Politico-media complex
Iran, ranked 174 out of 179 in 2013, is described as highly censored, as the Iranian government maintains strict control over much of the print and broadcast media and news websites.
These women hosted anti-American programming intended to lower American soldiers' morale and illustrate the use of governments' use of the media to influence the public or their enemies.
[48][49] Deutsche Welle's mission to “promote understanding of Germany as an independent nation with its roots in European culture and as a liberal, democratic, constitutional state based on the rule of law.” illustrates German use of the politico-media complex.
[60] According to Furhammar and Isaksson, it was Russian filmmakers who were the "masters of montage" and discovered film's power to create the convincing illusion with cutting, rhythmic editing, and a didactic approach.
[60] A comparison of the first three installments of the American series Why We Fight and the Nazi documentary Sieg im Westen (Victory in the West) demonstrates how convincing even two opposing interpretations of the same events can be.
The first covers years in a couple of hours but its density disguises any omission of truth while the latter manages to depict war with real images but without blood or death.
[61] Falsification of political matter in documentaries can be created by lifting shots of events other than the one being dealt with and including them in the film so that they appear to be a part of the "reality" it claims to represent.
[66] World War II propaganda persisted 30 years after Dachau and Auschwitz such as in the thinly disguised fascist Italian film The Night Porter (1974).
[67] What amazes Henry Giroux, as he explains in "Breaking into the Movies", is that such blatant ideological messages were ignored by critics and the general public, and that society may be incapable of testing the present against the past has implications for post-industrial oppression in the West and the strategies for resisting it.
Despite the writings of Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse, and Paulo Freire, the majority of Americans do not recognize how important class hegemony, or cultural domination, is in nations where populations are kept obedient to governments through ideological means.
"[68] Though feature forms of propaganda lack documentaries' ostensible authenticity they can retain political power because directors' resources are less limited and they can create the reality of the film.
[69] Besides Frank Capra, no other major American filmmaker has seriously presented central themes of citizenship, participation, and responsibility in civic life amidst the complexities and corruption of the political world.
[71] In his next film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, (1939) Capra reinforces the integrity and decency of the everyman who can transcend politics despite the power and crookedness of special interest groups.
[72] After the hero of Meet John Doe realizes his need for others, he discovers and attempts to expose a fascist bidder for presidency planning to take advantage of his club support.
He fails in the midst of a violent mob with the depressing conclusion that the American public is a credulous crowd that is susceptible to manipulation until the John Doe club members come begging his forgiveness and convince him to return to lead them.
JFK (1991) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962), on the other hand, are based on the premise that democracy is an illusion and Americans are the ignorant pawns of various conspiracies involving, for example, the collusion between the government and the media.
Film, as it contributes to mass culture, has been criticized for reducing the concept of class to stereotypes and predictable formulas that promote superficial understandings of ideology.
[78] One of the exceptions to oversimplification and ideological flattening in cinema has been said to be Norma Rae (1979), a film that presents a truer representation than is conventional of the complexities and politics of the working-class struggle and culture at the level of everyday life.
Rajagopal argued that the national telecast of the Hindu religious epic Ramayan during the late 1980s provided much of the ideological groundwork for the launch of the Ram Janmabhumi movement and that "television profoundly changes the context of politics".[84](p.
Articulating the temple restoration project within its electoral promise, the BJP, not surprisingly, went on to form the national government in the next general election,[84]p. 43 illustrating that, as Rajagopal argues, television is capable of profoundly impacting politics.
Central to the BJP's success was the party's strategic use of both the media and the market by creating merchandise such as stickers, buttons, and audiotapes centering on the key figure of the Ram.
News frames are "conceptual tools which media and individuals rely on to convey, interpret and evaluate information",[86] which set the parameters "in which citizens discuss public events"[87] and are in a mode of "persistent selection, emphasis, and exclusion".
[88] Framing is selecting "some aspects of a perceived reality" to enhance their salience "in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation".
Another advantage is its capacity to have extensive information in one place, like voting records, periodicals, press releases, opinion polls, policy statements, speeches, etc.
[96] Email is heavily used among numerous levels of government, political groups, and even media companies as a means of communicating with the public which plays a significant role in the political-media complex.
[citation needed] Blogs are a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
[citation needed] Bias is another issue of online discussion forums because many websites attract like-minded individuals, making it less likely for alternative perspectives to be introduced.
[105] The first major reappraisal of the relationship between a political elite/class and the media in a major modern Western PMC, with respect to the decline of representative political and legal processes and the consequent erosion of and dangers to the public interest in a Western democracy, is captured in excerpts from three contributions to an emergency three-hour debate[106] conducted by members of parliament (MPs) in the Parliament of the United Kingdom on the afternoon of the 6 July 2011.
It is an unavoidable observation that Parliament has behaved with extraordinary cowardice for many years...We are faced with a scandal of expanding proportions, including hacking, allegations of interference in police investigations, and claims that payments have been made to officers.
The debate was precipitated by some of the information procurement methods found to have been used by the now-defunct major British Sunday newspaper News of the World, which was owned by NI.
