MY generation folks will remember Cliff Notes, the bright yellow and black study guides that assisted our understanding of literature and other works. Some folks will accuse these guides of being substitutes for the original work but I found them really helpful. Now that we have AI (ahem)`assisting` students, maybe all these guides and explainers will become redundant, too.

Earlier this week, I played a video explaining Marshall McLuhan`s book The Medium is the Massage (the first proof had a typo for `Message` but McLuhan liked it so much he let it stay, saying it was `right on target` because mediums do massage sensory parts of the brain.) First published in 1967, his premise it is not the content of the medium that matters but the characteristics of the medium that determine the content remains relevant today. He believed media was an extension of ourselves; it extends our capabilities, enabling us to think differently and interact with others differently too.

He also said media alters our `sense ratios` so the content of the medium comes to our senses and that impacts how we use our other senses. One example that is often cited to illustrate this is the presidential debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Folks who watched it on TV thought Kennedy won while those who listened to it on the radio thought Nixon did. `It was the same content but what people observed, or what they thought happened, was very different depending on the medium they were using,` wrote Cesar Hidalgo, from the MIT Media Lab.

The media, thus, has social consequences. We have seen this play out with addictions to social media, polarisation in society, and even disinformation as predicted by McLuhan. He also saw that technology and communication would create a `global village` (a term he coined) at a time when it sounded too futuristic to imagine, so his prescience makes him an important media theorist.

And clearly one that leaders like Donald Trump and Imran Khan take inspiration from. They understand how the medium through which they communicate has more value than the message.

Without social media, for example, these leaders would not hold the power they do today; their mediums drove their success.

Khan has continued to dominate the headlines (across mediums) since his ouster in April 2022 despite the bans on his mention, his images etc. Now he`s threatening to write letters every day. He keeps himself in the media and we, as consumers, respond to the world in new ways, not always for good reasons.

Across the Atlantic, Khan`s one-timefriend Trump (yet to see if he pulls through for the jailed PTI leader the way it is being hoped) is causing a meltdown in the media. He`s pushing through executive orders, his controversial appointments are cruising through the Senate, and then there`s Elon Musk, the unelected billionaire slashing federal agencies.

New media really does create new societies as futurist writer Alvin Toffler said.

But are they well informed and empowered to make the right decisions concerning their future? `Everything is media,` said Steve Bannon, Trump`s former adviser cum guru, in an interview recently. `That`s why the cabinet is all TV guys.` Bannon was famed for his opposition to the media and his strategy of dealing with them was to `flood the zone with s***`. That happened in 2016 and is happening now as media scrambles to report on the supposed mayhem his administration is causing. The media, in its bid to appear non-partisan, after being partisan before Trump`s election, now comesoff as weak.

As a result of this `we better show both sides`, the audience does not have the full picture. Rupert Murdoch, one of the most influential media moguls, was spotted in the Oval Office. This was after a stinging piece in the Wall Street Journal, own-ed by Murdoch, which described Trump`s 25 per cent proposed border tax on Canada as one of `the dumbest in history`. However, Trump did pause on those plans. Are audiences able to see how those business relationships play out in the media they consume? The media is often treated as the opposition by administrations that like to bulldoze their way, making their rich friends richer and throttling any dissent. This is all too familiar here where each government has muzzled the press with iterations of Peca-like laws; this one is the worst but I doubt it will be the last.

It brings me back to asking what is the role of journalism. It is shockingly simpler than we realise: tell the truth not his, hers, yours, their truth. That comes from reporting, hard core and deep, not talking heads or lazy writers, who have to acquiesce to big money media bosses who are only in it to further their economic interests. • The writer is an instructor of journalism.

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