'He who owns the media writes the news.'
Reading papers and watching TV are easy and become habits. I don't think anyone would bet anything on the accuracy of either, but particularly for the old they give a feeling of still 'being there' of still being involved in life despite not working or actually Occupying Wall St., but a sort of feeling that they are somehow contributing to something or affecting something in some sort of way.
But there is actually a problem, people are gullible, far more gullible than they think.
I remember in sixth grade someone from the local television station to talk to us about producing television news. She said rather matter of factually that the central emphasis wasn't accuracy it was emotion. Like the Athenian intellectuals in Paul's day at Mars Hill we are a society that graves, 'some new thing' and I might add, drenched in emotive drama. Our media, not just news, is continually produced in such a way as to be a giant birdbath a hundred miles wide and an inch deep. I like current events to, I've watched the rise of Trump and the voting populace that supports him with great interest that boarders on morbid fascination, I can't seem to look away.
What built radio, television and then finally the internet wasn't just research and development and evolving technology. Of course those things were vital. What produced them at the root and foundation was commercial advertising, those asinine commercials and ads that populate so much of them is what footed the bills.
Think about it, why are campaigns so expensive? I suppose that's a complex answer but what I think is draining so much revenue is the advertisement and solicitation that is so much a part of American politics. I've long thought of political ads as bribes to the media. But that wasn't really the question, what is the point of the media and what purpose do they serve I think is more the idea.
Plato used an analogy of a cave where people were forced to watch silhouette images on a wall and those images were the only reality they ever knew. One of them gets out and see the world and comes back and tries to tell the others what is really going on, and according to Plato, they get angry and kill him. This has been described as, the common marketplace that enslaves us all.
How would you do it? How would you subjugate a mass of people to a an unreal vision of the world without letting them realize it's all a theatrical production? You would have to control cultural centers like markets, schools, religious institutions, political centers, legal administrations and one very central tenant would be where people get their information on current events.
Don't get me wrong, journalism is a vital source for truth and information in a democracy. I have undying respect for journalists who tirelessly pursue truth and make it known though media outlets. But there is another element somewhere in the architecture, something darker and more insidious working alongside those pursuits. One can stare long enough at the architecture long enough and start to see vague outlines of dragons and demons, some real and some imagined.
The media is there because humans have a natural desire for knowledge, the craving can be as strong as any sexual or chemical addiction, it can be as noble as a minsters devotion to the gospel truth. Our problem with out institutions and enterprises isn't the intrinsic nature of those systems but something fundamentally flawed in human character. The media exists because the best and worst things in our nature craves both truth and drama and a source for knowledge that informs and at the same time, tells us what we want to hear.
