Mass Media is Not Your Friend

This is a fairly recent development in American history. Huge media companies do not have an interest in bringing real news to you. Even SNL is being edited (you can see the, now removed video here). The United States still has the most liberated press in the world (eat it you government run, in part, European news industry), but the viewpoints expressed have narrowed recently to reflect the views of the handful of behemoth corporations that own the vast majority of the media outlets in this nation (they like money, and romantic walks on the beach with our current administration). One of the reasons that blogs have become so popular in the past couple of years is because of the frustration felt by many that the news is no longer an objective look at the world but a selective and tinted look that will produce more profits for the giant backers. Several years ago Comedy Central ran an advertisement for The Daily Show that concluded "Where more Americans get their news, than probably should." It was funny, it was light-hearted, it was true...at the time. Now it really doesn't matter. The Daily Show is as good a place as any to get news today, and it's funny so...extra points. They frequently point out that most TV news (mostly Fox, but CNN, MSNBC and others as well) lob softballs and kiss up to politicians rather than confront and discover. One of my favorite recent segments was the contrast of Oprah with tv journalists where it was clearly demonstrated that Oprah was harder hitting and more of a seeker of truth than the journalists we see on the tele.

The internet is, of course, both good and bad. There are thousands of sites for news organizations, both TV and print, and there are tens of thousands of news related blogs (like this one, from time to time). There are many sources of information and misinformation. If you are careful and think critically then you can probably get to something resembling the truth...eventually. Unfortunately we don't have time to do that. We also don't really have the means to tell fact from fiction in all cases. Visceral responses abound (gee, really?!?), and emotion is spread and clouds everything. The one thing that you can count on now, is that the media is not your friend. They no longer have the interests of the nation and its people at heart (yes, some journalists do, but they seldom have the last say in what is reported).