When something “newsworthy” happens, initial reports may have some degree of accuracy. Then, the various groups able to profit from the event order changes to fit their agenda. Airplane crashes are always followed by articles telling us that agencies associated with aviation need increased funding “to make American citizens safer when flying”. Drug-related crimes and incidents mention the need for more drug enforcement. Somali pirates illustrate the need for new Navy ships “designed to combat the new threats to democracy”.
Every day, thousand of people scan the news to be sure that their organization may benefit from whatever’s happening. “News” about any event that increases funding for media supporters quickly becomes pundit talkchat. Soon, the desired thoughts and feelings about whatever’s happened are converted into public opinion so blatantly that few people notice that their own minds and voices have become willing “repeaters”, waiting for a chance to tell others how intelligent and enlightened people think about the event. It never occurs to any of them that they are mocked and derided for being bamboozled so easily by the very people who do the bamboozling.
On the other hand, some facts are quickly buried for money. We don’t hear a lot about the forced circumcisions, actually, unbelievably painful clitorectomies, performed on strapped-down young girls in the Middle East. Few talk about the financial damage done to poor Americans as their electric bills go up to pay for “renewable energy”. The fact that Global Warming is made to look real by jiggering numbers and closing temperature recording stations in colder, rural areas is overlooked by a media that pretends to be staffed with “courageous investigative reporters”.
Most “news” consists of two kinds of lies. The obvious lies distort the truth. The less obvious lies eliminate consideration of the truth. The two kinds of lies reflect the Sins of Commission, which is doing something wrong; and the Sins of Omission, failing to do good. It is wrong to tell lies and it is wrong to hide truth.
Media “personalities” are well paid to tell participate in both kinds of lies. They are, therefore, risking the double damnation visited upon those who do evil while refusing to do good. It’s not something they think, much less talk, about.
Within the media, the truth most hidden is that they, themselves, have souls headed for a judgment that cannot help but be followed by great and endless pain when the punishment for “leading a little one of Mine astray” kicks in.
