Örsan K. Öymen

The world order and media

20 Kasım 2023 Pazartesi

The primary duty of media is to inform the public accurately, a responsibility that transcends whether the media outlet is a public or private entity. Media organizations serving governments, political parties, or capital interests morph into propaganda tools rather than serving the public interest.

Media, or mass communication tools, are indispensable elements of democracy. In an environment where the public is misinformed, accurate decision-making in elections becomes impossible.

Just as a country without separation of powers among the legislature, executive, and judiciary cannot claim to have democracy, a nation where media is not independent of the state, government, political parties, and capitalist class cannot either.

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Global power centers, fully aware of this, always strive to control and direct media for their benefit. Decisions on which guests and commentators appear on TV, which columnists write in newspapers and news portals, and which news receives how much attention is often made by pawns of these power centers, not by objective and independent media executives.

Few media organizations resist this corrupted system in the world.

Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's "Manufacturing Consent," Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," Sidney Lumet's "Network," and Oliver Stone's "Salvador" are among the works that strikingly address this issue.

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Without fundamentally solving the issues of imperialism and capitalism, resolving these media problems is impossible. However, until these broader issues are resolved, certain measures can be taken.

Preventing owners of private media companies from engaging in commercial activities outside of media; stopping monopolization in media and the ownership of multiple media outlets by the same owner; banning media owners from participating in public tenders; ensuring objective and independent broadcasting by both public and private media companies, and their affiliations with power centers, through independent audits; applying severe penalties to media organizations failing these audits; implementing legal regulations in this direction; enhancing the teaching of media ethics and morality in communication faculties; applying and monitoring merit criteria in media recruitments are among the measures that can be considered.

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In an environment where the public loses trust in media, conspiracy theories, superstitions, fallacies, and rumors become more prevalent. In other words, the detachment of the public from media doesn't solve the problem; it leads to the cover-up of imperialism and capitalism issues with these theories, perpetuating the corrupt system.

This is precisely what imperialism and capitalism aim to achieve.

Ending the occupation of media by enemies of the people is, therefore, a matter of vital importance.


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