Remember they’re clueless…

Forgive me for stating the bleedin’ obvious, but it never hurts to remember this.

At times like this, a lot of people are slavishly following the media, and that’s understandable. But there are a few things that need to be kept in mind.

1. Have you ever met a journalist? I have. I worked for a Fleet Street newspaper company for years. They are all – ALL – narcissists, halfwits, bullshitters and spivs. Perm 3 from 4.
2. Their motivation might, when they were wide-eyed students, have been to shine a light on murky affairs, bring truth to the world and advance civilisation, albeit in pursuit of their own glory. They might even have ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’ tattooed on their arses in pig-latin. But 10 minutes after they get through the door of any media organisation, that will all be swept away, like dogshit scraped from a shoe. By necessity. Media companies don’t survive on truth-telling. They survive on clicks, copies sold and advertisements. Thus begins the spiral of bullshit, partiality and cosying up to the powerful.
3. If nothing else, remember the Gell Mann Amnesia Effect.

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

Happily, the media has become so blatant and so egregious over recent years that the scales are falling from a lot of people’s eyes…

The Coronavirus crisis has driven gains in confidence in almost all UK institutions, except for one. A new survey from Kekst CNC (which tracks public opinion in the UK, USA, Germany and Sweden) has found the British public has increased confidence in Government, the health service, food retailers, and even financial services. The media, however, is the only institution polled in the UK that saw a drop in confidence – people are losing confidence in the likes of Peston and Piers even whilst they are gaining viewers. The joint-largest drop of all four countries…

I have to wonder why it’s taken this crisis for people to wake up, given all the lies and nonsense previously peddled, but I’ll take it.

AJ

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