You British have sold your souls for something less than the conventional mess of pottage. You are ruled in the first place by money-bags, and the faddists whom they support to blind your eyes.
John Buchan - The Half-Hearted (1900)
Written well over a century ago but things don’t really change much when it comes to the public
arena. We still allow faddists to blind our eyes while the money-bags make off with the
money.
Where does the primary responsibility lie? With the
mainstream media obviously. The media actively support faddists and always have.
Faddists breed an endless supply of stories simple enough for headlines, news,
articles, campaigns, freak shows, righteous indignation and even some analysis
on slow days.
As long as we have mainstream media wedded to drama we are
stuck with faddists, nutters, well-connected loons, creeps, charlatans and
celebrities because the media need them. Looping back to the Buchan quote - yes
we have sold our souls. We’ve sold our souls to the media. Without the media
the faddists would be nothing.
3 comments:
Well, he might think we've sold 'em, but first, we didn't get paid, and second, neither did they when thry tried to sell them on!
Good point. The media behave the way they do in part because they are money bags. Their interest is in generating revenue (mainly these days via subscriptions, advertising, and personal info) rather than providing the truth. But there is also the fact that, regardless of income, the media are staffed by idiots who are driven by those fads. Whichever regime we had, they would still be idiots. I think the great success of the media is to sell radicalism and fake compassion while still making mountains of money.
Scrobs - that's the real problem - we didn't get paid. As Mr Krabs said - who needs a soul when you are filthy rich.
Sam - yes the media are staffed by idiots, as if idiots are what they want to carry conviction while spouting drivel.
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