Based off documentary (George) Orwell rolls in his grape - Essay Example

George Orwell Rolls in His Grave” is an incredibly interesting film based on the changing role of media in our life and the lack of true competition in the media. The title is a clever reference to Orwell’s classic work 1984, which focuses on a super-powerful government focused on thought control of its citizens. One of the central arguments of “Orwell Rolls in His Grave” is that this kind of thought control is actually happening, at least to some extent, because of the concentration of media ownership.

This documentary shows very clearly that the media is not engaging in critical thinking. There are several examples of the media not engaging in critical thinking throughout this movie. One of the main problems with the current media practices is that media will often report whatever they are told is happening without actually dissecting the context surrounding it. For instance, the media’s current coverage of the protests in New York over Wall Street do very little to unpack the socioeconomic causes of this anger, or the realities of the issue.

Instead, they simply either cast the protesters as “good guys” or “bad guys” and run a story about how good or bad they are. Likewise, the movie “George Orwell Rolls in His Grave” shows that the media has a clear agenda that it pursues relentlessly, which is the aggrandizement of media and the protection and expansion of media profits. Media companies have become more and more concentrated into small ownership groups, so there is no real competition in the media market anymore, and whenever there is a news story about deregulation of the media, the media portrays this as an amazing thing with no downsides because they want to be able to make more profit off of it.

There is no way to truly be a critical thinker if you are relentlessly pursuing an agenda, so in this way the media fails to actually engage in critical thinking. There are many ways the media fails to live up to the test of critical thinking in “George Orwell Rolls in his Grave” which remain true today almost a decade after the movie was made.