Startling stories appear in the news one day and then disappear the next. Why is this?
The startling news (at the time of this writing) is that Trump has been indicted for violations of the records act. Of course, we are hearing this from the Trumpster himself, as the indictment has been sealed. Will this be another nothingburger or will he be tried and hung as a spy? "I regret that I have but one life to give for the Trump Organization!" he might say, on the gallows.
But I doubt that will happen. If it did, well, Biden is right behind him, as he has admitted to having classified documents in his garage. We don't hear much about that story anymore, do we?
We see these "breaking news stories" one day and then they sort of evaporate into the ether the next. A story appears about a breakthrough cancer treatment (usually from a conveniently obscure country overseas) and then we hear nothing about it later on. Sometimes these stories are just exaggerated and when the truth comes out, well, no one corrects it. Other times, they are just click-bait garbage, that might be part of someone's scam - the Elio car ("Coming out NEXT YEAR for over a decade!) or rotating skyscrapers or air-powered cars or whatever. The media loves bright shiny objects because people click on them.
The latest gag is the impending revelation of UFOs! A guy says they landed in his back yard, but for some weird reason his security camera went offline and he "forgot" to take his cell phone with him to snap a photo. You'd think he'd at least ask for an autograph! Weirder still, the media treats this with deadly seriousness (as do many of the readers) instead of vales of laughter. I mean, it has all the markings of an "anal probing" story. And we know those are not true, right?
Stay tuned! Revelations of "Alien Tech" are coming out next week! Or next month! Or soon! Why don't they just release it? Oh, right, because it doesn't exist. People really are easy to fool.
Why does the media publish this dreck? Simple! It's all about money. The tougher question is why we click on this crap and why we believe it. I guess we all want to believe in miracle cancer cures or that maybe "Alien tech" will save our asses. It won't because it doesn't exist. Sorry, that's not a sexy story - we have to buckle down and solve the problems we created for ourselves, by ourselves.
You ain't gonna click on that, arya?
We place too much faith in the news media. Back in the day, maybe they were slightly more restrained, but then again, maybe not. "Don't believe everything you read in the papers!" is a quote as old as time, and it predates - by decades - some obscure Bush Administration lackey. Don't believe everything you read on brainyquotes-dot-com and particularly on Quora. (No doubt it was said by Twain or Lincoln - the two people nearly every quote is attributed to, online).
But you knew that already, right? RIGHT?
Some "Newspapers" such as the Weekly World News (illustrated above) just cut to the chase and abandoned all pretense of journalistic integrity and gave the people want they really wanted - entertainment. Sadly, this business model has taken over journalism. One by one, the networks merged their news divisions under their entertainment wings - Fox in particular has been up-front about this, registering their news trademarks under "Entertainment Services" - no real news here, folks!
Worse yet, the "tabloids" are now deemed respectable. The National Enquirer which was a pencil-shaving above the Weekly World News in terms of reliability, was cited as a "news source" during Presidential campaigns. They broke many of the Bill Clinton infidelity stories and, lo and behold, the owner of that trash rag was a raging Republican. Major news outlets were citing the Enquirer story - bought and paid for - as a news source. So long as a wild allegation is made in something resembling a newspaper, well, it is news.
On the flip side, the Enquirer would "buy" stories that were damaging to Donald Trump and then bury them - or at least try to. These are the vaunted standards of "journalism" (or as I like to call it, "urinalism") today. I mean, that jackass who took over CNN and drove it into the ground was finally fired. They can't figure out how to improve ratings. Maybe news? Hire real investigative reporters instead of talking heads with opinion shows? Do actual original reporting rather than just barfing up stuff published elsewhere? Nah! You'd go bankrupt - people want red meat.
So, the problem is us, not the news organization. They are pandering to what we want, which is biased news, biased in favor of our preconceived notions. We also crave excitement and entertainment - so they put up this click-bait nonsense - stories you read about and then forget about, even though they were supposed to be earth-shattering at the time.
Meanwhile, really important stuff is swept under the rug. Russia is committing war crimes against civilians and what are most American's interested in?
Some guy who claims space aliens landed in his back yard.
Humanity is doomed!
