“And what’s the point of the media if it lies to me?” People who cannot understand the size and importance of their opinion and attitude, nor the size and importance of the media in a society, usually defend themselves with this reaction.
Author: Katerina Topalova
Never before we had greater opportunities to be this informed. The digital age has opened up the possibility of broad views, but at the same time shortened the existing ones. This availability of information has opened the possibility for quick and easy spreading of lies and manipulations, unsaid information and half-truths. Media content can be one-sided, half-hearted, suggestive, half-true, or completely inaccurate. But who has the guts to lie to you? Who pays the price of the media lie?
In the era of information inflation and ecstasy of communication, man himself has become information.
To be media literate means not to believe in everything, to be able to critically read every piece of information, to make an assessment for what purpose it was created and in what way.
People who can’t read can easily be fooled by what it says. People who do not know how to read can easily believe a lie.
Who is profiting from your gullibility and how?
The media is an important link, an important player in a society. They are the conductor of information to the broad masses, the possibility of each news reaching the individual. In such conditions, it does not matter at all whether you receive correct or false information.
Creating our own attitude and making further steps in life is the result of the information we have at our disposal. If you are a constant target of lies, then your decisions will be wrong, or more precisely, you will make decisions that benefit someone else.
Media illiteracy allows corruption to flourish with sweet talk and maneuvers with words, through orchestrated lies to create a false vision, panic. To hide the truth, you have to have a goal, and that goal is always profit for the few.
Media lies are not a privilege only for our society, they are a worldwide phenomenon, an instrument for creating environments that are ideal for corruption, mistrust in science, spreading conspiracy theories, mistrust in media workers, mistrust in institutions, as well as alienation and mistrust in the people.
Media literacy must be part of education, be part of science curricula from the earliest age, be a goal in shows, texts on the internet and on all platforms available to the audience.
Media literacy is important for all ages, as it is part of general literacy.
In the end, we all pay for the media lies, as individuals and as a society, creating a half-world in which we spend our lives!