Each of us has a revealing moment when we understand for the first time that a segment of the “news” broadcast we’re watching is actually a press release put out by some special interest.
This conclusion may follow: “What! The News is mostly press releases designed to make us think, talk, spend, and vote in a desired way!” Most news stories and articles are press releases. They are pied pipers, leading us down some primrose path. Many battles are fought with press releases.
Aside from the occasional emergency, news broadcasts are as carefully scripted as the commercials that precede and follow them. Many magazine and newspaper articles are also press releases. All press releases are cleverly designed to target and manipulate groups of buyers and voters.
All institutions generate favorable press releases. Every news broadcast or article is an IQ test. “Who has helped get that story placed about what a wonderful job the Post Office is doing? Who placed the information about how many people the Veteran’s Administration was helping? Who is behind the Global Warming press releases? What group profits from getting us to shut down factories to clean the air?
There are battling press releases in religion. “The Catholic Church may be real old, but Catholics worship idols.” “We do not need to confess our sins to a man, we confess our sins to God!” “Our friendly, neighborhood church is like a family.” “If we believe, we are saved.”
The Catholic Church puts out a “press release in reverse”. Each Catholic priest has taken a Vow of Celibacy and Obedience. None of them fly around in a Personal Lockheed Mission Jet with a couple of pretty stewardesses. Those “living press releases” attract a certain sort of person. Many of them become martyrs for The Church, with press releases written in their own blood.
Catholic schools, orphanages, and hospitals are “living press releases” in institutional form.
The Only Church Jesus Founded provides an even more bizarre sort of press release: “Jesus said ‘If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.’
Our Church began when He Who Fulfilled the Prophets said ‘Thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you The Keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.’ The Catholic Mass is the only place on earth where bread and wine, just like at The Last Supper, are transformed into His Body and Blood. Ours is the only Church whose priests have the power to forgive sins.”
Now, that’s a press release!
