Noam Chomsky used to say that the media manufactures consent. The huge political and financial muscles of the media manoeuvre people in many ways and make them oblivious to their real crises.
Herbert Mercuse termed the modern people as one-dimensional. He argues that "advanced industrial society" created false needs, which integrated individuals into the existing system of production and consumption via mass media, advertising, industrial management, and contemporary modes of thought.
Meanwhile French philosopher Guy Debord said the modern media makes sure the existence of a society of spectacle. The media throws a relentless amount of content to make people busy and forget the very thing they saw minutes ago. For them a football match and a war, where millions die, become the same. All the phenomena are reduced into mere ‘content.’
The whole process is so powerful that it makes human beings machine-like. They cannot even feel when they are burnt, looted and killed. One such extreme example is seen in the Bangladesh media over the last couple of years.
The people in Dhaka observed a harrowing ordeal when around 50 people were killed at a fire incident. It was learnt that the building, which was situated in a busy part of the city, did not have proper licence to run a restaurant and fire exit plans were compromised.
It is evident that the whole fiasco took place due to the corrupt authority and businessmen who ‘manage’ these things through bribes and political influences. The inferno was a case of structural killing.
People started to become angry but then came the marriage of India’s business magnet Ambani’s son. The billion-dollar programme captured all the focus of the Bangladesh media which depicted the tiny details of the grotesque show.
Voila! The public became oblivious even about their rage. News media and social media started to talk only about the orgy that took place in a country where most of the people live under poverty. Media were able to produce another spectacular show and were able to reduce the death of so many people by a bygone ‘content.’
What a shame!
The Boxer: The author is one of the indefatigable working-class Bangladeshis who have been trying to change the fate of the nation but were betrayed by the ruling elites and autocrats. The name is inspired by a character in George Orwell's 1945 novel Animal Farm.