George Orwell, from the book 1984, once noted, “lies pass into history and become truth.” The depiction of his dystopia as a treacherous society run under the tyranny of a deceptive government is, inexplicably, becoming much of reality today. The recent downfall of governments’ transparency around the world is posing a serious threat to the citizens as lies and untruths permeate society. Most importantly, this unfortunate spread of modifying information and propagandizing is run through a rigid circuit that the majority of the citizens use: media.
According to The Huffington Post, modern-day journalism and media have been under the mercy of the state through legal censorship. Not only are numerous news agencies today forced to censor information in favor of its political head, but journalists and activists are also thrown in the prisons for reporting the truth. In other words, legalized censorships contravene the most basic right to press. And the piercing truth is that citizens really do not have much power to absolve the censorships brought by their tyrannical figurehead.
Another way in which the transparency level of the government has been sliding down the slope is through the spread of fake news. Starting from President Trump’s “alternative facts,” fake information and news have been inundating the US. This spread of fake news and information is too far-reaching for normal citizens to handle on their own, to filter out those that are false, and thus poses a significant threat to our liberty.
In most cases, global problems can’t be solved with a few clicks on a Facebook post or a few likes on an article about it. With an intangible problem such as this, people need to spread awareness through the power of media. Besides the handful of those that try to deceive people of fake information, there is the other half that utilizes media as a path to spread information and call people to immediate action. Such action of spreading words about the opacity of the government through online platforms and social media will most likely help build a supporting group for this cause against the problem.
The growing oppression over information and the diminishing voice of truthful knowledge are imperative keep a watchful eye out for. If we do not want to create another dystopia such as that in 1984 in our own world, we must fix our world, perhaps in five minutes or less.