I think that Saunders uses the megaphone to represent the
mass media. Much like the megaphone man, today’s news stories have evolved with
the intention of shocking and grabbing the public’s attention. Instead of the ‘dinner
party’ conversations of different flavors and carefully crafted arguments, the one-sided
media brings down the level of discourse. The loudest opinion is the one that
people are most inclined to listen to and react to. In fact, many talk programs are simply reactionary to other more dominant news shows; their programming
serves to reiterate, debate, and ultimately agree with the “loudest”
source. I think the dinner party analogy
is very clever because he makes the function of the megaphone very clear.
In section 7, Saunders goes on to say that the megaphone is draws
its life-force from attention. He states that “today we are led into the arena
of public debate by seers whose main gift is their ability to compel people to
continue to watch them” (Saunders, 245). This fits perfectly into the idea that
the megaphone is the media; it would be unable to survive and lose its validity
entirely if no one watched it. But yet, the mass media continues to entice the
public with shocking, offensive headlines and flashy half-truths. And because
it’s the loudest voice, we are compelled to react and feed the fire.
I agree with what you said, which is concerning because I feel like we're always going to be fueling the fire and it'd be really difficult to keep this mass media from changing the way we think.
ReplyDeleteYou made a great point in your second paragraph.. the media would definitely not be able to survive if everyone stopped watching and listening!! I totally agree, and like sheila said this is very concerning.
ReplyDelete