"Whoever holds the power tries to own the truth." How do the texts you have studied and your additional material, support or challenge this statement?.
Whoever holds power does try to own truth. Power, more often than not, is addictive. Holders of power try to own or manipulate the truth to hold a particular stance in society, as vengeance, and/or to feed a power addiction. When the holders of power "own" the truths of society, it bestows them with more power, thus making power and truth camouflaging or "truth" telling a vicious cycle.
Rob Sitch et al's Frontline series explores how media, as a power in society, tries to own the truth. The composer aims to make the audience realise that the media (especially current affair programs) can, and probably does, manipulate the truth through techniques in the satirical show. Frontlines" exposure of the behind-the-scenes of the on-air "Frontline" (the show within the show) aims to make the audience think that perhaps real current affair programs were similar in "not letting the facts spoil a good story". Sitch et al does convey this meaning to the audience though a "hand-held camera" filming technique and lighting techniques to make the show really appear as a "behind-the-scenes" documentary showing the real truth about what goes on in current affair programs. Society believes news and current affair shows, thus giving them all the power to create/camouflage/manipulate the truth. .
In the Frontline episode "Night of nights", Telecoms" phone-line tapping story is not broadcast. Telecom obviously did not want this bad publicity, so simply told the network not to air it, as it was a big sponsor of the network, and gave the network compensation with a few mobile phones. Mike Moore is then faced with the moral issues of hiding the truth instead of exposing corruption. Of course Moore is easily bought, and hides the truth. If he had refused, he would have lost his job and the network would have hired somebody else who would cooperate.
