Trust Ruined

These past days I've been focusing on the downfall of public trust in the institutions that once provided the public with truths, facts and information that reflected reality. Those days seem far behind us now with news-outlets withdrawn behind ideological frontiers, medical institutions in service of profits for Big Pharma and politicians saying whatever their support-base wants to hear.

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I believe that the trustworthiness of "The News" took a big hit when the first 24 hour news-channels started to air "The News" non-stop. Sure, news has always been event-based to some extent; something of public interest happens, and news-reporters give an account of the things that happen. The problem for 24 hour news networks is this: it's not every day, hour and minute that something truly important occurs. So what do you do? You make events interesting. It's always "breaking news" followed by exclamation marks, no matter how insignificant it is in the grand scheme of things. There's always a "ticker" running in the bottom third of the screen, the phrase "some people say" has become commonplace and used to preface "news" that's actually just opinion.

CNN first aired in 1980, and what most people will have forgotten is that in the first years the network was ridiculed as the Chicken Noodle Network. It wasn't until its live coverage of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 that the network gained significant traction. The war was sold to American households with flashy images of the magnificent hardware of the U.S. military, with 3D models of choppers, missiles and airplanes, maps of flash-points and movements of the ground-troops; they made war a spectacle that could be enjoyed from the comfort of your own living room. We all know now that the first Gulf War was sold with lies, just like the wars after the 9/11 attacks, and I dare say that the networks' quest for sensational headlines aided the willingness to blindly repeat the war propaganda they were fed from the politicians.

Trust in traditional institutions is further demolished when programs or YouTube channels that are known for their scientific prowess, their reliable reporting on developments in the world of science and scientists, sell their soul to advertisers. There's a channel that I often use to keep in touch with these scientific developments called "Veritasium"; its name is the Latin word for "truth." So I was disappointed when I learned that this channel chose to do a promotional video on self-driving cars, leaving out any discussion on the many imperfections and problems that still need to be solved. Another channel I regularly visit did a report on this blatant abuse of the trust that Veritasium has built over years. Please watch it, and please stay alert when consuming information or news...

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