Media Mischief Un-Managed

In case no one's noticed, this blog isn't "monetized". I don't make a thing from it. I'm not blogging here to make money. (Edit added 9/26/2011: Okay, I added AdSense as of today. I don't endorse, sponsor or promote any ads here. Do with them (or not) as you will. The point is, I'm not "bought" by anyone. But I made my Significant Other happy by at least trying to make my time and efforts here pay something - even if I make nothing. As I said, I'm not blogging here to make money. If I do, it's a happy by-product and nothing more.)

(Edited added 02/24/2012: Okay, I have moved the blog to my new persona, and no longer have AdSense, as that requires me to use my real name, so I am no longer monetized on this blog.  Funny how that works, huh?  At least I'm back to staying true to the message, without any financial compensation for it (sigh). )

What I have here is an editorial blog. It's designed to convince, sway, influence and inform - probably in that order. I have my ups and downs and make no apologies for them (unless, of course, I apologize). I update things as situations evolve and become clearer (at least to me), but I make no bones about why I do this. There is no deliberate deception. I have no hidden agendas.

Believe it or not, this makes what I say far more reliable than what passes for news these days from the major media outlets in the United States. Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, the AP, INS, and most of the other news organizations have two handicaps I don't have:

1. They have to cater to a consuming public
2. They have to sell advertising to make money.

Now, this wouldn't seem to be much of a handicap on the surface of it. After all, all businesses need and want to make money. This is well and good. However the business we're talking about here is the NEWS, and that's where the whole "businesses making money" part goes badly wrong. In the pursuit of staying in business, the news is no longer the news. It becomes entertainment.

Again, news can be presented in an entertaining fashion, but it's not what's happening. The news is secondary to the entertainment. It's a by-product. I've seem headlines and news teasers that were the equivalent of saying, "Deadly plague sweeping the planet!!!!", but the story is about the latest round of flu shots being available and lasts less time than the teasers took to air. The news is no longer a place to go to get the facts of the day. It's a place to go to become flooded with sensationalistic hype, leaving you as terrified, sweaty and exhausted as you'd be if you were fleeing a pack of rabid weasels.

But even if you overlooked the sensationalism, we get to the fact that the news isn't just news. It's a perspective. In the pursuit of sensationalism, the news becomes (intentionally and unintentionally) increasingly biased. I wrote a post about this back in 2008. It was how biased blogs were being passed off as "news". The problem, as I expected, got worse. Now it seems that news and bias go hand in hand. News was less important than getting the point across as to how one should feel about that news. What's worse, there is a general blindness on the part of the public and the media to accept that their US news sources are ALL blatantly biased these days.

Fox News is so right-wing, viewers having the stomach to watch it should be rewarded with free memberships to the KKK, NRA and RNC. MSNBC is so left-wing, it should require its viewers to be card carrying members of PETA, Greenpeace and Earth First!. The rest (From the Drudge Report on the right to the San Francisco Chronicle on the left) are so biased that news takes a back seat to trying to convince people that they must believe a certain way about what the stories cover. And this all ties in to sensationalism and the need to make money on the part of these news organizations. Sensationalism sells. Playing it up, slanting it this way or that, making even the mundane sound earth-shaking (or at least implying it's earth-shaking) is what the news is all about these days.

The problem is now endemic in the US and I don't see that it's going to get any better. No news organization that I've found in the US is unbiased. This wouldn't be much of a problem if people didn't stick to one news organization from which they get their information. But they do. And often times, these news organizations try to play on the fears people have that their news might be biased. Fox's "Fair and Balanced" bullshit is a great example. I could say the sun is simply a very large heat lamp plugged into a socket in Soho. But just saying it doesn't make it true. Fox News is as blatantly rightist as MSNBC is blatantly leftist. Only MSNBC admits its bias from time to time.

The only way to deal with the flood of opinionated stories is to hear a lot of them, find what facts are involved and glean the truth of the matter from the sensationalism. It's more work, of course, and I'm sure, given the inherent stupidity of mankind, most people won't do it. But most people are sheep. They want the sensationalism. It's entertaining to them. They can then feel justified in their ignorance of reality because their biased news organization has told them the things they want to hear because it fits their belief system.

This isn't news. It's religion.

Whatever ethical motives our once-great news organizations had in the past to present the who, what, when, where, how and (maybe) why has gone the way of the wind-up watch and Walter Cronkite. We no longer have serious men (and women) giving us the news in a straight-forward manner. We are being "entertained", suckered in by sensationalism, and fed a diet of bias that has helped polarize the country. This is all done to ensure a constant stream of news consumers who will see the advertising and buy the advertiser's products so the advertisers continue to sponsor the Evening Bias Hour.

The fact is, no US news organization has a lock on the news as fact. They will dress it up until even the victims of the event couldn't recognize it and present it, freshly spun in the direction the organization's bias leans. So if you want the REAL news, read between the lines. Ignore the adjectives. Focus on the facts. Better yet, read the news from overseas - especially from countries which are unfriendly toward the US. You already know the news is biased, and can find the facts a bit easier to decipher with that presumption. Above all, DO NOT USE JUST ONE SOURCE FOR YOUR NEWS and ALWAYS KEEP IN MIND whatever you do read, view and/or hear IS BIASED.

If you're ever interested in finding out the real truth out there, this is what you have to do these days. Otherwise, please unplug your mind completely because whatever reality you will be living in will be controlled by the news organization you choose to believe.