The Washington Post notes that many political press conferences are faked and stage managed, with reporter’s submitting questions or topics in advance, and then having staff prep the politician’s answers. The problem is this is a charade where reporters and politicians pretend to have a live, unscripted event – and misrepresenting this to viewers as something it is not. Reporters play along with this nonsense.
Most journalism in the U.S. today is “yellow journalism” that focuses on scandal, celebrity, “crisis”, the oppressed and fear and the prophets of doom – via scary headlines, and sample bias to cover stories that fit the yellow journalism narratives. Today, the most over used word in media is “crisis” – as you’ll see in this post, today, everything is a “crisis”.
CNN: “A charter school principal in Tallahassee did not follow procedure before a lesson on Michelangelo’s statue of David was given to sixth graders and was asked to resign, school board Chair Barney Bishop III told CNN.” But read the story and you’ll she was in hot water for a year’s worth of issues – the Chair also said: “She was not let go because of Michelangelo’s David lesson”. CNN simply made up the headline to fit a meme of making Florida look bad.
It’s time again for the annual “World’s Happiest Country” bull shit survey results. Using a survey that doesn’t measure happiness, the survey proclaims – every year – the same Nordic countries as the world’s happiest. That’s because the metrics they use define happiness as living in a Nordic country! But again, don’t measure anyone’s happiness. And every year, the media twits fall for this survey.
Why does everyone lie? Because it is effective and easy to get away with it, even when prominent people and organizations tell obvious grand lies. We have been trained not to question, not to think critically, and not to think for ourselves. Thinking for yourself is double-bad wrong think and should be punished.