The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Maybe you saw the video of over a hundred newscasters who work for Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the company that owns a big chunk of all the TV stations in America and wants to buy hundreds more, reading a word-for-word warning to their viewers about fake news. Their chairman of the board, David Smith, when asked about requiring all these independent stations to read from the script, said all stations do this. Meaning, all news stories are submitted to editors. The difference Dave omits, of course, is that those other stations have in-house editors, not Big Brother dropping edicts to its myriad minions.

The other difference Dave misses is that there are news stories and there are opinion pieces and it used to be they were kept separate and made clear one was not the other. Fake news, if you were to ask me and I know you didn’t, is synonymous with Fox News, those fair and balanced folks who wouldn’t know a fact from propaganda if you beat them with a National Enquirer. They blurred the lines intentionally the way Rush Limbaugh can twist the truth into a pretzel with hot mustard and call it a hamburger. Destroy the public’s faith in honest journalism, you can pretty much manipulate truth to your own ends. Donald Trump is living proof.

We tend to believe what we want to believe. With the internet and blogs, we can narrow our media right down to our selective viewpoint, reinforce our beliefs and live merrily in our bubble of ‘facts’. Right and left both. We all know there will be biases in reporting, selective editing that swings in one direction or the other. PBS will pick a story on the plight of immigrants while a Texas television station might highlight the illegal immigrant who killed a woman and got acquitted by a jury. One will cover the effects of global climate change while the other will simply call it a hoax and drag out some scientist in a different field who corroborates it.

There is, however, a huge difference in liberal or conservative bias in a news station and just calling everyone else liars and fake news. One is just human nature and hopefully a good media outlet will attempt to minimize that bias; the other is propaganda intended to mislead an audience. We have a President who attacks the media, sometimes by name and sometimes by individual, and we have a monopolistic broadcast group who is more than happy to help him.

Fair and Balanced? Fake News! Corporate Censorship? Monopoly Media!

These are confused times, amigo, made more so by cynical politicians and corrupt media moguls. If the aim was to sow discontent and anger, they’re doing a great job. Fifty years ago the Jefferson Airplane wrote a little ditty called White Rabbit that perfectly captured those times when the liberals were the ones who were anti-government and maybe captures these times too.

When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head

Damn good advice. But what are you gonna feed it?

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