Are We Controlled by the Media Without Actually Knowing It?

Despite being insightful enough to know when a news company is simply dramatising a story, it’s still very difficult to read between every line that they report and know what’s really going on.

We are swamped with coverage of every little murmur that happens anywhere in the world, and within seconds a rumour from an unknown source can echo around the globe and fill every newspaper, website, or yellow ticker box at the bottom of the screen claiming to be breaking news.

Media Mind Games

Clubs can easily come out and claim these stories to be false, but within weeks or even days, that same club can contradict themselves by doing the exact opposite of what they claimed a few days earlier.

Because the media is a serious bargaining tool used by clubs, players, and managers, you can never be completely sure that what you hear someone says is what they actually mean. With this added element of uncertainty, there will always be a part of you which will believe that a far-fetched story might be true.

With enough media coverage, expert analysis, and constant bombardment of information, you start to believe what you read or hear without realising you are being brainwashed by saturation, manager mind games, and educated speculation.

Summer madness

The summer transfer media frenzy has caused massive debates and arguments amongst fellow fans over transfers that have not acctually happened, this progresses to supporters attacking a manager in regards to him "apparently" wanting to sign a player that particular supporter doesn’t think is good enough.

We have all had arguments with fans who start topics to complain about something that they read in a paper, assume that it's true, and then get angry and accuse players and managers. What these people don't realize is that their frustration is a factor of something that hasn’t happened or may never happen.

We all know the morals of some media companies are misguided or that they simply have another agenda, Consider the coverage of the Hillsborough disaster as one example, I really find it hard to believe that some people still think everything they read to be true.

Xbox managers and You Tube scouts

Does this constant coverage of every aspect of football now empower the armchair fan with the knowledge that they believe they are capable of questioning someone who has spent most of their life learning their trade?

Maybe the computer games of today are so detailed in depth that we really do know how to do a managers job without going to specialized training courses for several years.

Or maybe we are controlled by the media without actually knowing it.