I’m a massive history nerd, and completely proud of that fact. I can’t help it, its just the way I’m built. The torment I face is knowing the historical struggle our country faced for freedom. It wasn’t just a tax on tea or sugar that oppressed our ancestors. It was also the restriction and censorship on the press.
The fight for the right to criticize our leaders is a fight that took thousands of lives, and completely changed the World’s landscape. The British censorship of the colonies, is a major reason why I can not get past President Trumps, fight with the media. A free press, IN MY OPINION, is the most valuable right Americans have.
I am not saying that the news isn’t bias, slanted, and flat out wrong at times. Because it is, but here is a truth bomb for you. There is not unbiased news. There never has been. If you just want the facts then pick up a math book.
Reading weather statistics for the last hundred years, or historical timelines, or a laws passed by congress will make you wish for stereo instructions. There dull, bland, and overly confusion. If you don’t believe me download the US tax code and see if you can figure out how to fill out a W-40.
That’s where the media steps in and provides it greatest service. Newscasters put the absurd into common language, so everyone can understand, but that doesn’t mean their isn’t a bias in what they are reporting.
The simple act of an editor, deciding what he will print and won’t print is a bias. The editor must decide what HE or SHE thinks the readers want to know. They have to sass up the headlines, so instead of: November 20, 2017 Review of the Congressional Vote on the Republican Written Tax Bill, we get Trump’s Tax Bill is Bogus.
It’s not fake news, it’s news that is market to readers and viewers, who the advertising companies want to reach. Television, websites, facebook, and newspaper’s make their operating budgets from selling advertisement, not subscriptions. This means those editors and CEO’s have to figure out how to match their client needs to the general population.
The big question they have to answer is how to get people to spend their money to read/view our news reports.
This commercialization of the media removed the government from sponsoring the media, and censoring it. The problem is that we are overwhelmed, in this era, with contradictory stories and newscast. This dichotomy was created by the ease and scope of the internet, and social media.
Now anyone can write a story and put their opinions out into the world. But, this does not mean that the government should stop supporting a free press. It means that our leaders have to rise above petty conspiracy theories and name calling, and let their actions speak louder than the media’s words.
It also means that problem is that the citizens of the United States have stopped become lazy. We no longer rush to the library to read the latest laws that Congress has passed, or download prospective bills, or look up the source material for news stories. We tune in to networks we trust, and buy papers that don’t challenge us to action.
We should question our government and our leaders. We should not qualify ourselves as a card carrying member of one political ideology or another, because when we do, any information that contradicts our prescribed narrative becomes a war.
This is an oxymoron within itself because the internet has freed up so much of our time. While also overwhelming us with bogus new stories. So we watch the news channels that will validate our presumptions and not challenge our assumptions.
