The Braindeaed Megaphones ': The Braindead Megaphone' By George Saunders

Today’s media (news) plays an enormous role in the lives of people in directing a specific perception of the world around them. Most often media conduct's a subconscious effect upon its spectators in which the upshots are deliberately or illdeliberatly towards a particular topic.

It seems not a day goes by without news of a major calamity echoing in the chamber that is the news. This echo chamber might even lead you to think that we are living in the most dangerous time in history. Protest spring up in one city, wars start in another country, a terrorist group kills civilians, or North Korea performs a nuclear test. What this news might not tell you is that we are living in the most peaceful time, that less children die in birth today than ever before, that many diseases that were once prevalent have all but been eradicated. This is what George Saunders speaks off in his essay “The Braindead Megaphone” he asks use to imagine a man

Malcolm X 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.” The media reaches out to all places and affects everyone. It changes how we think and what we do. In the novel White Noise, Don Delillo uses Babette’s moral ambiguity, conveyed through her decisions and actions, to reveal the influence that media has on the internal conflict between one’s self interest and morality.

Weber highlights the dual position of mass media, which operate both as transmission vectors and as actors. The philosopher argues that the emergence of media monopolies, especially in television, transformed information into “pre-formation” (Phillips, 2011, p.170). Indeed, journalists and reporters used to process raw data, analyze it, and provide their readers with more or less relevant keys to enable them to form their own enlightened outlook on the content presented. With the advent of information technologies, the focus has shifted towards less analysis and a larger volume of “news”: “Transparency here would equate with immediacy of meaning and accessibility of comprehension” (Phillips, 2011, p.163). News TV channels offer a constant loop of raw data over raw data. They provide only superficial critiques of the material that they offer to their viewers: ”as you say, not so long ago the notion of information ‘implied a process of alteration’: it was developed to take into account the inevitable aleatory effects of space and time in the transmission of data.” (Phillips, 2011, p.170). Social media has intensified the thirst for fast circulating, humongous volumes of material, which is doubly mistaken for information and transparency: “it [social media, author’s note] can stimulate the expectation that ‘then’ is

In his essay “But Enough about You” Brian Williams addresses a very interesting issue about the user- generated media and the Mainstream media in today's society. He believes that the ideal American culture has changed because people are only concerned about themselves. Nowadays people are more interested to watch news if the implied message involves them or if it's good enough to tell someone else. Williams explains how all the new devices, the web, video and the digital cable fill a perceived people need. Therefore, many people are not interesting in reading newspaper or watching news in which it leads the Media to lose viewers. He emphasizes that the audiences that follows the news report are dropped, but the media still work hard to gathering

After reading this article I have realized that everything that is not our own thought could be in some way a megaphone. The biggest one of these being mainstream media. In Article Six, Saunders says, “In the beginning there is a blank mind. Then that mind gets an idea in it, and the trouble begins, because the mind mistakes the idea for the world.”1 To the media our minds are a blank page. Their jobs are to fill those blank pages with things to keep us interested even if it isn’t relevant to our lives now. We see what they want us to see, not exactly what we need to see. By filling those blank pages they get us hooked on and keep us coming back for more. A great example I see day to day are the different news stations rambling on about politics firmly stating what they believe to be the correct stand-point on a specific issue. They want us to believe what they believe by filling our blank minds with their views in a direction that will convince us is right. Along with filling our blank minds, the media tends to find ways to distract us. It distracts us by showing us things that

All throughout history we have used metaphors to describe people, places, events and emotions; so it is perfectly fitting to describe the mediums with which we project our ideas as a metaphor as well. This is Neil Postman 's basis for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Television and other media outlets have conditioned us to accept entertainment in every aspect of life; but most of all it masks the state of public affairs and politics. Through his book, Postman begs that we recognize the ways in which media shapes our lives and how we can use them to serve us instead of hurt us. Broken into two parts, Amusing Ourselves to Death focuses on a historical analysis of media, then discusses the television media-metaphor in more detail. Postman examines how media has infected every aspect of public discourse by prizing entertainment as the standard of truth.

