The significance of media can not be understated in terms of their influence on our well-being and of the well-being of our planet.
Some actors act in the media space to yield power over people. They create narratives that mislead people into supporting war and destruction, accusing other of attacking and citing a need to defend. They persecute people who disagree and put them in prison or kill them. Gleichschaltung – a term initially describing the politics of Hitler in subjugating the entire informational field and eradication all political parties and all political opposition is now again the practice in Russia. Presumably the reasons for this actions are all rooted in FEAR, it seems to me – fear of losing control and mainting a status quo of wealth – perhaps enrichment of one’s own person and fear of being vulnerable when losing power.
A panel in German on language as an instrument of power in societies.
Media creates consciousness in people who consume media. The media pre-selects what is important enough to show and what is not. It decides on presenting the facts in a certain light, citing critics or not, citing certain facts and leaving others out. If we are talking about manipulation, journalists themselves are richly rewarded for doing what the powerful ask them to do – and punished, if the object.
We can see many examples of this in Russia under Putin. Gleichschaltung has been a slow process compared to what happened in Nazi Germany, as the Russian media contained many independent, lively components after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. See for example the story of the TV2 Omsk regional television channel from Siberia. But the process has been hypercharged after the Russian full-scale invasion of democratic and free Ukraine in 2022.
Other actors act on different motivations. They are in search of truth and through informing about the truth want to contribute to a better world. If mistakes and errors or injustices are named, we can do something to change things. That is the premise that informs many people who select journalism as their life occupation and calling.
As of the end of 2023 there are very few independent journals left in Russia and saying the truth in Russia has become a high risk undertaking, as there is no legal protection against being wrongly accused or even assassinated – and that is true even outside of Russia, where many media creators have relocated.