Seats and forms of power: to what extent have the modern media become too powerful?

First, I’m going to speak about the notion “seats and forms of power” and to illustrate this notion I will present the media which is knowing as the 4th estate. Media is all the means of communication. It takes a big part in our life. We read tabloid or quality papers, watch the news on TV. The media is present every day and every single hours in our life, we are surrounded by it. We can ask to what extent have the modern media become too powerful?

In the first time, we talk about the right/power of knowing what’s going on. And in a second time, we will have a look on the freedom of speech.

Today, we live in a world where everything is worldwide. And the fact is because of that we want to know what is going on in our country but also in the rest of the world. The media have this power. The power to say to the people bad and good news. For instance, in 2003, people from Hong Kong decided to protest against the Hong Kong’s government and China. But only a journalist and the protesters remember this event. In 2014, still protesters against Beijing approval of candidates for Hong Kong’s chief executive and the journalist but also the rest of the world are knowing what’s going on. The event becomes worldwide thanks to social networking sites. In that case, the Chinese authorities have cracked down on many internet users because they support the Hong Kong protest and the Chinese version of Twitter Weibo have been censoring. To avoid censoring, protesters used Firechat to anonymously communicate with another while avoiding government surveillance. Indeed, the file you want to send goes via satellite before arriving at its destination but with a router you can send your file directly without going via satellite and like that you can avoid censoring.

In the world, people must have the right to say or draw or express themselves. We should not be punished or harassed because we say what we think about a situation in a country. Persons who comment different facts all over the world aren’t criminal, they are just saying the truth. For me, nobody should tell us what to think or what to say. And it’s a moral duty to show people what is on in the rest of the world. It’s clearly not normal to be sent to jail or sometimes kill because someone is telling people the truth. We can reference ourselves to Thomas Jefferson who said “we hold these truth to be self-evident: that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” in the US declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, in some countries, journalists, bloggers and other people aren’t allowed to act this way. They can’t do their job or exercising the right of speech otherwise they are harassed or incarcerated. In these Countries, the government wants to control the investigative reporters to prevent them from telling the truth to the world. And they search to restrict the people’s access to information. Some NGO such as Amnesty International tries to denounce theses abuses of those government and to release people who have been detained for exercising their right to free speech.