Truth: The enemy of the press

1. They hate you.
2. Hate you deeply
3. Do you know how much they dislike you?
4. All of them that hate you.
5. Everyone knows you are hated
6. Listen, to them speak their hate.
7. This person thinks you are weak, nothing.
8. This is the face of the enemy.
9. Watch this person demonstrate their hate for you.
10. They hate all you stand for, they hate all of you
11. Listen to this expert explain their hate.
12. You are a victim of hate.
13. You are a victim.

Rinse and repeat, repeat and rinse.

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
Adolf Hitler

It is a good quote, despite the source. This is an interesting thing as often we use the reputation of the source as a qualifying factor for the information provided rather than the information itself. Is the information contained in the words a lie, would it be more or less accepted if it came from a more reputable source? Tell a lie often enough and it will not only lead to belief, it will become actionable and what started a lie can become reality, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I do not watch the news as there is little in there for me that I find useful to improve my experience and nothing to add to my skill set. For me, the news no longer delivers events, it delivers agenda, narrow perspectives and engineered information created to polarize and separate without offering space for discourse, room to discuss. It positions itself as an authority and then overreaches its bounds. This is my opinion, you can have yours.

For me, the news has become a vehicle to transport propaganda to the audience en masse but that audience is separated by various ideologies and grouped to consume from a narrow band of sources that are tailored to deliver what satisfies their desires but more importantly, feed their fears.

And there is a news cycle and nothing lasts long in the system before being chewed and replaced by the next irrelevance, the next senseless tweet, scandal or molehill turned to mountain. With the drop in income for real journalists, it is all about speed of output, not quality and without longevity of information, it must earn fast by churning often and then be spat out to make way for the next partly formed, opinionated piece designed to sway the audience, make them feel.

Clipped images and sound bites of information delivered and repeated that cover the chosen events for 5 minutes but get repeated 48 times in the life cycle of the news day. Deliver, rinse, repeat. With the speed of the churn and burn, not only is there no time for quality investigative journalism, there is no time to investigate if it is quality or not. A lot slips through the cracks of time as the next emergency takes precedence over investigating the potential flaws and nuances of the last.

Read, watch, listen to the easy to swallow, easy to remember, emotionally charged messages designed like a sales pitch. Keep getting Yes as the answer. Yes, that is terrible. Yes, they are bad. Yes, something must be done. Yes, go and do it. Yes, yes, yes, I will support you because your fears are now my fears, you have shown me the truth. I believe. Act for me. Please, save us from our enemies.

Do you trust the media, do you believe in fake news? Does the fake news happen to always be what the other side is listening to? Is the fake news on the left, or the right? Does it depend on where you stand? Do you know the source, do you trust the source, is it syndicated information, who is the reporter, their background, who pays their salary? Does it matter? Maybe not if you trust your source.

Are you objective? Are you certain?

When I was at school, we did a semester on bias in the media for our English class. After looking at examples of manipulation, investigating current news and repeatedly finding them in just about every piece read, I became very biased. I haven't trusted the media since. That was in 1995 and in my opinion, media bias has only slid further into political agenda and social engineering territory. As said, my opinion.

This is not just the mass media, this is all media as each source has a position that means they benefit from the audience either directly though subscription or indirectly though advertising revenue. It is not about information, it is about market segmentation and holding attention to increase time on site metrics. It is about audience approval and pleas to emotion to attach the audience to the source, to trust the source, to keep buying the brand of information they are selling.

The market doesn't have to be large, just engaged, compelled, believers. The information blurs into the background as the personality becomes the trusted source, not what they say. Anything can be said and for a fan, none of it is wrong or, all is forgiven when it is. After all, this engineered personality is fighting the good fight, attempting to preserve our way of life and save us from our common enemies. Those who disagree, those who question, they are agents of the enemy sent to undermine the message, weaken resolve.

You watch, they watch, we watch and all consume, accepting what supports their world view, rejecting what does not. Each market segment sectioned off, walls erected, points of polarization installed so that no common ground can be found. Not that it matters, why would one try to find common ground with the enemy?

Is this a work of fiction?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]