News mismanagement

Author: admin

If all national media ownerships could be sued for malfeasance at once, now would be that time. If ever this nation was poorly served by those noisy entities, now is that time.

I’m sick to death of Stormy. Of Karen McDougall. Michael Cohen. Michael Avenatti. Of wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling overblown “coverage” of our adulterous and sexually overactive president not being able to keep his pants zipped! There are other, far more important stories of terrible, life-and-death events going on in our world.

But, in a rush to satisfy stockholders, boards of directors and bean counters of the mega-ownerships, nearly all big media is turning a collective back on people, events and tragedies in this world that we need to know more about. More now!

Here’s one. Have you thought about this countries direct involvement in at least three undeclared wars? And there may be others if you throw in our military death counts mounting in secret battles in Africa, South America and several Middle East countries. This has been going on since the first years of Bush-The-Junior. We’re losing huge amounts of young lives and billions-after-billions of national treasure in these and other places. With no constitutional authority to do so.

We’ve completely failed Puerto Rico. Houston and other Southern environs have been struggling to recover from hurricanes of two and four years ago. Water has been undrinkable in major parts of Flint, Michigan, for four years. Capetown, South Africa, a city of four-million souls, is due to run out of water in about 30 days. England’s exit from the European Union is fast-approaching with world-changing effects expected on entire national economies. Immutable evidence of rapid climate change is mounting much earlier than previously predicted. Stock market’s gone to Hell. A new threat of a North Korean nuclear attack covering much of the American mainland has appeared within the last year. And on and on and on.

Relying only on the mass media markets for your information, have you been fully informed what the significance of these and hundreds of other stories are on your world? And the world’s of your children and grandchildren? These are significant events and major disasters happening now. They’re not just subjects of some distant collection of historical trivia.

As an “informed country,” are we as knowledgeable of the expected huge effects of Brexit on our national economy as we are about the titillating details of Stormy’s latest TV appearance? Has the constitutional issue of undeclared wars been answered to your satisfaction? If you sent a son or daughter off to Syria to be returned in a body bag, do you know why politicians allowed your family to pay that unreasonable price without their authorization?

Since the Reagan administration allowed multiple media market ownerships by the same business entity (“media convergence,” it’s called) and with the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine at the same time, the nation has been more poorly served.

An example of legal media abuse is the Sinclair operation owning dozens of stations across the country including Boise, Seattle and Portland. Full, unbiased reporting has been axed at Sinclair. Now, in those markets – and many more – nightly right-wing scripts and videos are being sent to all with the order to “read ‘em” and “run ‘em.”

Those are legitimate evidence of the failure of our mass information system. There are many others. And, when coupled with board-stockholder-bean counter demands for profit regardless of content, we get “Stormy and friends.” Or reporters interviewing reporters about their opinions. Or endless B.S. about which weird, talent-challenged “celebrity” – read Kardashian – did what to whom.

To be more informed, it’s become necessary to seek out small niche market sources. Mother Jones – The Hill – Politico – Vox – to name a few. These – and a few more – are filling in the news “vacancies” infecting major outlets.

My heartfelt suggestion to the national folks – who appear to be forever lost to us for real, trustworthy and informative news – is to set aside the last 10 minutes of each broadcast hour. Call it “Stormy Today.” Take all the other salacious crap of the day and shove it in there.

Or, you could just tell the CNN’s, Fox’s et al. to just shove it!

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