The empires’ journalism: The Neo-Crusaders

The war was unavoidable; the United States officially assembled a war cabinet, and the aircraft carriers, which are belong to the U.S. Navy, were on the route to the Middle East. These all were prepared in 2 weeks after the September 11 attacks. Also, several American and foreign presses went into a state of emergency. Among the presses, CNN also sent large-scale reporters, which are fitted in owning over four thousand reporters, to Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

CNN has broadcast several interesting programs, especially related to wars, battles and conflicts, and kept at the top in broadcasting the stories about terrorisms and wars. They firstly wired World Trade Centre, the building wrapped in flames caused by an airplane crash, to the world exactly after 4 minutes. The broadcasting was rapidly well-prepared as like the American preparation for countering terrorisms.

The early reports on CNN, Fox and several American presses fully filled reports with the Americans’ painful and sad languages, and wills of punishment. As like broadcasting games, ‘we including the U.S.’ and ‘the enemies selected by the U.S.’, which have been unavoidably regulated by Americans, were written in articles. At least, the United States has become as the pronoun of goodness, whereas the Arabs and Islam have become as the pronoun of common bastard. Joel Achenbach, who is an American staff writer for The Washington Post and the author of seven books, once suggested that audiences have to follow the first regulation “Always be doubtful about media reports”. (Achenbach, 2004)

‘U.S. Attacked’, sourced from NYT

After the time, several media were focused on the case for leading U.S. and Americans to prepare the war against terrorists. Several American media, such as NYT and Washington Post, claimed about prudence on a strong view. However, the other media have claimed not to decline a war. In the final, they have chosen a war; along with the choice, CNN changed the special report subject from ‘America Under Attack’ to ‘America New War’. Usually, this tendency originated from delivering the U.S. government’s comments without proper filtering. According to the tendency, unilaterally delivering information and confined sources made some false reports.

Arabs and Muslims have become to terrorists the world’s common enemy due to those tendencies. Years later, it was disclosed that the attack on Gulf of Tonkin was a CIA lie; however, at that time, several American media reported that American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin had been attacked by Vietnamese torpedo boats. (Solomon, 1994)

What we have to consider is to take responsibility to judge the fairness of media and reports, to avoid unnecessary conflicts. As what I have mentioned as above, Joel Achenbach once said “Always be doubtful about media reports”. (Achenbach, 2004)

Reference lists

Achenbach, J., 2004. On 9/11, a Telling Seven-Minute Silence. [Online] Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53548-2004Jun18.html [Accessed 26 October 2014].

Solomon, J. C. a. N., 1994. 30-year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War. [Online] Available at: http://fair.org/media-beat-column/30-year-anniversary-tonkin-gulf-lie-launched-vietnam-war/ [Accessed 26 October 2014].

A new generation of democracy; protest, its culture and digital movement

According to the development of the internet accessibility, all the people are able to figure out what others have planned for the common beliefs, and also being able to share such meeting places for whom regardless of sex, age and religion. This is why online communities are able to be establish among various off-line communities. Except the countries where are ruling by dictators, all the people freely discuss what is in their minds, regardless of issues, categories and topics, and this implies the freedom of speech in the online sphere. Nowadays generations are called as ‘N Generation’ (imply as Internet Generation, originated from the book ‘The Growth of Internet: The Appearance of N Generation’, published by the American Sociologist Don Tapscott. One of the features of N Generation is that they are not hesitated to utilize the internet, unlikely the old generations are. And, the internet is not only being used as having funs, also used to truly defend our freedom and democracy, such sweet things.

Nowadays, the tools are increasing power as a tool for political activities such protests to against what they feel something is wrong.

This is mainly due to social networking services that large amounts of people can gather and freely argue what their minds are. Previously, the SNSs ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’, and the UCC ‘YouTube’ have established to deal with political activities. Because, people were feeling safe even when they had discussed in these open-spaces due to its ownerships to foreign companies, especially being highly magnified during the Jasmine Revolution in Arab.

“You are the internet” – FireChat in Hong Kong

Nowadays, people are using mobile chatting applications such ‘FireChat’ (recently being highly used in Hong Kong, send messages through Bluetooth connectivity, not the internet). (Shadbolt, 2014) Furthermore, the China’s Golden Shield Project, the largest firewall established by the Chinese Government to block some foreign websites such Facebook and YouTube, are being able to bypass by setting Proxy or VPN (Virtual Private Network). (Pingp, 2011)

Thus, such technologies have developed our lives, even the cultures in political protests. Furthermore, young generations especially have felt such feelings of hostility towards old generations from other backgrounds. Youths are being well adopted to the new cyber environment, and established the methods to against towards old stuffs such dictatorships. To change its climate for shifting the social environments, which are well-suited for youths, they will continually try utilizing the newly-established fun-stuffs, while elders are trying to restrict them to maintain the present world.

