Pundits & Panels & Experts, Oh My!
What Has Happened to the News?
Dec 8, 2017
When I was growing up, Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw and all the stable anchors in news used to tell us all about issues and events throughout the world. It was all comprised of facts, figures and information about the events and issues. There were virtually no partialities, no political agendas or special interest groups involved in what was reported. The important thing that I find so glaring as compared to today’s news stations is that, then, there was a horde of reporters sent throughout the world gathering facts, figures and tangible information almost as if they were under oath to be factual and speak the truth about everything they saw and heard. Attendant with each thirty-minute broadcast was also only about seven to eight minutes of commercial advertisements. Things have changed. Today’s news appears to be VERY different in many ways.
The dictionary defines news as the announcing of current events and their attendant information and details. Although we say that we have become an information driven society, we receive reports with a few morsels of information which are then followed by a deluge of opinions and perspectives that take center stage in almost every report. When a news report or “breaking news” is announced, the content is usually one of three stories which has been beaten to death from every possible angle and perspective. Panels, pundits and experts that most of us have never even heard of expound opinions and personal thoughts based on their own political affiliations and financial agendas. And even then, once the discussion has started, it often devolves into a shouting match between opposing pundits on the panel. What has happened to the “reporting?” Where did all the facts go? Is it really any surprise that “fake news” has been metastasizing across the media like a forest fire in California?
We have become deluged by our media with a tsunami of personal opinions, thoughts, perspectives and political agendas based on each station’s political and financial supporters. How can we know what’s really going on? Is the truth that we must listen to all the differing stations and partisanships and make our own decisions based on our intuition? The only problem with that is that our culture has short circuited the use of doing this with promoting political correctness and an expected approval of only culturally specific affirmative action. But when you point this out, you’re called a racist, a homophobe, a radical or some other blanket term used to invalidate any thinking that might contradict the prevailing underdog’s group objectives connected to the issue. To not speak out leaves your position in society superseded by those in culturally preferred minority groups and leaving you feeling taken advantage of. To speak out or object makes you a target by putting you on the defensive. In accepting this, our altruism has become perverted. What to do? How can we maintain our rights without getting trampled by every underdog group looking to be one up on us? Our values are being funneled into a narrow view of the world supporting the expanded entitlement of the most current and loudest protesting underdog organizations. And if we don’t visibly support their demands, we are looked upon as non-compassionate or racist.
For a culture espousing the necessity of scientific research to back every fact concerning our existence, we have certainly undermined our world image and perspectives with a barrage of one sided intangible and unprovable beliefs and idealist assertions geared toward manipulating popular opinion by corporate administrations and partisan leaderships over our social actions and perspectives. The “news” presents the perspectives and the minority groups enforce them.
Little known to most people, almost all of the major news entities are owned by one corporation which, incidentally, is politically aligned with the “left” or a liberal ideology. This then promotes a “subliminal” barrage of information geared toward herding the American public into aligning with a perspective that perpetuates a radically preplanned myopic view of the world; sort of a mass mind control. If we are all channeled into focusing on what each group or public figure does socially that contradicts the politically accepted and fabricated view of what is considered “right” and proper in the world, we miss the larger scheme of what is really occurring in current events. In short, the media has succeeded in conjuring a tremendous distraction from becoming aware of current events in the world through encouraging the investment of our attention into petty social minutia. In allowing this to occur, we become the perpetrators of our own brainwashing program. We’ve allowed ourselves to become the victims of a large “find the pea under the cup” scam watching the pea under the cup and ignoring the manipulator and his agenda.
So, where does this leave us in understanding what’s really going on in the world? Where? Out to sea without a paddle. With virtually no solid references toward evidence or factual data, we are left with using only the opinions and perspectives of those chosen by the media to rely on for our knowledge and understanding of world events. This leaves us totally out of touch with the reality of things. Through the media, those in power have a totally attentive, obedient, responsive and eminently moldable population. Now we are ripe for herding and fleecing. Only those of us who think for ourselves can see the reality of things. But we are rapidly shrinking in number as our children’s education in history, mathematics, and literature is becoming homogenized into an Orwellian story line emulating the news and social protocols of 1984. But by progressively shrinking in number, are we becoming helpless in effecting any change back toward life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Let’s hope not.