If you like to pass along false rumors and innuendos about
the President -- any president -- and the President’s policies, you can be
reasonably confident you’ll never be called out for it by a member of your own
political party. In my opinion, the
Republicans excel at this ability, but the Democrats cannot be far behind with
this flawed sense of party loyalty. The
news media helps to perpetuate the concept, by ignoring any responsibility for
fact checking much of what it passes along to the public. Nothing new here I suppose, but there are
some journalistic accounts of the media exercising its supposed position as
“watchdog for the public.”
The lure of advertising dollars has corrupted the “eye of
the public” function of many media outlets in the world today. The need to maintain large
readership/viewership numbers in order to entice advertisers is too strong a
need for corporate media businesses. Unfortunately,
the general public has been all too willing to let this undesirable development
come about. Reporting the news is more
about money than journalism.
While we’ve been sleeping, the people that benefit the most
from this situation have been quietly solidifying their power over our
society. Numerous examples exist of this
constant struggle to promote favor for the few at the expense of the majority. Some of these examples include eliminating
protections for workers and the public safety.
Alarm at this development is small since only a minority of people is
able to relate to the overall negative trend.
Far too many people belong to the group of trusting voters who believe
their political candidates will become their trusted representatives in power
once they get into office. The truth --
for those willing to seek it -- is less than encouraging with regarding elected
representatives and who they represent when they get into office. Representing the people in public office is
more about money than civic duty and protecting the interests of the public.
The Tea Party claims to be an organization that evolved from
public dissatisfaction with the political process in this country. That may or may not be true, but regardless
of the virtue of the party’s origins, some observers believe that the Tea Party
has been co-opted or corrupted by powerful moneyed interests. The two major parties seem to be controlled
by the people within them that are more concerned with continuing their careers
than with promoting ideology to benefit the public welfare.
Assume for the sake of discussion that you are qualified in
everyway to hold an elected office. What
are the chances that you could win an election to an office outside of the
state you live in? Then ask yourself how
much money has to do with your answer. Now ask yourself, who controls the money?
The press and other news media used to hold the upper hand with
its ability to gather information and report that information to the public and
the public had to rely on them for news information. Now days many people carry camera phones and
other small recording devices. This is a
scary development for entities that would like to filter, disguise, or block
knowledge of their activities from the prying eyes of the public. Even without the official press doing its
job, in some ways it is harder today to hide questionable activities from the
public. Some of the responsibility for
exposing these questionable activities has been taken over by people involved in
demonstrations of public dissent. Organized
dissent worries those entities that don’t want close public scrutiny of their
activities.
Motivated opinion comment/letter writers continue to send
their opinions to newspapers and other media outlets in the hope that those
letters will be posted and read by others.
Some of those comments and letters do get posted or published and the
Internet has made it easier for people to make public comments. However, compare the impact of any single letter
or comment writer’s efforts with the impact of well funded groups or large
corporations. Both are expressions of
free speech, but are they equal?
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