Opinion/Editorial
BLOOD IN THE WATER
At one time, the only television news was provided by the three existing networks of the time, and they only ran short news shows because the government made them. Back then they reported on the things that were happening around the country and the world. There was little in the way of opinion in the news of those days (think fifties, and early sixties). Things began to change as CNN was invented as the first twenty-four-hour news station and other cable networks soon followed. What happened to make network and cable news the highest profit television projections above all others, even sports or special events?
Blood in the water happened, as the news operations went from being unwilling minnows to morphing into giant shark-like creatures only interested in blood, and everything dealing with it. No amount of blood is too much, and no violence causing humans to bleed is violent enough. Every local newscast leads off with the blood pouring from broken cars and other vehicles. It waits and preys on every bit of the blood of mass shootings and then gleans every bit of psychological ‘blood’ from those hurt or grieving over friends and relatives lost while bleeding. What this new giant shark media does, when faced with criticism of it for covering this ‘news’ in this way is to deny it. The public has a right to know.
That’s about as stupid an explanation as filming a person about to commit suicide because that person has a right to know. What this new media also does that is even more heinous is make things up when it doesn’t have enough blood to draw in the prey to its predatory practices. The war in Ukraine is in a sort of quiet hiatus, as wars go, but you’d never know it from the reporting. The mess of thawing snow and water making tons of mud everywhere has stopped the progression of that war, at least until the end of spring, when the mud will become solid earth again.
The news companies are owned by larger business or entertainment entities. There are no regular people owning any of that business. That’s a clue as to why a supposedly noted liberal venue, called CNN, is exclusively offering a “Presidential Town Hall” presentation with only Donald Trump in it. That will be blood in the water, sending out the sent to other predators that the big predator is once again up on top. The clue is all about ownership that brings about this sort of “it’s good for us as a business entity but bad for the country” popularized by Moonves when he was CEO of CBS and asked about whether Trump was good for America. All of the media, virtually all of it operating national news, is republican owned. That republican party if not the part as it was only thirty years ago. The new party has only money to be considered.
The actual ‘news’ the public is exposed to these days has drifted into a hazy place that’s about as existent as limbo is or was for Catholic babies. Blood in the water is all about reaching out to fund a basic human need for violent bad news happening to other people, the more distant, the better. An unfortunate part of human survival involves feeling better when bad things are happening to others, and therefore not to them, or us. The news industry figured this out and then completely immersed its entire identity and economic survival in supporting that knowledge. There is no patriotism in national news. Whenever bits of it do surface through rising anchors, like Rachel Maddow or Stewart of the Daily Show, they are slowly, or not so slowly, squeezed right out of having any mainstream role in the industry.
The polarization of America, like only seen a few times in the past, as before and during the civil war over slavery and WWII over entering what was considered a European war. Today’s polarization rests totally at the feet of this modern amoral mass media structure and the devastating effects of that structure not being one that can logically seem to be one that can be disassembled may be the single worst thing that’s ever happened to the people of the United States.
