I try not to react to news each day hoping I manage my day with sanguine composure.
I find news disturbing and energy sapping. It keeps people constantly scared and anxious: building unconscious fears and seeding prejudice. News by definition is served out with one objective: sensationalism. To gain eyeball for the channel and deliver the commercial goals for prime time advertising. TV channels compete, racheting the decibel levels to steal the march from its' near rival, clamouring to gain attention. As we have so little time to reflect on the news or to ascertain the veracity of what is being shared, we fall prey to colluding with the editorial slant that it so vociferously espouses.
You can see this out through screaming headlines in the dailies, live news streaming, channels with news anchor, who invite panels not for objective dialogue but to stimulate argumentative views, where emotions are exploited and manipulated and all of us become live spectators to an unfolding drama. Everyone who watches has vested interests and all are gratified perversely. Panel members, who get an hour's slot to fame to either celebrity status or notoriety. I often wonder why panel members even bother to come when they know it could only be reputation damaging, but I guess they do not care. Unashamed, unabashed, and unrepentant they confirm to us all the sadness of our times: Crime and evil pays, justice and fairness continue to be violated. The anchor enjoys his potency to grandstand each news hour: interrogating and attacking, and making insinuations all the time, even while wishing to appear to be asking a question. Your silence confirms your guilt, your responses are taken as an excuse. Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t. The audience these days is also invited to engage with the gory drama, through live text streaming of messages right through the telecast. News today is perverse entertainment, not objective reporting of facts, even a permissible allowance for offering a perspective.
News today is speculative, sensational, gory, emotion rousing, and devoid of facts and accurate confirmation by authorities. Through archived images, manipulated clips set to multiple loop, and subtle innuendoes, the media whip up a kangaroo trial: a media trial that allows them to be prosecutor, judge and jury. Through all this we remain hypnotised, our mental abilities suspended, our thinking ability restricted, as we consume large portions of adulterated poison. This toxicity plays itself out in so many other ways: and anger is often deployed where it does not belong.
News today is speculative, sensational, gory, emotion rousing, and devoid of facts and accurate confirmation by authorities. Through archived images, manipulated clips set to multiple loop, and subtle innuendoes, the media whip up a kangaroo trial: a media trial that allows them to be prosecutor, judge and jury. Through all this we remain hypnotised, our mental abilities suspended, our thinking ability restricted, as we consume large portions of adulterated poison. This toxicity plays itself out in so many other ways: and anger is often deployed where it does not belong.
Who is to blame? To answer that question respond to the riddle below:
A Queen, ignored by the King, decide to elope with a Knight, who seduced her and galloped off through the forest, where they were confronted by a Ogre who attacked the horse. The Knight, pushed the queen to the ground and certain death. The ogre’s soul was possessed by a wicked Witch who lived in the mountains. Who is responsible for the death of the queen?
It's like "who killed John Francis?"
ReplyDeleteWho is to blame, indeed. Consumers of news in my opinion - stopped watching that channel (thinly disguised) months ago. Or the Queen looking to sensationalize her life, found ready takers who dumped her to save their lives!