A few weeks ago, in our ASTU class, everyone had to pick and analyze a blog post from Riverbend’s blog, Baghdad Burning. Riverbend is a female Iraqi blogger, who describes herself as a “survivor of the war”, and offers an engaging, yet critical perspective of the War on Terror. I read through some of Riverbend’s older blog posts, but the one that caught my eye was the most recent blog post written on April 9th, 2013. There, on the 10 year anniversary of the invasion of Baghdad, Riverbend evaluates  the lessons that have been learnt since the War on Terror.

Riverbend succinctly describes the role of mass media in the portrayal of history by asserting that,

“We’re learning that the leaders don’t make history. Populations don’t make history. Historians don’t write history. News networks do. The Foxes, and CNNs, and BBCs, and Jazeeras of the world make history. They twist and turn things to fit their own private agendas.”

As scary as it may seem, this is unfortunately true. Often, representation in mass media is portrayed in a certain perspective, and can cause biases amongst its consumers. Our perceptions can be shaped and dictated by the way mainstream media reports news, and the voices they allow to be heard.

Now, I want to connect this idea with the concept of feminism. For Political Science class, we had to read bell hooks’ (her name is intentionally uncapitalized) book entitled, Feminism is For Everybody. hooks asserts that that misunderstanding of feminism is largely due to the fact that most people hear and learn about feminism through patriarchal mass media. When people think about feminism, they may think of a very radical, “anti-men” movement that is solely interested in gender equality. However, the reality is far from this. hooks describes feminism as a broad topic that encompasses issues of social-class and racism, and seeks to overturn oppression and sexism as a whole.

To be quite honest, I haven’t really thought about feminism in the way hooks describes it. And though it is partially my fault for not digging deeper into the topic, I think I can also attribute my lack of understanding to the flaws of mainstream media. We are (whether we know it or not) in some ways trained by the media to think and act a certain way about a particular topic. Thus, feminism, and the War on Terror, are similar in that they are grossly misrepresented by how the mainstream media presents them. And this is dangerous, because our limited perspectives can undermine and silence the voices that have been so cunningly excluded.

We need to break out of the tunnel vision that we have become so accustomed to. Though we may not be able to access a diversity of thought through the mainstream media, there are plenty of other alternatives out there. Independent media outlets, blogs, and of course, the internet are some ways to find and uncover perspectives not offered by conventional forms of media. Whether we choose to pursue it or not is up to us.