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The Braindead Megaphone Analysis

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“The Braindead Megaphone”, a short story written by George Saunders, aims to criticize modern media that, being an extremely influential tool, does not bear responsibility for what is rationalized. He contends that we are products of what the media presents to us, and that there is little intellect remaining in our society. In the very beginning, the author seems to enter the reader into a dialogue by suggesting him/her to imagine a party scene and then accentuate a man among all the conversing guests of the party, with a megaphone. Saunders emphasizes that this man is far from being the smartest or the wisest one. Moreover, this man seems to be less experienced than the surrounding guests at the party. Neither has he had exceptional skills …show more content…

I have completely forgotten that in order to stay capable of adequately rationalizing any information absorbed, we should be capable of filtering it. Media companies are in existence for profit and this is a commonly known truth. They merely inform us of topics they want us to hear, and are in no way unbiased. On the contrary, there are several reputable programs known to be left-sided or right-winged. Only we are responsible for ourselves and are capable of reducing the impact of media on our society. For instance, Internet connection and a great assortment of modern technologies give us a choice to select individually what our minds will be filled with. Hence, it has been estimated that an overall percentage of TV watchers has significantly decreased. Therefore, I consider that media’s impact is less significant than it used to be as people themselves select the material they want to receive. Therefore, it challenges the validity of the argument in times of easily accessible Internet. Being published in 2007, this work greatly accentuated the problem of a society where the media dictated exactly what and how information would be transmitted to society. However, in the modern technological era, the media’s content is less important to society due to our ability to select, and as a result the argument presented by the author, along with most of his concerns, is

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