The News Apocalypse
The News Apocalypse
The newspaper business died a long time ago. People in the business know this. It would be hard not to, once you’ve lost your job and the newspaper industry’s circulation has plummeted to all-time lows. But the mastheads remain. The New York Times is still called “The New York Times,” even if it bears no resemblance to its former self.
Here is a parallel example; I recently went to buy a new flat screen HD TV. What to buy? I needed a brand name. And, there it was, “Westinghouse,” one of the giants of industry for nearly a hundred years. There was just one problem, Westinghouse died decades ago. Only the name remains, which was bought for a relative few bucks by foreign investors who want a brand name, without the expense of building one. According to consumers, the rating on the TV was pretty low, so I bought a lesser brand name, with a better actual reputation. More than a few other, once great companies have similarly fallen, and their brands bought out by clever investors, playing on people’s memories.
The newspaper biz is much the same. For instance, the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, bought out The Washington Post, gutted the paper of its old staff, especially the ones with hefty pensions, and remade the paper in his own image. But it’s still a paper, so it must be objective since objectivity is the stated goal of the news business.
Unfortunately, objectivity is not the norm for the human species. Highly biased, subjective opinion, is far more common. People take sides for a whole range of reasons. The act of setting aside those biases, while attempting to look objectively at the facts—and only the facts—as best they can be ascertained, is an acquired skill. Bias is like the comforting warmth of your mother’s memory, holding you close. Objectivity, by comparison, is like a rattlesnake, whose poison can either be lethal or the anti-venom that saves your life.
Today, the media game more closely resembles the rattlesnake, although the memory of what they used to be, is never far away. The advertising money that once went to three major networks is now disseminated between hundreds, maybe thousands of media outlets, making group-think harder to control. Propaganda is also far less effective when the old-guard media is no longer the junkyard dog that keeps the competition out. The gate that was once locked and accessible to only a few is today, an open door—and that is precisely the war being fought between the corporate-controlled media and the new media. There are simply too many junkyard dogs for the old-guard's taste, so new laws are written handing control of the single most democratizing tool in human history, from the people, back to the elites. It is the clever use of language that sells the agenda. However, if we peel away the layers of rhetoric, what we find, is the same ole, same ole. Meaning, the corporate giants posing as voices of conscience. So, complete is this subterfuge that even the people working as full-time corporate propagandists fail to recognize their own bullshit. Why should they? People are generally not prone to attack the source of their bread and butter.
It should be readily apparent, then, that self-interest is the enemy of objectivity, the ally of bias, running as deep as our collective memory, and as shallow as our personal ambition.
Mark Magula
The newspaper business died a long time ago. People in the business know this. It would be hard not to, once you’ve lost your job and the newspaper industry’s circulation has plummeted to all-time lows. But the mastheads remain. The New York Times is still called “The New York Times,” even if it bears no resemblance to its former self.
Here is a parallel example; I recently went to buy a new flat screen HD TV. What to buy? I needed a brand name. And, there it was, “Westinghouse,” one of the giants of industry for nearly a hundred years. There was just one problem, Westinghouse died decades ago. Only the name remains, which was bought for a relative few bucks by foreign investors who want a brand name, without the expense of building one. According to consumers, the rating on the TV was pretty low, so I bought a lesser brand name, with a better actual reputation. More than a few other, once great companies have similarly fallen, and their brands bought out by clever investors, playing on people’s memories.
The newspaper biz is much the same. For instance, the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, bought out The Washington Post, gutted the paper of its old staff, especially the ones with hefty pensions, and remade the paper in his own image. But it’s still a paper, so it must be objective since objectivity is the stated goal of the news business.
Unfortunately, objectivity is not the norm for the human species. Highly biased, subjective opinion, is far more common. People take sides for a whole range of reasons. The act of setting aside those biases, while attempting to look objectively at the facts—and only the facts—as best they can be ascertained, is an acquired skill. Bias is like the comforting warmth of your mother’s memory, holding you close. Objectivity, by comparison, is like a rattlesnake, whose poison can either be lethal or the anti-venom that saves your life.
Today, the media game more closely resembles the rattlesnake, although the memory of what they used to be, is never far away. The advertising money that once went to three major networks is now disseminated between hundreds, maybe thousands of media outlets, making group-think harder to control. Propaganda is also far less effective when the old-guard media is no longer the junkyard dog that keeps the competition out. The gate that was once locked and accessible to only a few is today, an open door—and that is precisely the war being fought between the corporate-controlled media and the new media. There are simply too many junkyard dogs for the old-guard's taste, so new laws are written handing control of the single most democratizing tool in human history, from the people, back to the elites. It is the clever use of language that sells the agenda. However, if we peel away the layers of rhetoric, what we find, is the same ole, same ole. Meaning, the corporate giants posing as voices of conscience. So, complete is this subterfuge that even the people working as full-time corporate propagandists fail to recognize their own bullshit. Why should they? People are generally not prone to attack the source of their bread and butter.
It should be readily apparent, then, that self-interest is the enemy of objectivity, the ally of bias, running as deep as our collective memory, and as shallow as our personal ambition.
Mark Magula