Media Manipulation Exposed in George Orwells Shooting an...

Media Manipulation Exposed in George Orwells â€Å"Shooting an Elephant† The phrase â€Å"the power of the press† is used often, but what exactly is the power of the press? Since the beginning of news reporting, it’s been known that what actually gets into the news reports is monitored and carefully picked by higher authorities. What isn’t widely known, however, is that the media can use specific wording and phrases that, on the surface, look like normal news coverage, but are actually a technique of the media to control the images people see and the words they hear and read. From this, people then form their ideals, but are these actually ideals of those people if the media from which they based them off of was controlled to begin with? It is†¦show more content†¦On a daily basis, Orwell was perceived as an intruder upon the Burmese land by the natives, but on this day, he is â€Å"momentarily worth watching† (Orwell 337). Taking up an elephant rifle, Orwell went forward to do something about the elephant, though he w asn’t sure exactly what that would be. He didn’t want to kill the elephant, but now that he held the rifle, he felt that the Burmese had the power and were forcing him along: Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd—seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind†¦ [The leader] becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the â€Å"natives,† and so in every crisis he has got to do what the â€Å"natives† expect of him (Orwell 337). Orwell’s perspective was that because the Burmese expected him to shoot the elephant, he had no other choice but to do so. His own ideals of how shooting the elephant was wrong were overcastted by the Burmese â€Å"media,† who urged him along and condoned the death of the elephant. It is not evident whether or not the natives were aware of their power over Orwell. The media as we know it today, however, did realize its power over the