A large percentage of the American population no longer
trusts mainstream news outlets
either on television or in print. A June 2013 Gallup poll indicates nearly 4
out of 5 Americans among younger generations from age 21-64 cannot trust the
major news networks, not when the likes of NBC and MSNBC are owned by General
Electric, Comcast and possibly Time Warner in this age of super-mergers. Both
the circulation and very survival of America’s news print organizations have
shriveled or dried up completely.
Amongst the nation’s largest cities, few traditional
newspapers are still left today. Even the perennial powerhouse dailies like the
New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times have gravely suffered, and in an
attempt to keep up with the changing times, years ago moved to the internet as
their mainstay means of surviving the computer age.
Time Magazine and Newsweek similarly have been forced to downsize with Newsweek
permanently suspending its print circulation. In recent years’ Time Magazine in
print has been reduced in size to a mere skimpy little shadow of what it once
was.
To a significant portion of Americans, all the mainstream
news corporations have been rendered state propaganda and disinformation tools
for the US government. Indeed their embedded (alias “in-bed”) news reporting
has become a cynical joke amongst the populace. Entertainment fluff and filler
space have come to obscure and replace real news and real issues that vitally
affect the well being, safety and concerns of the American public. The
controlling powers behind mainstream media outlets have made a concerted effort
to keep American citizens the last to know especially when it comes to world
events and developments.
According that that same Gallup poll from last year, this
growing distrust that Americans have towards mainstream news is only exceeded
by their distrust towards big business, HMO’s and US Congress. Even last
month’s Gallup poll shows President Obama’s approval rating dipping to an all
time low of just 39% with the majority of Americans now disapproving of his job
performance. This negative, across-the-boards view reflects both a generalized
discontent and disconnect with today’s status quo power structure. And as a
result, a mass exodus of US citizens have switched viewing their world through
the known distorted lens of traditional news coverage to that of the world wide
web, currently celebrating its quarter century anniversary this week.
Hence, in recent years a growing number of people have
been turning to online
sources as their primary means for news information and current world
events. Despite unlimited numbers to choose from of websites portending to
depict accurate coverage of domestic and international events, in today’s world
the notion of objective, unbiased news coverage becomes highly suspect. Thus,
an informed public must be extremely discerning when it comes to believing what
is the truth and what are the lies based on propagandist manipulation.
Ultimately individuals will naturally gravitate toward whatever sources of news
best fit their particular biases and beliefs based on their world paradigm. So
one’s sense of reality and truth about the world becomes both highly elusive
and subjective, if not impossible to tease out and grasp.
To compound this already perplexing, complex problem, the
systematic dumbing-down of America has produced a mounting population that all
too frequently gullibly accepts either the spoon-fed deception and lies of
mainstream media or often equally biased non-mainstream news outlets. For
decades now Americans have been conditioned to no longer think critically and
discriminately to sort out facts from fiction.
Creative questioning, exploring curiosity or daring to
challenge authority is entirely absent from the current US public education
system bent on homogenized conformity and socialization toward robotic
compliance. And as a consequence, too many Americans blindly accept as gospel
truth anything they read, that is if they still read at all, naively assuming
it would not be fit to print on the internet, in books, magazines or newspapers
or seen on TV, if it were not all true.
No comments:
Post a Comment