Calvin Seng’s Blog

I was late to school about 20 minutes. It was because I have to throw the clothes my roommate and I had been collecting for almost one week into the washing machine. The lecture had started, but my friends told me that it was going to end soon. In fact it was. Then Mr. Radzi came in and told us about his disappointment regarding our positive feedback, but negative feedback to him. However, those feedbacks should be taken by him for further improvements. 

Our job on that day was to hand in our assignment. After the submission, we all went to have our brunch before attending the Maths class.

So what I am trying to say about media imperialism is, it is in fact a powerful tool, in shaping people’s mind. What we hear, and what we see from the news, radio, or even internet, how true are them? Thinking in another point of view, are we being controlled by the media, by the enforced people, by our government? Are we being exposed to what they wanted us to believe instead? Are we being shaped into what they wanted us to be?

I have to admit that media imperialism is too powerful that it has the power to shape one’s mindset. It has to be used correctly, else divergence would occur and things may turn out nasty. We should expose ourselves more to what is real, what is the thing behind the scene, behind what we could see usually. Luckily, we have internet these days, that actually providing us  another chance to expose to things that usually could not be controlled by the government.

After watching the documentary — The Power of Nightmares, originally aired on BBC, I have to admit that they were examplifying the right things to us, at least a good example that we could understand what is Media Imperialism about. 

Part 3 of the documentary was “Shadow in the cave”. It was about Bush, ex-president of the USA, creating a fake impression that all Afghans are terrorists, and also using that to siege war on Afghanistan. He was controlling the media, could not stop repeating the incident of 911 to the Americans, causing them to worry and fear of terrorism. Hence, forming a special unit that anti terrorism, performing the anti terrorism campaigns throughout the United States. 

Not only that, he was assuming that Osama was on the Memo Cave in Afghanistan. He claimed that Osama’s base was at Memo Cave.  That special force even illustrated the cave and saying that Osama and his troops were storing ammos and foods in that cave.  Ordering soldiers to conquer the mountain, and bombing any cave that the soldiers saw was all he could do.  

In fact, he was chasing something that doesn’t even exist. Sacarstically, nothing was found on the cave, and in fact, all the caves found and bombed at that particular mountain, none has what he claimed to be true on the media.