WhatFinger


A gangrenous infection of denial, political bias and cheerleading

Self-inflicted wounds killing Old Media



Ever since the days of Benjamin Franklin, newspapers ruled the roost in the world of dispensing information to the masses. It would take nearly two centuries for other media to challenge print’s supremacy.

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In the late 1920s and into the early 1940s, radio was touted as the new media that would make print irrelevant. Well, it didn’t happen. Along came television in the late 1940s and the prognosticators once again rose up to proclaim the impending demise of the print media. Well. It didn’t happen. And now, in the present world the Internet, the Blackberry, micro-technology the death of print has once again become the subject of conjecture about its imminent death. Admittedly, it does appear that newspapers will disappear if they retain their existing present business model. Oddly enough, however, both radio and the big television news networks are also in danger. Yet, I do not believe they will collapse from external competition but from internal rot. A gangrenous infection of denial, political bias and cheerleading has been eating it up for years. Interestingly, the current state with the North American Old Media shares many parallels with the Roman Empire during its time of collapse. Many believe the empire collapsed with the death of Constantine the Great in 337. In reality, Constantine inherited an empire already showing signs of decay. Successive rulers took to feeding their people “circuses and cakes” to keep the population oblivious to what was really going on around them. Meanwhile infighting at the political level left further weakened the vast Roman stranglehold on the known world. This left it vulnerable and indecisive allowing the Visigoth invasion around 417 C.E. They were followed by Attila’s hordes of Huns toward the middle of the fifth century. So it took many, many years for the Roman Empire to shrink and finally fade away. Now, back to the Old Media and the parallels with the Roman Empire. We need only to look at the disgust and revulsion with which many Americans and Canadians view the Old Media. Journalists are held in such contempt that they rank below lawyers and politicians. Most recently the media’s internal rot is displayed in its feeding frenzy off the drug-soaked corpse of Michael Jackson for nearly two weeks now. It has dominated every major news program, entertainment show, front page and the radio waves feasting on every tidbit of the man’s existence. I am sure the pitiable coverage will extend beyond that which will surely include reports that Michael was sent to us from God. Another example is the well recognized fact the media elected Barack Obama. A handful of soul-searching reporters have almost admitted as much, questioning their own conduct in producing anti-Palin propaganda during the last U.S. election rather than news. In more recent days Sarah Palin’s return to the national spotlight with her announced resignation as governor of Alaska drew a not surprising media reaction. Falling right back to their campaign of unconscionable attacks on Palin, they have resumed their attempts to destroy her credibility and suggest a heinous agenda on her part rather than report the news. They will do anything to ensure she cannot make a run for the presidency. Their behaviour will undoubtedly come back to haunt them. As an example, in the election between Paul Martin, Liberal and our current Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada’s leftist media spread every conceivable lie devised by the Liberals to scare Canadians away from voting Conservative by continually repeating a Liberal lie that he had “a hidden agenda.” The media scare tactic worked the first time. It failed the second time. I predict the same will happen in the next U.S. presidential election, if in fact there is one. I am increasingly concerned the Obama administration will fabricate crisis, either internal or external, as a reason to suspend elections if it appears he might .lose in 2012. Another example in recent days is that of the leftist Toronto Star, often referred to as The Red Tsar, which published a story on Palin’s resignation announcement. In a subhead the paper stated Palin is a “lightning rod for the media.” The Star got it wrong. Palin is a target of the media. If I had any bit of advice for Palin? it would be more beneficial if she treats the Old Media the same way they are treating her rather than try to win them over. First off she should refuse interviews with the likes of Oprah Winfrey, the mindless coven on The View and any number of newspapers, television talk shows and comedy programs that savaged her in the past. Palin would be further ahead to build her audience through others means. The Old Media is now moving quickly into irrelevancy anyway. Before we cheer the demise of the Old Media too quickly, several questions arise. A major concern is what will replace it? How will the New Media respond to the void? What will ensure that it is fairer and more balanced than the Old Media? How will it protect itself against government and big business interests? These are questions that have to be seriously considered. One solution might be that local and regional media outlets might rise to the challenge. Because they under closer scrutiny by their respective audiences than the national media they are under more pressure to be balanced and fair. More news feeds from these outlets could be used to provide material for more National and International outlets like Canada Free Press (CFP) and others across the continent. CFP is currently carrying a column posted by “Wake Up American” with the heading: Announcing Fire the Media Citizens Action, which involves a call to shut off our television sets and sign a petition through which to send the Old Media a message. The idea is certainly worth consideration. Realistically, however, I think the Old Media is collectively too stupid to take the backlash seriously. CNN and its sister network HLN have responded to the rise of Citizen Journalism by attempting to lure citizen reporters to their programs by soliciting their comments, news reports and cell phone photos. What they are constantly reminding viewers of is these sources have not been verified. Since when do they care about that? Ho Hum This is an ideal opportunity for the New Media to organize given the fact President Obama has been outed for his onslaught of attacks against the U.S. constitution and the American way of life. I just hope more of our American cousins catch on to the threats they face to their rights and freedoms and react to what is really going on before it is too late. Here in Canada, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau won praise for implementing his Bill of rights and Freedoms. What he created is a Dictatorship of Minorities. We have reached the point where Canadian customs, institutions religious beliefs and ethnicity mean nothing when challenged by any imported belief system from abroad. In other words, the minority communities have rights to protect their cultures. Canadian-born residents have none. In the coming weeks and months I am hoping the web-based media, bloggers and others can find enough common ground to launch some sort of co-ordinated effort to trade information, work more closely with citizen reporters and perhaps even form an alliance that can check the facts of some material being fed to them. Some of which is already going on. We might even call it the World Internet News Service with the acronym WINS. It has a nice ring to it, I think.


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Bill McIntyre -- Bio and Archives

Bill now devotes his time to his media/communications consulting firm while fighting for time to pursue freelance writing assignments, promote television projects and create the odd movie script.


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