Reference lists

Pingp, 2011. The Great Firewall of China: Background. [Online] Available at: http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/2010-11/FreedomOfInformationChina/the-great-firewall-of-china-background/index.html [Accessed 27 October 2014].

Shadbolt, P., 2014. FireChat in Hong Kong: How an app tapped its way into the protests. [Online] Available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/16/tech/mobile/tomorrow-transformed-firechat/ [Accessed 27 October 2014].

Who counts in Global Media?

Global media has been the trend of nowadays. Everyone around of us is able to instantly figure out what is happening around the world by simply accessing the internet or satellite TV those are connected to central networks. However what I would like to argue is the role of the media. Is it fairly illustrate and represent voices or is it just intending to represent the supremacies’ wishes and voices, just as like the Voice of America (VOA).

Last time, I chose and discussed about the topic: Cultural Imperialism and the Media Imperialism, included defining several aspects such as the positive aspects which influenced to politics, and may led to the better societies; on the other hands, the media just represents the western’s voices.

‘Battle Royale’ – CNN & BBC vs. Al-Jazeera

In the term of the history of news, it has been a part of the western culture for a long time. So simply, the western world has controlled and overran the world’s media industries for centuries. Instead of these media, only local media subsists in their local areas, recorded only a few of audiences. However, during the Anti-terrorism Movement, one of the challengers suddenly appeared up on the surface, and threated the western media. The challengers, named Al-Jazeera, slightly took over strengths, and occupied the media industries as one of the predominant of the industries. After the time, the United States would eliminate the Al, and established the Arab-located U.S. friendly-media, named Al-Hurra, and it totally collapsed.

According to the neutral role of such media, news must be unbiased. There are no places standing for the propaganda media. However, U.S. had expected the success of Free Radio, broadcasted at the behind of the Iron Curtain, in Europe, during the Cold War.

As what I have mentioned, the purpose of media is not supposed for propaganda. Those who are using it for the purpose, the media will be collapsed, media must respect the various points of views. If broadcasting areas are limited at specific areas, then actually it does not matter, refer to as Fox News Channel the most right-wing media in US. However, media meets the whole world nowadays, due to the Media Globalization. Today, an international domestic market is much important than a domestic demand market.

At this point, let me directly ask about it: who is going to trust VOA, Russian Pravda (in Russian: Пра́вда), and the published journal of the Chinese Communist Party such as CCTV, rather than the mass media of the free world such as BBC and Al-Jazeera. …Before, the Hollywood movies, after then, the American dramas are.

Media Imperialism, the double-edged sword

Someone may argue Media Imperialism is the invasion of the foreign media, with strengthened influences, threated local media. However, I believe the imperialism has been greatly tarnished long time ago since the Media Globalization has been recently established into societies, everyone’s life and our living rooms.

The word ‘Imperialism’ sounds unreasonable. However, not only the expected negative aspects, Media Imperialism respectively has two different sides, both positive and negative are; nations’ attractions with media can have various results as written below.

Feminist Activism in Arab World

For the positive aspects, women’s rights may be suitable for an example. Nowadays, American or European way of modernized lifestyle and the social influences & reflections of women have created more powerful images of women in other countries’ media as well. (Noh, 2007) Everyone in the countries easily cannot refuse this happened reality, except Muslim countries; they have never tried to innovate. Women and their lifestyle have begun to act like sexy and the temptation of women at Hollywood and K-POP, and they have established several social activities and movements to become like them, such as the raising of feminists.

Furthermore, spreading the ideology of democracy to autocracies were able. The media have truly realized people what are the realities of the outer of iron boundaries. The reflections realized them and finally triggered them to rise for the freedom which they had never experienced before due to the dictatorships’ autocracy, and these connected to the actual movements, such as East Germany & the unification of Germany (Elizabeth Boa, 1994) and Jasmine Revolution.

On the other hands, the negative aspect is; the current supremacy world-media channels, such as CNN and BBC, reflect the realities, synchronized views only from American or Western sides, such as the Iraq War and the Anti-terrorism Movements which overcame human-rights. These media show aspects only from one side and supremacies’ minds with the ideas that the wars and the movements are fundamental to make Iraq or other third worlds more civilized.

I call the media ‘the double-edged sword’, because of some reflected advantages and disadvantages, either. These stories were coming from the double-edged sword, and the essay was trying to reflect with the several studies and the references, in the way how Media Imperialism was able to change several social realities, and push other countries and cultures in wrong understanding, and I personally believe these cannot be contradicted.

Reference lists

Elizabeth Boa, J. W., 1994. German Monitor, Women and the Wende: Social Effects and Cultural Reflections of the German Unification Process. The Netherlands, Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – Atlanta.

Noh, S., 2007. Intersecting Gender and Race in Globalization: Beyond the Evolution from Cultural Imperialism to Cultural Hybridity. [Online] Available at: http://lass.purduecal.edu/cca/gmj/sp07/graduate/gmj-sp07-grad-noh.htm [Accessed 27 October 2014].