Living in another country for an
extended period of time really hinders your abilities to pay attention to the
current events going on in America. It may also be due to my obliviousness of
the news that goes on anyway. Some people would say, live your own life and
don’t pay attention to the news, because the less you know the happier you
are. However, I believe that to live in
today’s generation, the more you know, the more knowledgeable you are, and the more
appreciated you become.
I have been
updated on everything that has been going in the case of Snowden and the NSA.
Throughout summer in Germany, I heard small things here and there about a guy
who was ‘Snowed – In’, and something about the American government listening
into people’s conversations (but I already partially knew that, it didn’t
surprise me much.) I didn’t realize how large and important this whole case
really is.
If you take
a random survey on the street, asking people “How do you feel about the
whistleblower Snowden and where is he hiding/living now?” I bet you would get a
plethora of different answers or just facial expressions. People having a
strong view on it, some who are aware of what is going on, some saying, “He is
in Moscow with a warrant for an entire year,” “Obviously, the guy being charged
for espionage on the US government!” And then there are going to be others,
staring into space with a blank face trying to remember anything they can and
if they ever heard such a name. [Lets say we will take the survey on the
streets of New York, with all different kinds of people. We will see how many
citizens actually watch the news or not.] Obviously, people who care to know
about such things will find out, will research themselves, and react to it
whichever way they feel. I would actually be very interested in the statistics
of who knows what, and how thoroughly. Watching the Edward Snowden Interview on
YouTube, I was surprised that the video doesn’t have many more views than it has
now. I am not sure what the news channels used to portray over this summer
(since I was not in the country, and didn’t watch any American news), and how
they revealed the Snowden topic. I heard it was on every single channel, and it
was hard to get away from it. Which
leaves me to question, how many people wouldn’t know about such a huge topic?
Isn’t everybody supposed to know about this?
Here in
America, people were slow to hear all of the documents Snowden was releasing,
which he was doing on purpose. He would release “The Guardian” article, and
some time after, the American people would hear that he traveled to China, and
after some time, release the Interview video. Hearing the information bit by
bit, and following up with it everyday must feel different rather than hearing
it all at once and being updated on it within a couple of days. When I came
back from my long trip, I was updated rather fast with everything going on.
There were some gaps in everything that I found out as well, which also needed
to be filled in. Hearing the information all at once doesn’t give you the sense
of how long and tedious the whole situation for the American government and the
American people was. Now, living in a country where it is hard to get away from
popular news and drama, it will be much easier to follow everything going on
within the government. It may even be as if I was ‘Snowed-In’ and oblivious to
all of the information going on around me in the world, but now uncovered and
paying attention to all of the news carefully.
The other day I was in my apartment with my roommate and my other good friend. I started talking about the NSA and Snowden with my roommate when my friend looked up from her computer and asked us what we were talking about it. We told her about NSA programs and she just sat there looking surprised. Not only had she not heard of Snowden or the whistle blowing, she had never heard of the NSA. I was surprised that she was so unaware of major news events. I tried to explain the programs to her but soon found that I couldn't really explain them either. I was critical of her for not knowing about the programs but what did I really know about them anyway? It is difficult to understand events like this ourselves but it may be more difficult to break them down to explain them to other people.
ReplyDeleteIts interesting that the media has not ran with this story endlessly. If nothing else, it could be considered a scandal. However, if you think about it all of these news agencies are tied to giant cable corporations. For example, CNN is owned by Time Warner, who owns a bunch of television channels. It does not make sense to broadcast how people need to act to change when they are sitting pretty broadcasting content. Its not just that though, people also frankly don't want to have to do anything. Many of us are quite content just watching Duck Dynasty, and our complacency is mirrored in our media. Why would they sell us something we were not interested in hearing?
ReplyDeleteIt almost seems as if this topic isn't being "blown up" on media a lot because of the reach that the NSA has. Imagine being the guy that decides to really publish this story and make the NSA look like the bad guy? The NSA has so much power to really look into all of that information that I would personally be a little scared to release some report like that as well. I mean this may not be the situation in this case but I'm sure it has crossed many of their minds.
ReplyDeleteThere are actually a lot of people who I have spoken to as well, who have not heard about the Snowden whistleblowing incident. I have been wondering why the media and news channels haven't been making more of a commotion over this. I feel like most people who are well read on this incident are those who seek news through the internet. Additionally, it's people who deliberately search for it. Usually, people know their news based on what they happen to stumble upon. That usually ends up what they see highlighted on popular news sites/channels. Popular news sites haven't been sporting many NSA or Snowden related articles. People like my parents would probably run into few articles about the topic.
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