All The World's A Stage. All The Media Are Very Bad Actors

What are people to do when the legacy media DELIBERATELY LIE?

Are any of them capable of telling the truth about #Syria? Or anything else?

Never trust the media. Verify instead.

This was the question I posed on social media earlier, after reading Paul Joseph Watson's Summit News article about journalist Kurt Eichenwald using a phony image to promote a false narrative regarding President Trump's recent decisions to pull back in Syria.

Sadly, this was not the only outright lie told by the legacy media on this story. ABC News spread a video of a live-fire display at a Kentucky military show as footage of actual combat in Syria. They were quickly forced to retract the video and tweet out an apology of sorts.

Additionally, while it is difficult to confirm, the media's reports of massacred Christians and Kurds in Syria by the invading Turkish army are at least somewhat contradicted by other reports claiming no such massacres have occurred.

Nor is Syria the only recent example of deliberate Fake News. A recent Fox News poll purportedly showing a significant upsurge in support for the impeachment and removal of President Trump was so obviously and ham-handedly skewed that even Fox News commntators felt obliged to call it out.

The legacy media is also the mendacious media. The legacy media is the lying media.

Why do they lie?

Certainly ratings is one reason. Some media organizations, such as McClatchy, have latched on to Fake News as a means of financial survival. They've made the conscious decision that tabloid trash is more reliable revenue than objective journalism.

Personal biases and hatreds is another. As Project Veritas documents in their "Expose CNN" piece, Jeff Zucker, the head of CNN, hates President Trump with a passion, and so all CNN news is targeted against Donald Trump, facts and journalism be damned.

If malice is not enough motive, there is also stupidity--witness the New York Times trundling out yet again the ludicrous and discredited notion the 25 Amendment is a substitute for actual impeachment.

The legacy media is not merely getting stories wrong. These are not accidents. These are deliberate efforts to misinform and misguide the public. These are deliberate efforts to ignore important stories and essential contexts to promote demonstrably false narratives. 

While the legacy media is pushing their propaganda, they are also ignoring central banks openly discussing the possibility of a financial system collapse and a return to the gold standard.

While the legacy media is pushing their propaganda, they are ignoring a growing body of real, verifiable evidence contradicting every aspect of the Democrats latest machination to impeach Donald Trump.

While the legacy media is pushing their propaganda, they remain committed to ignoring the dangers and potentials for harm their narratives can bring, as one young woman improperly given transgender hormonal therapies discovered to the permanent detriment of her health.

While the legacy media is pushing their propaganda, they shamelessly ignore other aspects of complex stories such as Brexit, only to be caught flat-footed when the EU blinks and admits that it needs a Brexit deal perhaps even more than the UK.

What the legacy media is showing is that it is not enough to merely have a free press. A free society must have a free press that is committed to freedom. A free society must have a free press that seeks to inform even as it seeks to increase its revenue streams. People cannot make wise and informed decisions if they are prevented from having all relevant and available information, and what we are witnessing is the intentional efforts by the legacy media to withhold or corrupt that information.

Without a commitment to a full presentation of the facts, and honest coverage of all stories, not just the preferred narratives. we do not have a truly free press. By promoting propaganda, the legacy media are chained to propaganda.

What can the ordinary reader do about this? That was the question posed initially, and that is the question that must be answered.

Of course there is the obvious response: "Never trust. Verify instead."  No reader should blithely trust any media source. As i have stated, and as alt media journalist Tim Pool states repeatedly, "fact check me." Challenge what journalists, analysts, and commentators say, whether they are legacy media or alt media.

Accept that every media source is biased. CNN obviously is, and so is the New York Times. So is Tim Pool. So am I. Anyone presenting information will always present it through the lens of his own perceptions and perspectives. Anyone saying they are completely "objective" is lying, including to themselves.

Recognize there is a difference between "infotainment" and actual news. The first seeks only to entertain, while the second seeks to educate and inform. The bulk of the legacy media, particularly the online cable television shows, falls under the catgory of infotainment. Approach it with caution.

Recognize also that what matters most are the facts. It does not matter if a quote appears in the New York Times, or CNN, or in WND, or in the Epoch Times. It does not matter where a bit of commentary or analysis resides, be it this blog or the Washington Post or even Infowars. The facts are what they are, and opinions are as they are.  Take all of them with a grain of salt, and formulate your own opinions, your own understanding of things.

Understand that narratives frame the news. Narratives are never the news, and should not be taken as news. It might be entertaining to watch Hannity air his opinions for an hour every night, but his opinions about the evils of the Democrats or the virtues of Donald Trump are simply that--his opinions. The same holds true for Rachel Maddow, Laura Ingraham, and even the alt media personalities such as Wayne Dupree and Tim Pool.

Note that observation is not criticism. I follow both Wayne Dupree and Tim Pool on social media, and I pay attention to what they have to say. I take note of Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham as well. I do not disparage them by saying their content is primarily opinion, I merely acknowledge the limitations inherent in such content. My own material suffers from the same limitations. These are my thought, my ideas, my opinions; they are never more nor less than this.

As a side note, please recognize that I am deliberately not linking to any of the media personalities I mention here. All are readily found online, and I encourage one and all to look them up, along with the many others a simple search engine query will reveal. Their mention is not an endorsement of either their content or their views, merely an acknowledgement they exist.

Which is the final recommendation I have for confronting a mendacious and duplicitous legacy media. Recognize that alternative outlets and sources do exist. Do not shy away from Breitbart, or the Epoch Times, or CNS, or One America News Network, merely because they fall outside that pool of media sources collectively termed "legacy media". If they present good arguments built on good information using good logic their material is as worthy of consideration as any celebrity talking head on Fox, CNN, or MSNBC. The one thing the Internet has brought all of us is a proliferation of choices--seek out and embrace all of it.

Read broadly. Read critically. Read for quality, and reward quality. Set high expectations for those who would call themselves "journalists". Critique, criticize, and challenge everything and everyone.

All the world is indeed a stage. Sadly, all the media are indeed very bad actors upon that stage. All the media is susceptible to the perils of shoddy presentation, inadequate research, and incomplete analysis. All the media is susceptible to the corruption of coin--clickbait is often more lucrative and easier to produce than solid fact-based news.

If we are to once again have a truly free press, the one thing we must absolutely stop doing is trusting the press. Doubt and skepticism must become our cardinal virtues whenever we read anything that would presume to present "the news".

Do not trust anything. Verify everything.