Politics And The Media

18 Pages 4595 Words

dikian 90). Nixon knew that if he did not exempt Berlin from the law, his actions would be remembered, come the next election. This illustrates that the government needs the media more than the media needs the government due to the fact the media has the ability to shape and form political discourse. Also it is capable of disrupting the established paradigm, therefore threatening their dominant status. The media and its patrons, the elite corporations and politicians, produce thought control among the non-elite, general populace. Indoctrination is the essence of democracy; propaganda to democracy is like violence to dictatorship. Mass communications has introduced new forms of social control and social cohesion suppressing dissident action. “No wonder then that, in the most advanced areas of this civilization, the social controls have been introjected to the point where even individual protest is affected at its roots” (Marcuse 9). Noam Chomsky, a notorious media critic, has proposed the propaganda model which “traces the routes by which ...