Nmae: Osamah Golpy

City: Halabja

Email: osamagolpy@yahoo.com

• I would be grateful if you publish this article.

Pro and Anti mass media

A new era has begun all over the world; because of the effect of mass media the world is now strongly
interrelated. As opposing to the idea that "coincidence does not justify co-relation", now each and every event
in any piece of the globe would have huge effect on other parts which we may have held the idea that they do
not have anything to do with each other at all. But the facts show that they are related; the revolution in
Tunisia that leads Bin Ali ousted of the country motivates the Egyptian people, and then the people of Libya as
well as Yemen and Syria. It is surprising that it even motivates the whole world in one way or another.

Certainly Kurdistan is not an exception in this formula. Now the Kurdish people want to free themselves
from the chains that it keeps safe and tight for the past 20 years. As Marx says if you revolt “you have nothing
to lose but your chains". By "chains" he most probably means the economic hardship that encircles every low-
class member, but now the world has changed and so do the chains. The lack of freedom of speech, well-
organized election and the like are considered by people as new chains that should be removed by any means.
We have to add one more chain in Kurdistan which is the interference of political parties in the government
affairs.

Shooting dead several demonstrators and injuring dozens of them, the incumbent government proves that
it is not that democratic government that it claims. Rather, it shows that how double standard its diplomacy is;
in one hand, it claims that all they care about is the interest of the citizens and their security. On the other
hand, they are standing against the true demands of the same citizens. The latter one is emphatically carried
out by burning mass media stations, murdering the protesters and holding the protesters in custody with or
without courts’ warrant. The parties in power are leading a psycho war as well on opposition through the use of
mass media.

Terms like “pro” and “anti” in today’s communication have become as important as pronouns; you cannot
make a conversation with a partner, a passer-by without referring to these two polarizing prefixes. Their uses
are more critical in the world of mass media, once you watch, listen or read a piece of information, these two
powerful keys would be your passport to the twenty first century. Words like pro-democracy, pro-Mousavi, anti-
Gaddafi and anti-Ahmadi Najad would gives you much information about a group’s identity more than any
other words do.

Once again, Kurdistan is not an exception in the in the field of “anti” and “pro” tactic, there are labels like
pro-demonstration media and anti-demonstration media; the channels that do belong to the ruling parties are
obviously anti-demonstration and (semi) private ones are pro-demonstration channels. The journalists did not
stop at that point, but rather invested more intelligence in the field. Each agency has its own dictionary to pick
vocabulary from; pro-demonstration agencies use words like xopishander (protester) for those who are
participating in the demonstrations, whereas anti-demonstration agencies use ajaweger “demonstrator” to
describe the same bunch of people. The pity is that even the audiences’ mind is also made of anti and pro
formula. It seems that not surprisingly we may also find even pro and anti captions on restaurants’ tableau, and
then, we are obliged to choose either anti or prove or else you do starve