a shock to you? Well, you know what? We choose to be under this influence. We could easily delete Facebook off our phones, but the insatiable need to check our feeds is too strong, isn’t it? I know I spend hours and hours scrolling through Instagram, finding joy at any meme content I can find. The latest meme. The latest trend. The latest photo your best friend posts. There’s always a downside, and this one is, well, dangerous. Did you know that a media anchor, Mika Brzezinski, declared that it is the media’s job to “control exactly what people think” during an on-air discussion about President Donald Trump. Doesn’t that scare you?

It is our responsibility to pick out bias and do extensive research to get what we want. But why?
Why should we have to go through all this trouble? I hear what people say, that it’s not all bad. That “the camera never lies.” Well, breaking news: that’s not true anymore. It might’ve been true for the analogue era, before the invention of the internet, but not if you work in modern media. Look at this picture of models like Miranda Kerr. She seems beautiful, right? Too good to be true? Well, you’re right. It is too good to be true. Photoshop exists, you know? This happens all the time: advertisers manipulate women’s features like taking away blemishes to adhere to society’s constructed outlook on beauty. The media creates this unrealistic expectation. The media leads to an influx of mental illness. 65% of women and girls have an eating disorder, according to the Fact Sheet: Women and Eating Disorders. We want to look like these models, but it is literally impossible for even them to look like this. You still trying to find excuses for the media? I hear it all, the arguments. I know you think there is a change. I know there are already pop culture differences: improvements in portrayal of women, racial groups, religions. But look at this. Catwoman. Captain Marvel. Black Widow. You recognise these superheros, don’t you? You know what I see? Stereotypes, stereotypes, and, you guessed it, more stereotypes. Tight, revealing clothes. Objectified. Sexualised. Are you really going to sit there and defend the media when they represent a stereotype that women only have value if they are attractive or sexually pleasing?

So, what can we do? That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? The answer is as complicated as the question, but the first step can be this: place restrictions on the media. It’ is already happening. We all remember the massacre of 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand in March this year. What you may not know is that the gunman wrote a racist manifesto and posted it online before using, surprise, surprise, Facebook, to live-stream the shooting. You know what the gunman wanted? International attention. You know what we gave him? International attention. So why not make calls for internet regulation. Our own government responded. Australia passed a law that threatens fines for social media companies and jail for their executives if they fail to remove “abhorrent violent material” from their platforms. But you’re not the government, are you? We don’t have the power to do that. So, what can we do? Limit your time on social media. Get off it all together, if you haven’t already been sucked into the media’s web. Don’t give them what they want, your attention, your time, your information, and they might actually learn that what they’re doing can’t go on. It all starts with you.

It’s all a lot to take in, isn’t it? What the media does. The fact that it uses your information for profit. The fact that it spreads misinformation for their own political agenda. The fact that it controls you, how you act, what you wear, where you go. The fact that the good does not triumph the bad. The fact that it is harming us, at all. That we need restrictions on it. Malcolm X, a civil rights leader and activist, once said, “the media's the most powerful entity on Earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses." Are you okay with being controlled?