It's Just A Paper War

It's little more than a month after the conclusion of my first year of university, and my mum is already insisting that I should have decided on all of my courses for next year by today. Needless to say, the selection of what papers I am going to do is certainly not a process to be taken lightly. My choices will determine my academic route throughout the rest of my university life, with mum not wanting me to take more than three years to get my Bachelor of Arts degree, proclaiming that I will be cut off financially if I fail to meet the family's expectations.

The diversity of the possibilities is virtually limitless -- at least, limitless enough to cause me some serious trouble. One choice I could make is simply to continue on with my media studies/politics double major, with a minor in sociology complementing it. That is the route that my mum and I sat down and planned out together, so it's all prepped and ready to be taken up. However, as many of you will know, I'm really not sure if I stand on favourable ground in terms of my opinions towards the media anymore.

For me, the recent events in Australia have painted a clear picture of the sort of influence that the media has over the rest of society. The media does not so much reflect society as opposed to actually moulding and shaping society to disagreeable, very often corporate whims. In the case of Australia the media has played the role of perpetuating fear of difference for a long period and this has virtually directly resulted in the horrendous violence that has been occurring there since this time last week. Fear is the news media's middle name.

Despite my stance, I still have aspirations of becoming a journalist -- it seems to be something within me that cannot be fought down. I feel as if I am supposed to make that particular "contribution" to society. But numerous people, including my parents, try to encourage me by saying that I could "make a difference," and I find that hard to agree with. Contrary to what some extraneous stories may suggest, the power of one is minute. Besides which, it needs to be taken into account that journalists are under the governance of their publication.

In the end the fact is that the news companies are selling the information to an audience. They want this audience to be as broad as possible, and as such journalists are required to turn out palletable material that people of a wide range of ideologies can bear to read. The journalists' ideas are watered down so as to ensure the publication pulls a constant profit. There is also the unrealistic, but nonetheless aesthetically upheld in most circumstances, expectation that journalism should be as moderate or as neutral as possible. But there's no such thing as an absence of bias.

The two directly news-related papers that I have sat this year -- Media Studies, and Politics of the Media -- have both brought me uncomfortably to the realisation that the media is not a good thing, in that it has completely changed the face of our society to suit the interests of profit. I am of the strong belief that all of us are significantly a construct of the ideas that we are exposed to through the media as opposed to legitimate soul-searching. As such I see the role of the media as immoral, and although I recognise I could be a part of it, I don't know if I could live with myself.

Ultimately the question that I should be asking myself today as I make my decisions as to what papers I will take next year is, "what do I want to do for the rest of my life?" I feel unfavourably towards that question and towards the fact that I am sternly expected to have a career. I hope to enter into postgraduate study after I get my degree and as such I feel a need to focus on a specific area in my undergraduate years, and then carry that over into postgraduate. There is no sign of the freedom of the Bachelor of Arts that so many people cite as being there.

Journalism is the only profession that I have truly aspired to at any time in my life and I virtually dreamed about it throughout my high school years. My teachers had constantly asserted that they thought I would make a good journalist. I had psyched myself up to become a journalist. It is all that I have ever known as a life goal, so it feels decidedly odd to be in a position now where I am considering casting it off. Many people scoff at my proposed alternative of joining the academic staff at the university. It certainly may be a less realistic aspiration than becoming a journalist, but the upside is I wouldn't have to become a walking contradiction of everything that I have come to believe.