The Media and What Matters

I've long worried about the way the media treats politicians...and they treat each other. Every detail of their past is brought forward. Every secret they have is sought out and made public. Their personal lives often seem to matter more than their policies. Are they faithful to their wives? Are they religious? Do they go to service? Are they a family man?

Frankly, I don't give a damn. I don't care if you smoked pot in college. Frankly, if more politicians smoked pot in college, it might be a bit better, as they'd know it's not some evil drug. Though I'm sure more of them did it than want to admit, and likely quite a few of them have snorted coke and other things. If they are unfaithful to their wife, it can speak to their character, but we never know the whole story, and shit happens in life. You know what speaks more to their character? If they're fucking ignoring the health of people, including the workers on 9/11. How is that not as big of a controversy as if someone had an affair?

I think it's likely that many people don't ever get into politics because they don't want to have the public eye on them. They don't want it coming out that they were actually gay 20 years ago, and then just married their wife to seem normal, because society makes them hate themselves. They don't want people to know that they secretly get off on midget scat porn. Everyone has their secrets. Many people are too afraid that some of the shit they're embarrassed about will get out.

But, shouldn't politics be more about what your policies are? You are in charge of a nation...and the media cares more about whether or not you can keep your dick in your pants.

I keep hoping that thing will change with the media now that we have the internet. We can choose what stories we hear when we watch the news through a site or an app.

Of course, it being financially viable for them to run news agencies that give certain people more of what they want, like actual news, rather than puppies and 24/7 coverage of violence, we need advertisers to actually pay for adverts on such channels, and platforms like YouTube to pay the creators, and not take too large of a cut.

Of course, every time there's an adpocolypse on platforms like YouTube, budding journalists and tiny news channels that run on the platform suffer financial hardship and can go out of business.

The news media chooses who runs the country though, more so than individual voters. Every story they show influences who will get elected, and their habits determine who will even run.

Despite what some seem to think, not everyone wants to be famous. There's a lot of extra shit that comes with fame these days. As soon as you're famous, the media seems to think it's open season on your life.

Not that they necessarily figure out everything. Often times they miss actually important things, and don't focus on them even if they don't miss them.

They decide every day what to focus on. What news to broadcast. What stories deserve the most coverage. That influences everything.

What was really surprising was when Trump faced off with this coverage. He blatantly manipulated it, and used tidal waves of controversies to overwhelm the news and give them too much to cover, and make other controversies look smaller because they were just one thing among many. It was rather genius, and despicable.

Certain things do matter when it comes to controversies. It matters if someone has been accused of rape or molestation or such. It matters if they've committed DUI's. Criminal activity matters.

But, it also seriously matters what policies people support, how they think, how they vote, etc. And the media doesn't really care about those things. Individuals can seek out that information, as it's public, but the ones in charge of determining what's news worthy don't seem to think it's worth even a few seconds to mention when politicians vote for or against major legislation, or give people info in regards to that.

The excuse is always that that sort of news doesn't get great ratings. Well, I don't really give a damn, because the job of the news is to deliver news. With apps and the internet these days, they could let people get far more news than normal. They could actually get extra money, and let their reporters report on things that they might consider important news, maybe for reduced rates if they had to.

I keep hoping. I keep hoping that things will change, that we'll be able to pick our news stories and decide what is important for ourselves, because the news has kind of failed us for years. But the reality of the situation today is that who runs our country is just whoever can deal with the shit from their past being spread across the news, rather than who is actually supported by the people, and the most capable of running the government.

And we wonder why nothing gets done in government.

It's because they don't make it news that the government isn't doing shit. They don't run stories about how they're ignoring issues. They don't run stories when they refuse to vote on major issues. They don't shame them for that. Instead they shame them for a lapse in judgement when they got horny and did something stupid.

Not that that isn't necessarily news...just usually not worthy of all day coverage, to the detriment of all other news.

It matters what they focus on. It matters what they cover. It matters...and they don't seem to realize the detrimental effect they're having on the world by choosing what they focus on.

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