SILENCING THE MEDIA WORSENS YOUR WORST PUBLIC IMAGE

It is the height of folly to imagine that just because an authority has silenced the media, the reputational image of that authority will retain a good rating, enhance such rating or protect the public image of that authority. It has never happened and it will never happen that denial of balanced and objective information, as well as suppression of expression of dissenting views can be of any benefit to personal or institutional reputation; not when we are dealing with human beings, anyway.

When you suppress media expressions and the capacity of media to transmit the street messages which form public opinion, you are building a potent grapevine of gossip and rumor mongering that transforms the authority into a virtual monster. The only way to be perceived as benign, positive, progressive, forward looking, dignified and an excellent person of authority, is to be visible and audible. When you are visible and audible, everyone can see and hear you, see and hear of your deeds, appreciate your true self without the need to resort to artificial or creations of whom you are by sources from the grapevine of rumor mongering and gossip.

The notion that an authority is asserted by making oneself the only beacon of information is a fallacy that has been proven so repeatedly in the history of human development. Authority is uplifted, enhanced and promoted by its tenacity to stand the tests of trial. An authority can only be proven right if audiences receive the other side of the story. It is only right, if you know what is wrong; that is the design framework of a human being. To challenge this fact of life is to brand one as an ignoramus who does not make references to proven concepts; certainly a proof that such a detractor from scientific concepts of communication does not recognize written or spoken literature of facts.

When society is quiet, when an authority does not hear complaints or dissenting utterances and submissions, when everyone sings songs of praises of the authority, when an authority is not challenged- that society’s apathy and pretence become the clicking time bomb for that authority. The fall of dictatorships, which are often accompanied by bloody feuds and fatal suppression of dissenting views have succeeded authoritarian rule that attempts to make society a homogeneous blob of sycophancy. A human being cannot survive enforced silence; they can pretend for a while, but ultimately, the causative source of the silence becomes victim to the spontaneity of the inherent rebellion in all humans who cannot keep quiet.

History is littered with the literature and records of abysmal failure by authorities to shut-up society; it is a shocking revelation of the folly of mankind, and the shockingly self-destructive commissions of some authorities, to keep repeating mistakes of the past. 

There is no dignity for anyone, including authorities, in communities where the passages and tunnels of opinion are blocked, where opinion is governed and managed, where dissension is blocked. The loss of dignity is what turns authorities into monsters- in reality, as they over-react to the indignities arising from loss of dignity, and in perception, as the vicious grapevine builds monstrous apparitions of the real and unreal about such authorities.

There is only one way a person can win and enhance own dignity, and that is by granting dignity to the other person, irrespective of their status in society or the democratic views that they may hold. Dignity is inherent in tolerance; dignity is gained through humility and no authority can convincingly claim humility when such authority endangers the free flows of channels of information. Blocking information channels is the same effects of cholesterol on the human body- it clogs the veins and arteries, causing a stroke or heart attack; and if we carry the analogy further, we know that clogged veins burst because the blood flow is blocked. That is the same as society.