A rant about the media

A rant about the media August 25, 2016

It has language, so be warned. I don’t typically link to posts like this, since it’s from the hip and pretty full of rhetoric I feel drags down the discourse.  Nevertheless, there was nothing in it I could argue with.  It is true.  We don’t have a media, at least on the national stage.  We have a propaganda ministry.  Not only the obviously underplayed coverage of the Louisiana floods, but I had to chuckle because I remember the Tennessee story being interrupted by that bomb scare.

Years ago when I was at seminary, I had several friends who were, shall we say, left of center.  One was a couple my wife and I hung around with quite often.  They were liberals and Democrats all the way. Now this might come as a shock, but they actually believed their various liberal ideas and perspectives were right.

Because of this, they didn’t feel the need to cheat.  Like the athlete who knows he is the best, and doesn’t want to cheat because he knows he doesn’t need to, they didn’t want anything adding dishonest weight to the scales.   This was the 90s by the way.  This was that period in which a growing number of Americans – and not just conservatives – were getting the sneaky feeling that our news media wasn’t reporting news, but was running blockade for a single political and ideological movement.

It was in reaction to this that our friends said they didn’t approve.  They didn’t want to cheat, because at the time at least, they didn’t feel they needed to cheat.  Liberalism, they thought, should stand on its own.  They didn’t want the media stacking the deck, even if it was for the party they supported or the ideals they embraced.

And yet, today, it’s impossible to miss that this is just what we have.  Whether the MSM or FOX, we no longer have sources of information, but institutions all about covering stories in ways that advance their pet viewpoints or agendas.  The worst of it isn’t that people still follow what the media says, despite the fact that they know it’s biased.  I fear the worst of it is that people follow the media precisely because they know it is biased.  And we no longer care.

 


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