I think that I am preaching to the choir for the most part and this includes when I speak to my friends face-to-face about how we are all very aware of the fact that the main stream media can no be trusted at all anymore. We all believe that the big players in the media game are not reporters anymore but are instead political activists that will intentionally skew statistics, have unnamed sources, report hearsay is if it was documented fact, and run with a story that they actually don't have any solid information on.
You can tell that the above image is from a while ago due to the absence of masks but the sentiment has grown over the past 5 years in particular. Say what you will about Trump, but his constant lambasting of the media was not without merit. Time after time we saw the media manipulate data and use anonymous sources (who were probably non-existent people) but they were caught time and time again editing video and using stock images from completely unrelated events.
The two that come to my mind immediately are these ones
This scene was presented to the public with cherry-picked stills and even edited video that excluded the fact that Trump poured all of his fish food at once into the pond ONLY after Abe did so first. CNN (who wrote the article the above image is from) had previously completely omitted the fact that Abe did the full-box pour first but updated the article after scrutiny and to this day it says this.
The move got Trump some laughs, and a smile from Abe, who actually appeared to dump out his box of food ahead of Trump.
Abe didn't "appear to dump his box" his obviously did so and CNN and everyone else was very aware of this. All in all, this story is stupid and is a who gives a crap moment but was presented to the public as a method of making Trump seem inconsiderate to other cultures. To this day I am sure there are a bunch of people out there that still think that the CNN story (and many other outlets that parroted CNN's perspective) is actually true when it was a complete fabrication of actual events.
Then there is the Covid hospital crisis in New York City.
During the beginning stages of the Covid crisis in America, CBS wanted to make the hospital situation seem as dire as possible when they aired this footage of a busy hospital where things seemed frantic in NYC. There was just one problem: The footage had aired on Sky News days earlier and the footage is actually from a hospital in Italy.
CNN would later admit that they made an honest mistake and if you believe that BS, well, I don't know what to tell you. They did it intentionally and they know it!
There are of course tons of other examples and both the right and left wing media outlets are guilty of it and the supporters of both sides seem to think that only the other side is the one doing anything wrong: Look folks, they are all lying to you and at this point I think they have to in order to counter the lies of the other side.
I don't watch much mainstream news except to poke fun at them but a great deal of the major networks' airtime is devoted to debunking the claims of the other network. This is quite likely the only time that any of the networks even come close to being honest but at the same time they will cherry-pick data in order to support their narrative. No one is attempting to inform the public, they are attempting to dupe them.
src
This is, in a shell, almost all media today
Personally, I do not know anyone that watches or reads MSM stories (and that is precisely what they are - stories) but when I see that there are still millions of people that get their news from CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Breitbart, CBS, etc I have to think to myself: "do you actually still believe this stuff after all these years?"
These days, I find myself being completely unaware of certain events that are unfolding in the world because I don't even bother to look since I know that no one is going to be honest about what is going on unless it is some local puff piece about the success of a bake sale or something harmless like that. I would much rather have no idea that something is going on somewhere than have some jackaloons at a global "news" conglomerate try to convince me to be "on their side."
I would like to be on the side of what is actually happening but unfortunately, it seems as though we are not going to get this anytime soon. Ignorance is bliss, as they say and I would much rather not be caught up in any of it, especially when the major outlets (and even fringe outlets) are doing everything in their power to make certain that we don't actually have any real information.
So I ask you this: If you are still watching / reading/ listening to main stream media.... why do you bother?
on a bright note, I am extremely happy this a-hole is out of the limelight, at least for now
