Mass media is the most powerful tool used nowadays by leaders to control the public.
It forms opinions and attitudes. We all remember the time when television was harmless, when newspapers were true without rumors, when radio was a relaxing utility or even when the internet was a secure tool where no violence was detected...
Today anyone can flip on TV channel and hear vulgar language. The mass media have certainly evolved over the past fifty years or so, but does this fast evolution have not always been indoctrinating and fashioning the way people think?I think those who argue that media controls our mind are right. The media system is a universal system that is completely changing our way of living alone or in community. The general public has access to controlled information which is absolutely essential to the establishment since it conditions us to accept being ignorant in the dark. For centuries, ''mass media'' as the term was coined in 1920s, have been a part of the media specifically designed to communicate with a large audience(''New York Times,'' 2010-02-15).It includes books,radio networks, newspapers,magazines and today it also includes the Internet.
The communications audience form a mass society which is the main cause of the influence of modern mass media techniques such as propaganda and advertising. Everyone is curious about who owns the Media. The first and the most influential media distribution has always been the television(''Media's influence on public'',2003) because of its series of millions of images that are exposed in front of our eye.In fact, it is known that a child is exposed to about 40,000 ads a year(''Mass media and media'', 2010).
But, we can take five major companies who really dominate the media : News Corp, Walt Disney, VIACOM, Time Warner and Vivendi Universal. These companies own 95% of all the media we get(telecommunication, electronic media, video games, movies studios, television, radio broadcast, news... ). Because of their emergence in the whole world, they have the power to form our opinions and thinking specially those of kids.
This is why we have to be aware of what they are exposed to.
