The primary goal of “News” is to sell beer and shampoo

Last month the “news” was “NAZI POPE HIDES PERVERT PRIESTS!!!!!” It had every virtue a good news story should have except the negligible fact that it was a crock of crap. But what a long-lasting aroma! And look how many servants of the Lord of the Flies covered it from every corner of the media for two solid months. Why, the buzzing alone has lulled the average “news” consumer into the settled conviction that Something Must Be Done to Punish Benedict. And the beer and shampoo sales? Magnificent! So journalism happened!

Then, earlier this week the “news” was “NOAH’S ARK FOUND!!!!!!”. Well, not so much as you might think. But now that the NAZI PEDOPHILE hoo-rah is ebbing, you need to something to stampede the consumers toward the beer and shampoo.

Now we are informed “COMPELLING EVIDENCE OF LIFE ON MARS!!!!!” And that would be what?

Reason #1: NASA bureaucrats, in an era where Obama is threatening their jobs, are clamoring for any and every reason to prolong and expand their jobs. Or, in Journalese:

The results are so promising boffins have already planned a host of other missions to discover whether there is extraterrestrial life in the universe.

Reason #2: Water equals life. Or in journalese:

The recent missions have gathered evidence of sulphates on Mars, a strong indication there is water on the planet and therefore life.

Why we are to believe water equals life is never explained.

Reason #3: In addition, the very enthusiastic NASA people who have every financial and professional reason to hype “LIFE ON MARS” would like to reiterate that we suddenly are sure there is life on Mars. Cuz, you know, water and stuff. In journalese:

But the NASA boffins said the recent missions have gone further than any others in proving there is life on Mars.

We’re not talking “evidence” anymore. We’re talking *proof*. So don’t cut our jobs, Obama. We’ve got proof! Water and stuff!

Reason #4: Gypsum. Gypsum is found with fossils sometimes. So there you are. In journalese:

They were particularly excited about the discovery of a sulphate called gypsum which, it has emerged recently, is found in large quantities among fossils in the Mediterranean.

Mmmkay. Is it found elsewhere too? Does the presence of gypsum always correlate to the presence of life? Sure, it *could* be evidence. But is it? Or is it just evidence of the presence of gypsum? How is this “proof”?

Reason #5: The answer to this question is somebody named Jack Farmer is optimistic. Whether he is on the NASA payroll is unclear. The second answer is that somebody named Bill Schopf, whose relationship to NASA is also unclear, says that there’s a lot of gypsum on Mars. And this proves what? Well, here’s what “proof” means in journalese:

“Two, it turns out on earth there just hasn’t been hardly any work done at all to show whether gypsum ever includes within it preserved evidence of former life.

“The age doesn’t matter. We just didn’t know that fossils and organic matter and things like that were well preserved within gypsum.

“So, three, it turns out that now we have made that first step we are going to find out how widespread it is in other sulphate deposits on earth.

“And those lines of evidence will then give us a way to justify going to Mars and looking at gypsum because it looks as though based on these findings that is going to turn out to be a really excellent place to find evidence of ancient life, regardless of age, if in fact it is there.”

This, being translated means, “We don’t have any idea if gypsum really means “Life used to be here”, but we hope to find out. And if we do (based on terrestrial gypsum) we might be able to make some guesses that the gypsum on Mars may have meant that life used to exist of Mars and might still be there. But we don’t really know anything.”

Reason #6: Five experts had a panel discussion. One of them frankly said, “We don’t know nothing till we bring back a rock. So fund us!” Another expert said, “Methane!” which proves nothing, but sounds cool and is exclusively to be credited as a Sun scoop, so buy our beer and shampoo and not the Post’s beer and shampoo. Methane guy also stressed the urgent need to keep funding Methane guy. Money (sic) quote:

“We also need to send a mission to return samples from Mars. That would enable scientists to find out whether Mars might ever have harboured life.

“If we are ever going to show if there was ever life on Mars, I think we’re going to have to study samples back on Earth.”

Reason #7: NASA’s already got these big plans for big missions and it would wrong and bad to cut the funding for these. In journalese:

Almost 30 other NASA missions to discover life in space – including one to bring back rocks from Mars – have already been planned.

There are also plans to visit Jupiter’s moon Europa to explore its deep underground ocean and a moon of Saturn, Enceladus, which spouted ice volcanoes.

Long-term missions will also return to Saturn’s biggest moon Titan, sending a balloon flying through its atmosphere and landing a probe in its surface lakes.

Future missions would also visit comets.

NASA scientists have been searching for extraterrestrial life on other planets for some time.

Last November the space organisation launched the Kepler space telescope to look for Earth-size planets in this galaxy.

The telescope is on a three-and-a-half-year mission to find planets.

NASA has so far been able to download data – but many believe there are aliens out there.

This being translated, means, “We don’t have any real news about life on Mars, but we have all these missions we want to do, Obama is threatening our funding, and so we are banging the drum with whatever cooperative media we can find in order to gin up some excitement and try to protect our funding. It’s win win! Beer and shampoo media get a thrilling headline atop a story that is full of whipped air and we get to create the illusion that cutting our funding will tragically cut short Mankind’s Greatest Discovery just as we are on the verge of near-certain “proof” of life on Mars.

Reason #8: A famous physicist guesses that there are killer aliens out there. He must know something.

In summary: This is science reportage for people who only read headlines. It will be perfect for TV too. Soon we will all be under the impression that some big thing has happened to make life on Mars a virtually certainty. If all goes well, it will result in big bucks for NASA.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d love for us to go to Mars. I will be thrilled if we find some microbes there. But the fact is, we are nowhere near “proof” of life on Mars. This article was about NASA lobbying for funds, not about science. It was also about the unspoken agreement between scientist who live by the seven basic elements (Time, Space, Matter, Energy, Power, Funding and Prestige) entering into a cooperative agreement with the Beer and Shampoo Media to hype some glamor in order to benefits each party financially, not in order to actually do any real science or communicate any substantial information.