Government Control Over The Media
Government Controls the citizen through the media.
“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and institute a new government.” This quote from the declaration concludes the idea that the people power the government. Today however this is not true the government today, over powers the people and with help from its minion the media, it controls the people.
The government uses fox news to control the people today. By using the techniques panic mongering, equating violence with power, populism, and diversion, the government is able to successfully use fox news to trick the viewers into believing that what is being said is true. The way there techniques work and how they have worked in the past is simple. Panic mongering is used to scare, stir up, the people so that they cannot think rationally, and when a person can’t think rationally they will believe anything. This method worked during the time of the swine flu, and the assumption that Obama is Muslim. Equating violence with power is used to show that power is best displayed when violence plays a role, in other words to get power you have to use violence, this is used to sort of justify any violence that has been done. The Iranian regime against the protesters is an example of equating violence with power. Populism is used also to encourage the viewers that they are different from their opponents, this is really big when its election time, usually the competitors play themselves off as being one of “the people” and the other opponents are “bureaucrats.” And diversion, a technique used to put all the focus on the “moving forward” concept, this is used as either a distraction from the problem or as a spark of propaganda that is used to tell the viewers that instead of focusing on what happened lets focus on what we are going to do about it! In fox news the speaker invokes ACORN to tell the viewer that ACORN is something we should focus on opposed to focusing on the issues in Iran, or something along those lines. All of these techniques are used today to help the government control the people. Though there wasn’t exactly Fox News during the revolution there still was some use of the media to influence the people to capitulate in to the perspective the “revolutionist” wanted.
Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry, two major revolutionists, used the exact same techniques that Fox News uses today, to persuade the people to conform to their beliefs through their speeches. Equating violence with power is what both Henry and Paine spoke to the people, the concept that “the only way to obtain freedom is by fighting for it!” Is the main focus for both of Henry and Paine’s speech. Populism Henry and Paine used this technique to encourage the people to think that they are different from the ruthless monsters of the British. Panic mongering; Patrick Henry definitely stirs up the crowd when he boasts to the people “they must fight!” And diversion in Paine's speech his formatting goes as followed, he starts of talking about everything that happened in the past to the fact that they should focus on the past issues but instead “fight” for the solution for the future. Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine used the same techniques that Fox News uses today to encourage the people to believing the perspectives that they want.
The government controls the people by using Fox News and the techniques to trick the people into believing that what is being said is true. This has happened in the past, and it is continuing to happen.