Ali Can YALÇIN

The Relationship of Media and Power Groups

Media has been one of the most influential sources of information throughout

history. It can be used to inform masses quickly and effectively. But what happens when

governments and other power houses take advantage of its power and misuse it to

manipulate people into believing things that are not a hundred percent true or correct?

This could be exemplified in three historical cases that are witch hunts, the Nazi Germany

and the cold war era.

Modern age of history usually believed to have started with the beginning of the

Renaissance which was far after the Dark Age. Although the Dark Age is generally

attributed to ignorance and lack of science, early modern age was not the exact opposite

of this. This phenomenon can be seen in the famous witch hunts. In times of crop failures

and shortage of food, local governments, which at the time were feudal lords, looked for

scapegoats and conveniently found so-called witches. Oster (2004, p.216) found out a

correlation between decreases in temperature and the witch trials through statistical

analysis. She discovered that the number of witch trials went up whenever there were

economic problems (As cited in Heinsohn & Steiger, 2004, p.6). However, this is not the

only reason for accusations that feudal governments made in Europe. After the great

plague wiped out vast portions of population, another great witch hunt began. This time

its target was to repress the artificial birth control via the midwives who were branded as

witches (Heinsohn & Steiger, 2004, p.9). This aimed to counter the huge loss of labour

force by eliminating midwives who were skilled at sophisticated birth control techniques.
 One could think that, in the past, power groups manipulated the flow of

information easier as their subjects could not reach correct information easily. As the

centuries went on, accessing information became much easier; however, the advancing

technology also gave governments new ways to accomplish their goals of filtering what

information their people would get. One relatively recent instance of this is the Nazi

Germany between the first and the Second World War. As soon as Hitler won the election

in Germany, he banned the opposing parties and then started to work on the institutions to

control the information and its main agent media. Lee explains that this was

accomplished in two ways. First Nazi regime empowered and centralised Ministry of

Education to erase the opposition to conformity. And secondly, the Ministry for People’s

Enlightenment and Propaganda was founded to monitor the information flow (p.30). This

helped the Nazi Party to achieve its goals quietly and without opposition from people,

because people were only getting the news that government allow them to get.

United States of America was one of the countries that were aligned against Axis

countries which included aforementioned Nazi Germany in the world war two. After the

end of the war, U.S. was one of the two central powers in the world. To keep its position,

it entered a competition with the opposite faction which was in that time the Soviet

Union. It could be said that United States used some tactics not much different from

Nazis. The government wanted people to believe that communism was the evil that

should be got rid of, started to do propaganda that was almost never based on truth. Also

there was and infamous black list of leftist writers, actors and other people. That list made

it impossible to appear on any branch of media to voice their opinions.

 In conclusion, media is a great tool to reach information that is normally hard to

get. But it is also a great way for power groups to manipulate the information traffic to

control the masses that otherwise very hard to control. The well-known examples of this

throughout history should be considered by people before forming even a single idea

based on what they see and hear from the biggest and the occasionally biased source of

information that we call media.

 References:

Heinsohn, G. & Steiger, O.(2004). Witchcraft, Population Catastrophe and Economic

Crisis in Renaissance Europe: An Alternative Macroeconomic Explanation

Lee, S. J.(2000). Indoctrination, Propaganda and Terror. In S. J. Lee & S. Lang (Eds.)
Hitler and Nazi Germany. Available from http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.