"When men yield up the exclusive privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon." Thomas Paine 1774.
As citizens we need information. Real, and accurate information. We cannot acquire it ourselves. There are people who actually have jobs dedicated to digging, locating, finding that information for us and then enhancing that information, morphing it into knowledge and serving it up to us in a economic and palatable way so that as citizens we can make the most use of it. They are called, Journalists. This service they provide serves us as individuals, them as citizen agents, and the country and the world, as a whole.
However, if this trust is compromised, it fails us all. Journalists by necessarily need to be, for the most part, neutral. Anything that gives them an air of being other than neutral detracts from their work and the benefit we all receive from it.
We need our news agencies, we need all of them. But we need them to give us the news unhindered by polluting factors: big money, corporate and vested interests, and news shows/news networks that have been monetized. We need to separate out entertainment for market share, vested interest and, the actual news. If a news department loses money in serving the public, that needs to be okay, as it once was as part of a bigger concern. Concern for our country and the citizens which is to say, the customers.
These "news shows" as opposed to "news programs", if you will, are not just adjuncts to big money. They are our life blood as citizens of our country and our planet in needing to know what is truly happening in the world.
We need clean, accurate information. Otherwise what we have, what we end up with, is what we have been seeing in our country and in our world of late. Inaccurate information that is oriented to pay off toward these vested interests. To make money for the owners of these shows.
Corporations are not people. And stockholders are not all there is to consider in the world.
We need those who serve the news up to us to stop abusing the information and start serving the public, their lifeblood. When they start doing that, putting us first, then life for everyone will increase in quality.
It is true that those who are now seeding this abuse, will lose some amount of power. That is true. They will not have as much power as they could have, had they as they do now, squeeze every iota of every possibility of every dollar out of ever second of their effort.
Still, they just need to realize that this is really not bad for them, in it being good for us. It simply limits the heights to which their power can achieve. But with the rise of power for the citizen, it will enhance the country and that will enhance the economy of the world. And that, is good for everyone.
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