Perfect summary…

…of how our hucksters in beer and shampoo ply their trade as “journalists” (caution: some bad language, but dang is it accurate):

One thing he fails to note is the truth of Chesterton’s observation that much of the news is concerned with shouting “Admiral Bangs is dead!” to a world that never knew Admiral Bangs had been born. A huge amount of news reporting consists of sudden frenzies of fascination with somebody you knew nothing about last week, written and reported by people who also knew nothing till the story broke. Now everybody is, for instance, talking like absolute experts about Julian Assange when the truth is 99% of what you and I “know” about the guy is stuff we gathered from recirulating narratives constructed by “journalists” writing on the fly, supplemented with the gabble of whatever our trusted ideological drum majors are saying we should think. He’s a folk hero/enemy combatant/traitor/pervert (depending on which “trusted name in news” you decide to let construct the narrative). This is how a huge percentage of people navigate what they “know” about the world. That’s why your average American, stopped in the street, “knows” that Benedict is the guardian of perverts. News isn’t so much news as “processed information”. Processed by whom? By the few rich men and women whose interests are served by the processing process, of course.

My dear Wormwood, surely you didn’t think it is our business to teach? – Uncle Screwtape