June 19, 2010

Liars and hypocrits

The print media and the dying network news organizations just cannot understand why Americans are no longer reading their papers and watching their broadcasts. For me I don't read the paper as often as I like because apparently the concept of putting a paper in every red plastic receptacle is too difficult for my carrier. But most of us are turning away and tuning out because the reporting has gone from biased to outright playing for one of the teams.

One Republican Senator tap dances a super secret gay code in a restroom stall and it is the lead story for weeks. A Democrat Congressman commits assault and battery on a college kid -- on film -- and it is brushed under the rug. A Republican Representative sends text messages to an 18 year old page saying he wants to hook up (they never did) and he is booted from office. A Democrat Congressman runs a gay brothel in his basement and the result is cricket chirps in the media.

A Republican Congressman is caught taking bribes in California -- out he goes. A Democrat Congressman is caught taking brides and even has the money in his freezer -- why that is just racism.

I, for one, am fed up and sick of it. I have not watched a nightly news broadcast in years. I am glad to see the hacks and party supporters at Newsweek and the NY Times lose their jobs. I have a friend who works at one of the large weekly News Magazines (does anyone know what time it is) and he said he gets unbelievable pressure to frame his articles in a certain way. He sticks to the facts, but the editors often change the wording of his articles to bend the content to fit a certain editorial bias. He is senior enough to get his way, but as he tells me, some fights are not worth having. As we all know a troublemaker does not last long in any corporate environment. News organizations are a business too.

The reporting of news has always been a powerful force for shaping public opinion. Long before Goebbels and Pravda, the machinations of Hearst and Pulitzer dragged us into the Spanish-American War. Hyperbole and yellow journalism on both sides of the issue had a great deal to do with encouraging the Southern States to secede from the Union. The idea that journalist should present a far and unbiased viewpoint is a recent construct. While through much of the 1960s and 1970s the news media made no real effort to provide just the facts, we thought they did (hello Mr. Cronkite you leftist bastard). Only as reporters told us one thing about the Reagan Administration and we saw another did this great fallacy begin to fall apart.

Limbaugh, Drudge and others came along and began to tell the other side of the story. Rush may be as biased in his reporting as the Times, but at least he will admit it. He will tell you what he says is opinion, the WAPO just puts the opinion into the story and pretends it to be fact.

Today the legacy media does not get it. They haven't a clue we are on to them. They keep trying the tactics of attempting to hide their bias as news. The less we believe them, the harder they try, until today the news media is no more reliable than the yellow journalists of yesterday. Let us be honest, how can we expect any different outcome when the media honors the "best" reporters with a prize named after one of the most biased yellow journalist of the time?

Keep along this path media of today. We are on to you. Just try and convince us that taking a large bailout from the Government will make you more independent. Even those of us with a non-Ivy League public school diploma can see through that steaming pile of crapola.

4 comments:

GUYK said...

GREAT POST!

Greybeard said...

The problem, as I see it, is that we're trapped.
The voters want government cheese...
And the government cheese lovers are now in the majority.
(Witness the fact that 53% of the electorate voted for the guy who promised to give them cheese.)

We are in for a great deal of pain, and pretty soon.
The abovementioned electorate does not like pain.
When the government is bankrupt and the flow of government cheese comes to an end, those voters, having few skills other than working the "government cheese" system, will seek to get their cheese wherever they can find it.

I'm storing cheese and I'm prepared to defend it.
Those not doing the same will soon be referred to as "victims".

Ed Bonderenka said...

It is incumbent upon us to talk loud enough to be overheard in restaurants and convenience store lines, etc. about what is going on. It's the only way the American Idol worshipers will hear it.

TheWayfarer said...

Ed is on to something there.
We are definitely in the "bread and circuses" part of the American decline.
Like you, I have not watched the Nightly Propaganda for over a decade - anyone who can't smell the bullshit by now must have had their brain removed, or possibly been so "open-minded" they just fell out. Between the pubic screw-ools and ABCNNBCBS, most young, dumbed-down Ritalin babies don't have a snowball's chance in hell of finding out what is really going on til they're in their late 20s, and by that time, they've been set up for dependency, except for very rare cases. The Establishment propaganda machine is designed to make and keep you willfully ignorant; when they're not baffling you with BS they're distracting you with dainties: "Buy this new e-toy-phone & stay in debt forever/Who'll win American Karaoke tonight?"

It's no freaking wonder they want to shut down the web, it's the only place you have a chance of hearing the facts!

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