I really wanted to skip this story, because I was a newspaperman for some years and I worked hard at it and was proud of the job I did. So for me this news packs a little extra sting.
The Associated Press (AP) in its new set of guidelines has urged news writers to “avoid making references in news stories that suggest there are only two sexes in the human race” (https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2017/03/25/associated-press-issues-new-guidance-on-sex-gender-avoid-referring-to-both-or-either-sexes/ ). Never say “both” or “either” sexes, babble the servants of Satan–because “transgender” and “gender fluid” individuals–also known as desperately messed-up wackos–are “not comfortable” with reality.
Most of you have already figured out this whole business as being part of a Hell-spawned effort to deny the natural order of God’s creation and set up a lot of fools and moral imbeciles as gods on earth. If you “suggest” there may be only male and female–as in “male and female created He them”–you are now unfit to be a noozie.
I would like to believe that not everyone in the nooze media has gone over the the dark side. But it ain’t easy.
These days, it would seem that news is indistinguishable from entertainment and, to some degree, vice versa. Many people take entertainment as seriously as if it were factual news. When I was a child, TV news was serious business. The local newspaper kept to high standards. Opinions were limited to the editorial page and, amazingly, most people understood that opinion pieces were not news.
As I see it, the deterioration of news is a reflection of the deterioration of our society. If no one watched TV news or bought newspapers they would dissipate instantly, but people apparently want a flawed, biased, PC news establishment, because they continue their support thereof.
As this world deteriorates into disorder, there seem to be many people in today’s world that refuse to see what is happening but instead, they pacify themselves with the platitudes of their news/entertainment sources.
BTW, there is no need for a grand conspiricy behind all of this. I don’t, for one minute, believe that such a conspiracy exists, or is even possible. This is simply the result of free will in operation. The freedoms of democratic nations have allowed people to support the candidates that tell,them what they want to hear. A free press has given rise to news sources that deal in misinformation.
Freedom is not the problem; freedom is essential to happiness and productivity. Lack of ethics and selfishness are the problems. Freedom gives us freedom to make for the good or for the bad. We have the news and entertainment establishments that we have because of the choices of the many.
Unfortunately, they really are opposed to truth, and I can only hope that
more and more people are beginning to see the lie behind this mess- and all the lies they spin daily, hourly. I never liked watching sports, but with the pathetic excuse we have for “news” these day, even boring sports are preferable. I never watch any of this drivel, but sometimes when I am cooking in a room open to the living room, some of this mind pollution gets through. I escape as quickly as I can. What goes into the eyes and ears gets into the inner being. We don’t need this garbage.
There’s an old trick which involves making three confusing, but equally poor offers, so that the seller is so consumed with choosing between the offers that they don’t realize that they can refuse all three offers.
There are a lot of people out there that don’t seem to realize that they don’t have to watch or listen to any of what is offered. All of the choices of the cable/sat TV/Internet on-demand programming have fostered a situation where people don’t realize that they have the choice not to watch.
So right, UnKnowable. I am trying to clue in the other two members of the household, when I get up and leave the room the moment the “news” comes on. I think they are slowly getting a clue.
I’m probably an extreme case, but I can barely stand to be in the same room with any sort of broadcast or cable TV. My TV broke down forty years ago and within two weeks I found that TV was very distracting and I didn’t even want to fix my TV after that.
I do see the potential for value that television holds, but I also think that it can blur the lines of reality for some people. I have known several people that would react very emotionally to something. That happens on a TV show, completely forgetting that it was a dramatic presentation.
Actually, I think that is part of the problem. I recommend the book: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business is a book by Neil Postman. Here are some quotes.
“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”
“[M]ost of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action.”
“The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products.”
“We do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant.”
“I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.”
“People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think”
These things were written over thirty years ago, but are equally applicable to the era of the smartphone, etc. At on point in the book, he mentions that we don’t really understand what television is. I can’t find the quote and have a busy day ahead, so I must paraphrase, but that point stuck with me. I don’t think that most people even know what television, and by extension, radio and Internet media, are.
Liquor may have a pleasant taste, but to a child that doesn’t understand it’s power to imtoxicate it can be very dangerous. My experience some forty years ago taught me that TV had effects I had not reckoned with and that I didn’t want those effects in my life after I realized their existence.
I really do not think that society understands the persuasive power of media. I don’t think that its power can be measured or fully understood. To many people, the appearance of a talking head on a display screen has become a sign of authority and credibility. If the talking heads promote false reassurance the viewers are harmed. It’s that simple, but there is a huge flock of birds coming home to roost because of this phenomenon.
*sigh* Kill the culture, and it will kill you back.
We’re seeing it in real time. I’m not happy about any of this, but I’m not at all surprised that it has happened. The speed with which it has happened does surprise me, but I retrospect it is not that surprising.
The number of hours consumed by theater, in the way of TV, etc. is now incalculably high for most people. There’s no surprise that such people would hate reality.
As a fantasy novelist, that puts me in a rather dodgy position. I console myself with the thought that I can use fantasy as a way of approaching reality from a new direction.
And I think that you do so effectively, Lee. The distinction is that you never pretend that your novels are factual. They are fantasy and claim only that status. There are moral lessons, viewpoints, etc. contained within, but that’s common to most fiction.
Tom Sawyer was fiction, but it also confined an element of social commentary and reflected a satiric view of the social norms of the day. The Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn series contained an excellent polemic on the evils of slavery and showed black people in a light that was not in alignment with the opinions common in pre Civil War Missouri. It made its points in a fictional setting, but it was thought provoking. The same could be said of the Bell Mountain series, which I see as containing some very serious themes, played out in fantasy. Alexander Dumas was definitely commentary on French life in its day.
But neither you, nor Clemens, nor Dumas ever claimed their novels to be news. I’m not going to France looking for D’Artagnon’s house or to Missouri looking for Huck Finn artifacts and I can’t find Obann on any map.
Unfortunately, a lot of people today don’t realize that much of what they see on TV is completely disconnected from reality. When I was a kid, my picture of LA was the beach as seen on Beach Boys albums and the mansion the Beverly Hillbillies lived in. The reality of LA is much different from its media image. As an adult, I realize this, but there are many people whom do not realize that what they see on TV is quite selective in its portrayal of life.
The crucial point, IMHO, is that TV news is every bit as selective as TV drama and comedy. You see what the camera is pointed at and what the editor sees fit to include. They may present things that are factually true, but not an accuarate picture of the situation. They may present things that are quite slanted, but still factual. They may present things with a completely inaccurate perspective, but still be able to claim that they are presenting facts.
When someone is put under oath in a court of law, they agree to tell the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth. If a news organization adheres to the first item and violates the other two, they can mislead a lot of people, be factually correct, but still mendacious in effect.
I just found another great quote from Amusing Ourselves to Death.
“television’s way of knowing is uncompromisingly hostile to typography’s way of knowing; that television’s conversations promote incoherence and triviality; that the phrase “serious television” is a contradiction in terms; and that television speaks in only one persistent voice—the voice of entertainment”
That says it all. Everything on TV is entertainment, even the supposedly serious stuff.