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[–]anderssvedaval 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I've said this before to my friends, mass media, especially Western media, is a weapon. Sure, I read about it before, about how the media can lie sometimes. Like most modern millennials, I half brushed it off, half don't care because life was too busy. Until one day it happened to my old country.

When the current Thai military junta took power back earlier this decade, I was there, and my god, my people were REJOICING. They were thanking the gods and praising this man (the prime minister) for having the balls to say no to false democracy and do what needed to be done.

Now, I actually don't really care much about Thailand's politics, nor do I have the complete knowledge of the whole situation, nor do I support (or not support) the junta. But I saw the people rejoicing, and saw the corrupt elites being ousted one by one (still to this day), and I saw the long delayed economic and infrastructure projects starting up again (half of all villages in the country now have broadband, and the other half will have it by 2019, as an example).

But what do I see from Western Media? Oh, Thailand is now under brutal military dictatorship, with no free speech, the poor become slaves of the rich blah blah blah.

Ok, Thailand is not perfect, and it does have a lot of work to do, like decades or may be a whole generation worth of work. But let me tell you this; Thai people, just like the people under the 'brutal authoritarian regime of China', are living much happier lives than us here in the West, and definitely nothing like the media portrays.

[–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ha this is very very interesting, thank you for your post. I had no idea about the situation in Thailand. The contrast between the western media and the situation on the ground... there's so many places in the world where this is the case. It's honestly bizarre, and I'm glad that in the age of the internet I can read a story like yours and get a different perspective that would've been extremely difficult to come across 20 years ago.

The media is like a cage for the mind. And so many do not see this.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”

― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good