"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Monday, June 24, 2019

When News Becomes a Profit Center

Our national media has been on a downhill slide for some years now -- actually, ever since the advent of Rupert Murdoch, which in this country means Fox News. It's not just that Fox deals in propaganda -- it's much more the idea that, rather than a public service (which has become a quaint idea, at best), news should be a profit center. Those two elements together -- profit and propaganda-- have made a sad joke of the Founders' idea of an informed populace.

This comes to mind after seeing these tweets in a comment thread at Joe.My.God., courtesy of commenter Lazycrocket:



I'm sure you've seen and/or read the story about Mayor Pete being shouted down by some of his black constituents in the wake of the shooting of a black man by a police officer. The stories I saw focused on the outrage in the community and slanted the narrative to make it look as though Buttigieg didn't have much support at home, much less nationally.

That doesn't seem to be the case.

The point of this is that we don't know what's being left out of the reports, and we can no longer trust reporters, or at least a substantial number of them, to be honest. Even less so, commentators.

So much for a free and independent press -- the major outlets have become departments in major corporations, and the goal there is not honest reporting but profits, with the results that we see everyday on the news.



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