The media's role has always been to help people "know what to think" about things. Earlier in our nation's history, there were lots of separate media outlets. Most people called them newspapers.
Newspapers reported the news, and the more lurid the story, the better the paper sold, the more subscribers it got, and the more its influence grew over its competitors.
Yes, competitors.
Even as late as the 1970s, Seattle had two newspapers, the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Daily, they battled it out. This was true even in the midst of television and radio news. TV and radio "gave" their news away for "free," provided you listened to their commercials and bought their soap (they never actually cared if you used it).
When the Post Intelligencer ended up losing, the two newspapers went to the U.S. Justice Department to work out a Joint Operating Agreement. The Times would print both papers, but they would remain intellectually diverse (to the extent intellectual and newspaper can coexist).
In essence, there is little difference today between reading a "newspaper" on a computer screen unfolded in your lap while you relax in an easy chair. Some things, however, are very different:
- the speed of delivery, which is now a constant flow;
- the barriers to entry into the business, which today have become almost nonexistent for individual bloggers;
- the speed and reach of individual news articles, which can be emailed to friends, posted on social media and commented upon at news-oriented websites and discussion boards.
Retracting or correcting a news story is now extremely difficult, because the new version is unlikely to reach nearly as far as the original article traveled. False, erroneous and especially lurid reports, therefore, travel much faster and wider than their subsequent corrections. Mouse-click advertising revenue drives this.
I suspect we have reached the point where most people read only headlines, and that informs their "thought" about the subject. I put "thought" in quotes, because the "free" public educational system we are forced to pay for with our taxes has abandoned critical thinking. Politically correct opinions are now taught as fact, leaving students less able to think when they graduate than when they entered.
This dysfunctional system feeds upon itself. As adults the educational system's victims (graduates) have no defense against keyword-laced headlines followed by what is often computer-or-worse generated nonsense. Headline grazers accept the headline as fact because they were never taught to validate sourcing, which involves critical thinking.
"Fact checking" is the ridiculous remedy offered to this headline-pollution. Fact checkers have their own bias, however, and their verdicts will reflect their own bias … or their boss' bias.
Ultimately, our individual beliefs, hopes, dreams and the way we view events around us are the product of own bias. The entire purpose in learning how to think for ourselves is to trim and prune our own bias, which is how we make it conform to the reality that surrounds it.
The present situation suits the billionaire-funded, one-world-chanting elitist class very well. Their agenda relies on a victimized population sliced and diced into victim-sized segments that can be manipulated by fake news. It works because most individuals have no ability to discern truth from lies outside their own tiny world.
Social media are the echo chamber that reinforces unfounded and unvetted views. Social media generates the dopamine-link for instant gratification. Keep your nose in that smartphone, because there are plenty of people depending on you to swallow their agenda hook, line and sinker. Collapse is certainly a likely outcome, but the results of collapse are often difficult to predict, let alone manage, for those who initiated it.
Collapse is not the only possible outcome, however. There is an element present in world affairs that most observers do not acknowledge. Our lives validate the claim that no one has greater concern for a creation than its creator. We can look to our own lives as children who grow up to become parents to validate that claim.
In the midst of all the daily news turmoil, I am becoming more of a quiet observer looking for the unseen hand in events. The one-world globalists believe they are playing a game of three-dimensional chess against a population that can't master two-dimensional games. In fact, the elitists are playing 3D chess against someone who has mastered infinite dimensions.
The hand itself is rarely visible, although sometimes you catch a glimpse. Most of the time you simply see events that were considered impossible, such as the election of Donald Trump. The Creator has the greatest concern for his creation. That's the hand you want to follow.
The infinite-dimensional chessboard Grandmaster has a long history with us. You can meet him in Reconnaissance: The Creator Returns.