Thoughts on the Media

I used to think the problem with the Australian Media and its mother ship, the US media, was what was reported or how events were portrayed. Lately, I’ve been observing a deeper mechanism afoot, one that renders content relatively unimportant. The problem with the Australian Media is not so much what it says and how it says it, but how it teaches Australians to think, or, not to think.

“Black-and-white” thinking is one of a number of thinking styles considered irrational by psychologists, according to cognitive behavioural theory. The Australian mainstream media cultivates this irrational thinking style by using entirely good/entirely evil oppositions (not to mention Australian/un-Australian), omitting not only historical and political context but the shades of grey required for critical thought and accurate assessment of world events.

During George W’s propaganda push for the post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, black-and-white language and concepts were used gratuitously, specially prepared for the administration by a top US public relations expert. Among such pearls as “crusade” (which also plumbed ancient archetypes) and “axis of evil”, was “with us or with the terrorists”, a classic example of black-and-white thinking.

With a glut of material such as Hollywood movies and popular video games utilising rigid good guy/bad guy storylines, inculcating our children into an irrational mindset and preparing the ground for mainstream reporting to take the reins into adulthood, how much more frighteningly easy will it become to point our young men and women at a perceived bad guy and say “shoot”?