The Responsibility of the Media in a Liberal Society

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that if there was a checkout person at a convenience store, who only checked out certain people, that person would loose his or her job. If there were a trash collector, who only worked the streets he liked, he would join the ranks of the unemployed, if there was a plumber who, when called in to fix pipes, only connected unimportant pipes leaving huge gushes of water when the water was turned back on, would not long be a plumber but we have a media that only reports that which serves it’s own agenda with hardly any consequences for it.

As the old saw goes, “If a dog bite a man that’s not news but if a man bites a dog… That’s news.” the media seem to have a new definition of what is news. One glaring example is the I.E.D. (Improvised Explosive Device) found on a Brownsville Texas highway overpass set with a timer on Easter Sunday. Now I would think this would come under the category of man bites dog, as in, a rare occurrence that people would find interesting, but apparently most of the US media filed it under the category of, dog bites man. If this is in fact the case then how many times does this happen and go unreported. Is it actually as common an occurrence as dog bites? Wouldn’t that in itself be news then?

Intentional misreporting on the reason energy prices are going up is another example. The energy sector is the most regulated sector of every economy around the World. Regulation by it’s very nature drives up costs of production and discovery. Most countries around the World actually enjoy State sponsored energy monopolies. We all know the built in efficiencies of monopoly and the saving to the public under them… sic. But the media blame the market mechanism that provides feedback from market conditions as a cause instead of the actual root of the price increase.

I find the steady stream of conspiracy theories on the unbiased media quite vexing. The most popular today is the theory that Tea party adherents are racists. The unbiased media claim that there is “coded” language, they (the evil people who want representation within their government), may not say it out loud, that can be recorded but you know they think it… the unbiased media has ridden that horse to death. To the point of animal cruelty but are at a full canter.

Other examples of the unbiased media’s conspiracy theories are, the unwinability of a given war, that more taxation could solve the spending problem in Washington, that the economic collapse of 2008 was due entirely to Wall street executives without even a nod that the people in charge might have had some culpability, the constant fiction that “green” energy can replace our need for carbon based energy any time soon (several laws of physics are confounding), anthropomorphic global warming (when there is much confounding evidence that any perceived warming is a solar system wide phenomenon not limited to Earth), and that “Democracy” (meaning liberty, equality, fraternity and toleration among the masses) can possibly exist without a functional market system as a prerequisite. These are actual conspiracy theories, they cannot be verified, they depend on innuendo, they impact our emotions instead of our reason and they promote a point of view that is anti capitalist.

Another example of the media not doing it’s job is in the Medicare and Medicaid debate. The budget shortfall is so close at hand that a good analogy is; ten people stranded in a cabin in the deep woods in winter. The food is limited. A few people count what is available and proclaim that there is enough if only people limit themselves everyone will make it to spring. But six of the ten refuse to limit themselves and gorge themselves everyday. When the food is gone and there are two more months to go, of subzero weather, the whole ten die of starvation, not just the foolish six of ten. This could be pointed out by the unbiased media but they are intent on changing the subject whenever this fact comes up.

As I have said before, most of the problems in societies can be traced to culture, often culture’s effects have been confused with capitalism’s, but it is culture that has the deciding vote in human affairs. Culture is controlled by the media, biased and unbiased. They set the stage for American thought, and thought in every nation and country on the planet. When we see a denigration of people’s attitudes, and less people practice, the doctrine of self interest rightly understood, then we only need blame the media and the Elite. They have led the people to the decadence we see around us. Yet the unbiased media vilifies seventy year olds setting in a lawn chair with an American flag duck taped to the seatback and laughing as they bounce their grand daughter on their knee, listening to a speech by a Constitutionalist as violent racist anti Americans who threaten everything we hold dear, while describing people chanting “Death to capitalism” burning police cars, gang raping passing women, smashing windows and painting vitriolic graffiti on everything they pass, as peaceful and democratic demonstrations, in the same vein as Martin Luther King. (A total slam of a truly great human being, a human hearted Man).

So I ask, are the media holding up their responsibilities… or not?