Who Decides: Media or the People?

It may seem a paradox that this question comes at a time when the press is shrinking in circulation, advertising, revenue and staffing. How does it retain power over the public's thinking? The audience may be down, but it is still huge and the only game in town.

Now the audience hears the same story from most sources used in the press because there is a follow the leader journalism to a much greater extent than, say, 30 years ago when there were more papers that had different political agendas. Now most are liberal, some right and a few centrist.

Journalists ... at least some of them ... attempt to control our thinking by slanting news with distortion and omission, and putting news and facts out of proportion ... not by direct falsehood. Our votes often reflect their brainwashing, not the public’s good judgment. One example of distortion occurs when the media ignore the good in the USA and stress any faults. Pack journalism or like-minded thinking then prevents the good from appearing elsewhere to offset the destructive stories.

As Jean, one of our Blookers, puts it: "Modern American elections are being tainted by our left-leaning media outlets to the point that I doubt a truly 'fair' election ever occurs anymore. Leftist/socialist politicians get a free pass while everyone who has conservative views is routinely vilified. The 'Feral Beasts' have a pack mentality. They jump viciously on anything they can to twist facts or mock the conservatives whom they hate. They gleefully rip conservatives, Republicans, Christians, pro-lifers and anyone else who disagrees with them to shreds, while running interference for their favorite leftists/socialists."

This problem may not be limited to the hard-news sections of papers, but may extend to other kinds of media. Brooke, another of our Blookers, tells us this: "I worked for the tabloids last year, yet I have a tendency to want to say nice things about celebrities. I got yelled at for not making a big deal about their weight. ... Britney is too fat and Angelina is too skinny, apparently. I thought they both looked fine. I got YELLED at for not seeing that the story was weight and not their music and movies."

The press may support a favored cause or one that will attract audience, but have no proven scientific substantiation. Examples: organic food mythology, pushing global warming claims while ignoring the higher temperatures in the medieval warming period. Modern press practice also enables more harmful attacks on leaders than ever in history. The present continuous one-sided coverage probably would have destroyed Washington, Lincoln or any other famous person in history.

There will often be as much interpretation of what a person is saying as there is coverage of what was actually said. The interpretation moves the attention from the subject to the media author, who wrongly assumes the public wants (needs) the author's comments more than the quoted person’s.

The present system gives the most leverage to the noisiest radicals who can attract more attention often because they have no accountability for telling the truth, and little opposition. Thoughtful voices are drowned out by the press who favor stories that can grab more audience by ignoring accuracy or fairness.

Ultimately, we could regress to a situation where a few elite (the news media) control the public's thinking and actions ... as the elite controlled countries before democracy swept the world. We have no reason to believe the non-elected journalists will be fairer than other elites, although journalists believe they are superior.

In the 1960s after the Sullivan U.S. Supreme Court decision relieved the media of most responsibility for damage from false stories, it increasingly became fashionable for the USA press to offer opinion mixed with news stories without telling the audience. This gave the press untold power because there was no longer a legal limit as to how much it could distort news stories to support their political beliefs or slant news.

Today, a main purpose of many news stories is to attract an audience, not to convey needed information. Audience, not accuracy or fairness, is often the guiding light to news selection and writing. News became a profit center instead of a public service.

This blook is written to warn that the present distorted news reporting is creating a great risk. But the “media controlling our thinking problem” has largely been swept under the rug by the public, politicians and the press.