Throughout the series of George Saunders’ short essays, “The Braindead Microphone”, he examines how society evaluates and considers information. Within these essays, the way that the media affects the way we receive and process information is scrutinized. The essays utilize a metaphor, in which a man who attends a party possesses a megaphone. This megaphone is used to voice every inarticulate thought and blurb of information that comes to the man’s mind, yet everyone at the party still listens intently to what he says. The party begins to morph into a representation of what the megaphone shouts out. Media is represented by this megaphone, and the media has created a sort of blindness in society. Megaphones in the media have unfortunately created a blind humankind, that tends to listen blindly to the loudest source, regardless of specificity or accuracy.
Media tends to have an infectious effect on people; as the loudest voice is the most often heard, people tend to shift their conversations, and ultimately their lives, around this loud voice. Saunders points out this shift with the example, “If he weaves into his arguments the assumption that the west side of the room is preferable to the east, a slow…show more content… We must contemplate this idea that Saunders has brought to light with care. Saunders declares us the enemy, and claims that the solution to the issue, is plainly, to “turn that Megaphone down” (Saunders 19). In some ways, this is true, while in some ways it’s simply not accurate. Often times, the correct news is the most represented; yes, it’s true that occasionally facts can be mistold or misrepresented in the news, and we must be wary of this, but it’s not as severe as Saunders claims. We must merely carefully examine anything we hear, especially if it’s spouted out from a megaphone, rather than muting the megaphone
