When I was more naive, I thought that the role of the media was to hold politicians to account, to question and challenge them, to provide an opposition to their extravagant claims. That was back in the day. Here is the cliched view I once subscribed to believing.
But I was dissuaded from that particular notion back in 1998 when I saw up close and personal precisely how the UK media enabled the political project called “The Good Friday (sic) Agreement” I can still recall being present at a venue when Tony Blair’s dark lord Alastair Campbell appeared at a press conference and the “journalists” present were literally screaming like school girls to attract his attention. They weren’t there to ask critical questions, they were there to help enable the will of Blair. They were activists, partisans, not seekers of truth.
Since then, all illusions about a truly independent media have fallen away from me and I see them for what they are. This was evident in the time following 9/11, in the 2016 US Presidential election and most spectacularly during the Covid tyranny when they were *literally* bought off and colluded in pulling off the Scamdemic. Brexit was another period when it was obvious that the vast majority of the media held the wishes of the majority of the British public in sneering contempt.
The only reason to read or watch the legacy media is to laugh at them, to mock them, and to expose them. There are very few actual journalists left, but there is a surplus off on-message presstitutes who slavishly push approved narrative. I suppose George Orwell best understood journalism when he opined..
In 2024, nothing gets printed (or broadcast) that the Establishment doesn’t want to see.
Take the Ukraine-Russia land conflict. The lack of *actual* journalism has been staggering and instead all we get is Government approved and baited puff pieces. In the age of social media, we get to see through this propaganda but then it raises a deeper and more disturbing question; Has the media always lied to us? Is this the first conflict that we have been given an entirely fictitious one-sided narrative? Or is it the first we can see in full colours?
My conclusion is that it’s best to stay away from the Media and think for yourself, research for yourself and keep thinking critically.
Views: 2
