The Trews

The famous YouTube channel The Trews is a web series by Russell Brand who is an English comedian, actor and activist. He discusses his opinions about what appears on media, in newspapers or on television, and on some of his episodes, he responds to comments left by viewers. The show’s name is a portmanteau of “true” and “news”.

The show has a very simple style: it is a solo piece to camera supplemented with video clips and screenshots from different media. Sometimes he interviews celebrities, activists and not only that, he has invited guests like Alain de Botton, Alasdair Campbell and George Monbiot.

The series has a producer, who is a director and editor of the project as well – Gareth Roy. He has worked on other projects with Brand before.

Russell Brand has a lot of videos where he discusses Fox News Television. These Articles names are:

 

Charlie Hebdo: Does Fox News Terrorise Us?

Hobby Lobby: Would Jesus Side With Fox?
How Fox Lies Fuel The War On Drugs.

Is Rupert Murdoch More Powerful Than Your Vote?

And a lot of other topics related to Fox News Television. Let’s check one of his videos – Charlie Hebdo: Does Fox News

Terrorise Us? Russell discusses how Fox News speaks about Muslims and Terrorism in general, and asks questions that make you think about the fact that everything you know and the way you know it, is how media puts it in your head.

“You have to pay attention and look at the people who are behind these ideas. Terrorism is wrong, killing people is bad but it has to mean all types of terrorism. Who gets to define what terrorism means? Who gets to define what violence is necessary?” says Russel in his video.

He shows that the way Fox News represents information that actually we do not participate in the creation of these dynamics. Russel says that that woman, Charlie Hebdo is prepared the same as the terrorists, to cost the side of human values, the right of the free speech is important but is not as important as “they” rule human beings together, that finds solutions together. So what she is doing? Obviously it is not as violent but it is still equally damaging. She is operating on the behalf of people with their own ideologies and there are consequences.

maxresdefault

Russell says that the only thing left is just to watch, and laugh at it. Russell also calls those programs hilarious and entertaining to watch. These are comedy programs, as they use TV to promote the economic ideologies of the United States and not only that, these type of shows will have very serious consequences. “Violence and division are the consequence of programming like this that benefits the terrorists themselves. Those thing create a cruel world.”

Except for media, he freely speaks about religion, politicians, celebrities, and everything he says is “true”. That’s his slogan – Russel says the truth. His main goal is to speak for the of people and make sure that they see what’s happening around, that they see how government is lying about everything, and he wants to prove that the era when people blindly believed in politicians and media is gone. But still too much information, where the things are blended, confuse people and Russel helps with figuring out what is what.

Another example is a video where the comedian discusses the speech of the Queen of UK, where she is sitting in a golden chair with a golden crown saying that government does not have money, when politicians were speaking about the plans on how to save billions of pounds for the country improvement. Russell is speaking very ironically about the fact that people are starving in the streets, when the Queen is sitting on a golden chair, riding in a golden coach, and having a golden crown with a lot of brilliants. “Seems like a sustainable lifestyle” says Brand.

So why he is doing this? What is he trying to achieve? The answer to this question is that the real changes will come from us, and if we want changes, we better get organized. No one else is going to do it instead of you, the Queen is not going to do it for us, government is not going to do it for us, so “the only hope you have is yourself”. (Brand, 2015)

I think that what he is doing is proof that people really can see the lies and propaganda that our governments and media in general want to put in our heads. Russel Brand is an inspiration for many people. We can see that even from the comments from the videos, and he must be an example for the future media workers: that it is better to say the truth and leave peacefully rather live in lies and fake world.

This article was written by Lika Sas.