The North American mainstream media has a credibility problem and I think I have stumbled upon the means to help them regain the trust of their readers, listeners and viewers. And best of all, they do not have to change a thing they are doing now.
But first, let us consider how the mainstreamers have managed, in just a few decades, to alienate large portions of their once prodigious audiences who religiously subscribed to the notion that if “you saw it in the news, it’s gotta be true.” Talk about credibility.
Remember a dozen or so years past when the mainstreamers were accused of foisting upon an unsuspecting public something called “Info-tainment.” That term was coined to describe how the mainstreamers shifted their focus from providing a roster of the day’s events to serving up a mix of information and entertainment into one grand cocktail disguised as relevant news.
Many news junkies can attest to the fact, the mainstreamers have moved well beyond Infotainment and now generate their daily buzz through a concoction of disguised opinion, advocacy journalism, partisan reporting of politics and to shilling any and all causes for the environmentalists. Meanwhile they generally refuse to accommodate all but the shallowest of dissenting opinions in their news lineups. Unfortunately for them, this only works in a world where all the people can be fooled all of the time.
Before moving on to my proposed solution let us consider a few examples.
A day or so before winning the New Hampshire primary, a great debate arose across the U.S. over the fact that Hillary’s voice cracked while answering a question in a small café. In one fell swoop American saw that Hillary is, in fact, human and not the emotionless automaton she was portrayed to be.
The next day, a CNN reporter tracked down the woman who asked the question that triggered the emotional response. The question? “Did anyone from the Democratic Party ask you to be here?” In other words, was she a plant? The answer was no but the motive of the reporter was clear. Discredit Hillary Clinton at all costs by exposing her emotional response as a fake. You gotta love those guys.
Then there is the little matter of the global warming debate. The debate, in reality, is not about global warming, rather it is about convincing entire populations to accept the environmental protest industry’s claims at face value and accept any form of punishment they wish to impose for our collective eco-sins. The mainstream media has jumped right in, agreeing the debate is over and now we must all suffer the consequences or suffer some unbearable fate. A recent list shows there are several hundred fates from which to choose so at least we have a choice.
To illustrate media complicity in this sham, I would ask if have you heard of one media outlet demanding from the enviros to define exactly what, in their humble opinions, is a normal climate and secondly how long they expect mankind to take to reverse current weather patterns?
And one last tidbit. A bit of a tempest in a teapot has been brewing of late on Canada’s Parliament Hill over the fact that a reporter from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, (for our U.S. readers that is Canada’s state-owned broadcaster similar to Britain’s BBC) fed a number of questions to members of the opposition ostensibly with a view to embarrassing the government.
Now what is upsetting about this is, the CBC was established, in part at least, with the expectation it would provide Canadian audiences with a modicum of unbiased news coverage unfettered to evil commercial interests. Sadly, the CBC instead succumbed to the wiles of left leaning Liberals and other social democrats and has been unable to extricate itself from that unholy alliance.
These and many, many more examples of similar faux pas have the mainstreamers to the position of being almost on the bottom rung of the public trust ladder. I believe reporters are ranked somewhere between used car salesmen and politicians.
With the sincerest of intentions, I would propose that members of the mainstream media adopt a rating system for their articles in tandem with disclosure rules similar to those adopted by television movie producers and such, where viewers are warned of violent or offensive content before viewing the material. Similarly, disclosure rules would alert the reader or viewer as to the outlet’s political, environmental, religious and other affiliations which could color its reportage as clearly stating which side they support on particular issues.
For example, the CBC could run the following in advance of their items with something like this:
“Our reporter on this story is a paid-up member of the Sierra Club who also supports the aims of Greenpeace, ELF, ALF and PETA. Viewers should be warned that the information contained in this report might bear little or no relation whatever to the subject at hand or reality in general and therefore guidance from a higher, although secular, power is recommended.”
A newspaper could offer the following: “Readers are urged to tread carefully in accepting all the claims in this article as verified facts, since the writer is a Liberal sympathizer, along with most of his editors. The newspaper in general supports his views and would love to topple the current government.”
Naturally the mainstreamers could choose their own words, but their audiences should know before going into a report, just what they are getting for their money. And who knows, by the time mankind has returned the weather to normal around the World, they will have regained the trust of their audiences.
