Most people with a relatively normal I.Q. view the mainstream media in awe. Not exactly the same kind of awe that we regarded them in the 1960s but awe nonetheless. During the last 4 years, the “news” media seems to get everything wrong. They were wrong about the election, they were wrong about Trump’s potential as president, and of course, they were wrong about Trump/Russia collusion. Yet in all these instances it was either a double down on being wrong or they tried to blame someone else. Kinda makes you wonder why there are so many blamers in America, doesn’t it?
For our entire life, we have been told how wonderful the news media and all it’s “journalists” are to the point where the institution appeared firmly planted upon Mount Olympus. Hollywood has perpetuated this idea in both movies and television and yet the truth has always been just the opposite. Take the wild west for example. Books and newspapers portrayed America’s western expansion using “artistic license” and rarely did any of them come close to the truth. During WWI the press claimed that German soldiers were throwing babies into the air, catching them on their bayonets, and eating them alive (more or less).
The press has never been about telling the truth it has always been about making money.
How do you make money by telling the news? Do you just sit around hoping stories will appear out of magic? Of course not because by the time a good story comes along you might not have a news company anymore, you either have to write the story with as much artistic license as you can squeeze into the story or be instrumental in creating a story. Since news is about making money you can rest assured that both measures are in constant active play.
When it comes to making money one has to identify who ones customer base is and what they want. What do the citizens want? Decades of successful grocery store tabloids like The National Enquirer, twenty-five years of Jerry Springer and thousands of conspiracy theorists online and any idiot who is paying attention will tell you that what people want is bullshit. In the pilot episode of Happy Days at the end of the show “The Fonz” tells his friend Richie that, “Bull makes the world go round.” And people wonder why the world loved the Fonz so much. He was a no B.S. kinda guy.
How many of you watch P.B.S. news? Oh, I’m not saying PBS gives great news so don’t get your feathers in a bunch. What I am saying is that generally, PBS news is boring. Turn the channel to FOX, CNN, MSNBC or any of the legacy networks news programs and what you get is amazing graphics, suspenseful music, and actors (anchors/hosts) who react to the smallest and most insignificant stories as if the world might come to an end at any moment.
Let’s be honest here. There will never be a day that goes by that doesn’t have truly newsworthy topics we should be dealing with in it, in every corner of the globe. There are a lot of bad things that happen every single day around the globe but you’ll rarely hear about any of them from the “legacy media.” Perhaps if we did we might be reminded how good we have it and how we need to diligently protect what we do have. We might also come up with ways to make things better but the press doesn’t want that.
Imagine if you will living on a peaceful planet around peaceful people. Imagine being able to leave your car and home doors unlocked like people did when I was a kid. Imagine heaven on earth. Now imagine what would happen to the news media if all of these things came to pass. Of course, these things hold no interest for the MSM because these things would turn the news media into a crowded pool of programmers begging for work. No more limo rides to work.
Report it with as much gusto as you can, embellish it or just make it up. Whatever it is that will make that cha-ching sound in the register. News people have become celebrities of their own making and they aren’t going to be giving that up anytime soon in the name of truth and honest reporting. We’re talking billions of dollars at stake here.
If you want to be entertained watch television news. If you want to know what is really going on you either need a trusted information hub or you have to do the legwork yourself. Anything less is just feeding the B.S. that at least according to The Fonz, fuels the world.
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