An Answer for Everything: Legacy Media

Has anyone else noticed how legacy media presents stories these days? All the headlines seem to be designed to entice us into thinking they have the answers. For example, just a few from Time Magazine this week:

How the Inflation Reduction Act Has Reshaped the US—and The World

The Science Behind Why We Eat So Much at the Movies

How to Help Those Affected by the Maui Wildfires

How Extreme Weather is Affecting Small Farmers Across the US

All this reads to me like Time Magazine has become a serial Self Help book. I also recollect, somewhere, article titles like (I made these up, but something similar), There are More Ticks Out there this Summer: Here’s Why, or Wildfires are on a Rampage: Let Us Tell You the Reason. Has anyone else noticed this?

I’m not sure if any other news source does this as blatantly as Time does. (I did a cursory search for other similar headlines and found a few, but Time seems to be the leader in this particular style of parenting.) That said, I still get a subtle vibe reading anything from legacy media. It isn’t just news anymore, not just information, but a biased coercion to see things a “certain way.” Maybe I am being paranoid here, but maybe not. So much out there now just can’t be trusted, there is always an angle.

This vibe gets worse once I start reading the story. The effort that is made to coerce, educate, and “sway” may be subtle most of the time, while other times it is rather obvious. I think a reader gets used to this form of manipulation as well, and does not really notice all of the sensationalizing, catastrophizing, and terrorizing the mainstream media does day in and day out. Sure, news has always been presented this way to some degree. But I don’t know if it has always been so consistently biased. I always think of the Nazi rag Der Stürmer when thinking about how extreme “news sources” can become. Der Stürmer’s founder and publisher (Julius Streicher) was tried, convicted, and hung at Nuremberg for “crimes against humanity.” News is not only news, and seldom is it unbiased, but what we are experiencing today, really? Come on!

It seems to me that Mommy/Daddy media is in on the idea that “everyone who wants to be in power and control needs to be a parent.” I know this is subtle, but I think it is important to note. Since when does the news tell us how to see the news, or that it even needs to be explained to us in order for us to comprehend it? Are we children? It seems everyone out there in any sort of position of power thinks so.

The idea of projection is a prominent theory in depth psychology. Very simply it states that if you treat someone a certain way (a projection) that person will eventually start identifying with the way they are treated, and thus start acting out the part. We see this in psychology often, and an example is a wife who projects “boy” onto her husband, and in turn, he starts playing the role of boy. It is a bit more complicated than that, but you get the picture.

So, if we are treated like helpless children by our leaders and the media, then eventually we will identify with the projection and start acting like children—helpless and immature children—children who need to be told everything. Well, that certainly does seem to be the plan, doesn’t it? And from what I can tell, it is all going pretty well for them.

This sort of news reporting expects us to just sit back and take it in without much critical thought. “This is what is happening, let us tell you why, and let us tell you how to feel about it.” Sure, opinion pieces are fine. But they should be identified as such, and it be stated up front to be opinion, and people can take it or leave it. News stories should not even pretend to be opinion, and they are not presented as the author or editor’s opinion, they are presented as facts: news.

So how would they do it otherwise? Well, back in the day, the “mainstream” news consisted of flat, objective, soundbites of what the editors of such news believed were facts. Remember the criteria of getting three sources to support any piece of news? Well, I am sure that is out the window, unless the three sources fit the profiles of the news source’s prime directives. (These days of course that would be, among other things, the Covid/Vaccine narrative.)

There was a time where it would be anathema for a news source to be considered bias and run by handlers, owners, political parties, or any outside authority. The news was objective, and it was tantamount to keep the reporting of the news as objective as humanly possible. In fact, there were laws about this at the time. In 1949, in the United States, a policy was enacted called the “Fairness Doctrine,” which applied to any broadcast news source under the auspices of the Federal Communication Commission. This policy stated that any news source licensed by the FCC must present both sides of a controversial issue. In 1987 this policy was rescinded by then President Ronald Reagan.

Whether such a doctrine was ever entertained by the print media I am not certain. Seems like such an idea would be at the heart of the “print news paradigm.” But certainly, the way things are these days would preclude any such ideological standing. Think Der Stürmer again. No way. Considering too the government’s ongoing and insatiable practice of censoring anything that even smacks of contrary thought of the mainstream narrative, you’ve got a situation far, far, far from being “fair.” Ha! Such a word hardly even exists in the vocabulary of those in power.

And look at the fair nation to the north of the United States, the recent enactment of the Online News Act says it all. There is to be no access on the internet (at least on controllable outlets like Facebook and Google) to any news at all. This bill claims it is in place for the benefit of all news outlets, but really only the small, alternative news, the news sources not owned by the Big Six, that will be wiped out of “access existence.” The big news sources will not be negatively affected at all, nor positively. It is like putting a dab of Polysporin® (couldn’t help myself) on an open-heart surgery incision—it won’t hurt or help those the law was supposedly made for.

So, what have we got here? Nothing we can easily fix that’s for sure. Maybe it truly is time to chuck all major news services and start supporting the alternative sources. Duh, ya think? Well, yes. I am sure most of you reading this have already followed that plan. But if there is anyone out there who hasn’t yet, give it a try. Substacks are a good source too for real news. And while you are at it, it’s probably time to chuck nearly everything else you have grown accustomed to over the past few decades. Most of it is not what you have been led to believe it is—if not all of it.