In the novel, the public are exploited by the controllers of mass communication through their desire of easy and simple gratification, so much that the public is only consuming shallow “mindless escapisms” and at that point, independent thought ceases to exist (McGiveron, “Trick”). The public is so willing to continually gorge itself on these

News has spread around through different means and has rapidly evolved in just the past few hundred years, from newspapers, to news channels, and now also through online media. The purpose of these news outlets is to inform the population on current events locally and internationally. Many people feel as if the news does a good job in captivating audiences and influencing them, but wonder if they are actually reporting the news accurately. In their article, “Pictures in Our Heads,” Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson thought the same, and made statements stating that the media does effectively influence the population and insinuating that the media does not always portray their coverage accurately; this

Through the broad TV of fierce substance, and the mass correspondence of unjustifiable connections, generalizations, measures, desires, and regularizing parts, the media develops rough conduct and frightful or skeptical mentalities about this present reality.

The media controls many thoughts and facts given to the public that may or may not be true. With the Internet at fingertips across the world, news spreads faster with little evidence provided. Over the last century, the world’s speed increased with news inventions such as cars, electronics, and the Internet. Society’s mindset transformed from hard working to free handouts; therefore, when news sources make a statement, humankind believes it without researching the topic at all. Sometimes, news reporters make legitimate statements that are misinterpreted by readers. The words of the writer are at fault for perspective or understanding of news rather than the interpretation the readers obtain.

In “ The Braindead Megaphone” George Saunders introduces the importance media plays in our lives through use of megaphone guy. The megaphone is so loud that no matter how much we try to resist its influence, we will always inevitably incorporate its thoughts and believes into our own. The use of media makes us incapable of understanding real world problems because things mainly showed on television are meaningless representations of violence and wealth. Thus when media tries to trick us, time and quality of the delivered information is limitted. In response, people cannot comprehend the information address correctly and remain passive and tolerant about the stupid things that are actually being delivered. As Saunders states " our national language so dumped down-- that we are sitting ducks"(Saunders 6) People tend to stay passive when they fear that their actions will make things worst, so rely on those who have power over it “ relives us of the burden of living with ambiguity.” therefor to justify irrational acts media has been using terms as “ unfortunate but necessary collateral damage.” Media is providing us ideas on the world that makes us feel lonely, different from people outside our culture and making everyone else less understandable more violent and thus dangerous towards our nation and that “the world is full of

In chapter three (page 105) McKee highlighted that the public sphere contains too much ‘spectacle’. “From a modern perspective, it seems that the public sphere promotes a ‘short attention span’ in consumers. Ideas aren't explored in detail or at length, they're packaged as thirty second grabs”. McKee also talks about us human beings, suffering from a curse of ‘soundbites’ (Slayden and Whillock 1999). The terms ‘short attention span’ and ‘soundbite’ are the two most popular terms in our discussions about the public sphere. This evidently show us that the appearance is more important to us than anything else and how much more we concentrate on how the media approach everything that is surrounding us, rather than having our personal opinions.

It is a well-known fact that the media has a strong hold over the society, and in this information age, it plays a more prominent role than ever before. The recent film, Spotlight shows the manner in which a group of investigative journalists in the Boston Globe made is known to the world that sexual exploitation and abuse was thriving in Churches across the globe. The movie itself further propelled the awareness about this issue. On the other hand, earthquakes and genocides seem to go unnoticed on the mere mention of Kim Kardashian having a child. Clearly, the media is powerful, but people seek excitement from it as much or perhaps even more than they seek information and awareness. Unfortunately, it often seems that the media panders to the need for excitement, but such news can be easily acquired and sold. In other words, the kind of news that instigates public interest makes money is the mantra of the media today, and the quality of the news is compromised in this bargain. Even more concerning is the lack of responsibility exhibited by the new media. This paper attempts to show that the new media seems highly inclined to develop an exploitative relationship with the society, wherein the profits generated undermine the significance of the society’s well being.

To wholly have a grasp on how this new founded approach to journalism has changed alongside technology—as well as understanding the dangers such openness brings forth—one has to understand what exactly those changes are. Primarily, those that are writing for the sake of offering information have, whether willingly or not, fed into the usage of social media as it has become a centralized method of distribution that is relatively inescapable with the current times. As such those framing the news for the masses find an authentic avenue to stay in contact via social media that has benefits ranging from, “its extraordinary newsgathering potential; its potential as a new tool to engage the audience; and as a way of distributing our news” (Eltringham, 2012), all of which are deeply different from the presentation of reporting that occurred during earlier eras. Days of strongly structured instances of journalism that could not travel with such speed have been replaced as, “social media has trashed many of the foundations on