The Establishment Media at the local
level is becoming more and more pathetic by the day.
Newspapers are turning into a sad pile
of advertorial and wire-service-padded dreck. With unceasing cutbacks
in staffing and penny pinching efforts at production costs come
reduced newsholes and the appearance of each daily edition as no more
than an advertising circular with a wee bit of content thrown in,
fortified increasingly with ego drunk, barely readable self centered
opinion pieces with no use to the public trust whatsoever. There
should be little if any puzzlement as to why print news media is
losing readership in a never ending free fall over the past several
years. What the fuck is left to read anymore? Why plow through a
newspaper with a page featuring a five column by eighteen inch ad (on
a six column by twenty one inch page) just to jump to a continuation
of an article when you can probably read the same stuff online with
less attempts to interfere with your concentration?
Local television increasingly isn't.
Oh, sure, TV news is still mostly led with the usual murders and
fires, but anything of relevance to anyone at the neighborhood level
(especially after the first five to ten minutes of the newscast) is
dwindling. Desperate for viewer ratings, newscasts substitute the
latest whiz bang mobile live truck technology for any sort of
reporting of substance. Local stations are padding their daily and
nightly broadcasts with increasing amounts of corporate sponsored ad
spots disguised as public interest items mixed with infotainment.
Most of the “breaking news” shit is usually fires, accidents and
cop chases in cities clear across the state or even the country, with
no local relevance at all.
Is this perhaps a sign of the times?
Many people seem simply disinterested at increasing levels in what is
going on in their world, whether locally, globally or otherwise. It
may well be true that the local Establishment Media is giving its
audience what they want in the sense that, not only does the audience
seem to even know what the fuck they want anymore, but deteriorating
resources at news outlets are incapable of determining local
information needs anyway. What local communities get as a result is a
hodge podge of flashy but limited ability all gussied up and
disguised as actual journalism.
Is it time to start ignoring,
boycotting and subsequently shutting down all this shit? Would it
really do any good? These unholy alliances between the media outlets
and advertisers are simply too strong to see any sort of marked
termination of the current practices, much less their operations. A
core element of any local populace is going to slink right along like
rats to the Establishment Media's Pied Piper tunes. Maybe it's time
for some of us who are not quite as afraid or lazy in employing our
critical thinking abilities to start an open and vocal critique of
the what these corporate swill pushers are trying to shove on us as
relevant news and information for the useless garbage that it truly
is.
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