Have you ever scanned the mainstream news and thought –
“this isn’t the important stuff – the things that really screw us up”? It's not only pap though is it?
There are many threats to free speech and pap disguised as news is certainly one, but to my mind the biggest is the vast amount of money spent on lying in all its many guises. From misdirection to exaggeration, from cherry-picking to lying by omission, from false logic to the barefaced lie, it’s all there in the mainstream news services. Censorship is a risk, but lying is the bigger risk.
There are many threats to free speech and pap disguised as news is certainly one, but to my mind the biggest is the vast amount of money spent on lying in all its many guises. From misdirection to exaggeration, from cherry-picking to lying by omission, from false logic to the barefaced lie, it’s all there in the mainstream news services. Censorship is a risk, but lying is the bigger risk.
From commercial advertising to government PR machines, from global
politics to the weasel words of major charities, from demented pressure groups
to politically correct celebrities, the global lying machine is incomprehensibly vast, its
pockets virtually bottomless.
The sheer weight of money behind global lying makes it an
unstoppable trend. Liars have the money, the people and the myths around which
to thread their lies. They make the rules too.
Get used to it.
4 comments:
I overheard a couple of boys talking at a secondary school. One said (clearly a proverb), "When two people speak, one of them is lying."
Sackers - or both in the case of politicians.
Pols have always lied but a most once feared their God (a bit) and so tempered their efforts. But during the '20s Ed Bernays (an American gentleman) taught the world how to lie like billy oh, he invented the publicity machine and the ad agency. The rest is a spin doctor near you. But how much good does it do?
My mum used to let us kids lick out the pudding basin when something nice was made. First a it was easy to get the good stuff, then a teaspoon was needed and finally only a finger would get the last morsels. So it is with lying. Once we fell for the smallest lie, then bigger ones were needed and now all credibility is lost and nothing is believed. So now we reach the bottom and where to go?
The difficulty is the need for something nice. Rather hard to come by when you 'aint got no money, so make it up. Nothing is believed and indeed truly good news is too hard to find, so one might as well lie. Unstoppable indeed.
Roger - yes, I've come across Ed Bernays and he has much to answer for. If we opt for a society which makes a business of lying then we've no chance.
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