READ THE NEWS WITH CAUTION
When I was a younger man, in the 1960s and 1970s legitimate newspapers like the Washington Post and NY Times, even the NY Daily News could be trusted to inform the reader. In those days TV news was dominated by the likes of John Cameron Swazye and Walter Cronkite. These men were former print journalists who actually wrote their own news scripts taken off the “wires”. Then they sat down in front of the cameras and shared these stories with the public. We knew that these men and women had a “point of view” but we were secure in knowing that they were honestly attempting to disseminate actual events —“news articles” which would inform the citizen and the voter. Their function of information-gathering and presentation were critical to the proper functioning of a democracy where voters have a responsibility to be informed so they could vote intelligently.
In those days too—we also had the supermarket tabloids, sold on the A&P checkout line and filled with unsubstantiated gossip, and sensational stories. The blaring deceptive headlines in bold colors with lurid pictures were designed to attract the bored, uninformed or curious. Most of us knew that underlying function of theses publications were simply to sell the printed sheets of paper. The headlines were intended only to deceive.
A bored tabloid reader waiting on line might be eventually attracted to a blaring front page in bold typeface taking up half of the front page. The headline might have read: “Bill and Hillary Planning a Divorce,” only to discover when reading the article inside that the Clintons were involved in trying to dissuade two close friends from a marital separation. Searching the piece one may actually find some facts—perhaps the “friends” did actually exist. . But it was soon apparent that the headlines had no relationship to the actual story and were designed explicitly to deceive. The object of the tabloids was only to get you to pick up the paper and buy it. It had no higher function than the sales display it sat next to in which blared the benefits of smoking Camel cigarettes. The tabloid had no informational function. At its very best it was a low form of entertainment. It was “fake news”. Bored checkout line standers were soon educated to the deception...and only read the headlines...knowing that the story was a phony.
Unfortunately all our main stream media have become tabloidized. Post 2016–all our news outlets (with rare exceptions) have turned into supermarket tabloid news—the headlines are deceptive and intended to deceive. Read (or listen) to headlines with caution. The stories that follow are too often a distortion of the facts, or designed for outright misperception. Modern news even goes a bit farther than the tabloids—which conspired only to deceive you to purchase their product. The modern tabloidized media have added to their deception for profit and increased sales— the sinister intention of propaganda generation. Propaganda is the intention to mislead, generate false perceptions which push a generally left-wing, anti Trump agenda . These developments are an existential threat to our democracy...which depends on unbiased, information to provide for an informed citizenry.
So as in so many other things from the past. Things change, but our perceptions about them sadly remain static or lag too far behind. We listen to the news reports and think they are real news...like in the old Swayze and Cronkite days. No! Circumstances have changed in the news business.
Sadly today as we listen to the news or read it—we must remind ourselves of those earlier days of standing on that old supermarket checkout line and reading the blaring headlines we knew were only deceptive supermarket tabloid news. It is a sad comment on our nation and modern times.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment