Is The News Really Important?

Has the Media Killed the Message?

Have the 'News Hawkers' so saturated the airwaves and printed page with so many 'cry wolf' stories that few of us even bother listening any more?

Don't we have enough trials of our own just keeping body and soul together that we really don't need to be bombarded with basically useless information from far and wide?

Of what real interest is it to us when 'leaders' at all levels just keep stumbling along doing their 'jobs' albeit not all that well all the time, perhaps even most of the time? It is obvious that world leaders of both countries and trade and commerce are just making this up as they go, and sometimes the results are quite messy. It seems that our current economic (method of accounting) system has some pretty major flaws which sooner or later are going to have to go into the shop for a complete overhaul, either that or a good part of North America will be a sub post office of China one day. Remember that the debtor sooner or later becomes the slave of the one to whom they are indebted, and right now China pretty much holds all the IOU's.

If you look at the headlines from years past or television broadcasts, the media has always been telling us the sky is falling or have been crying wolf at least weekly and sometimes even daily in one form or another. But it seems we are still here and we still have the same challenges on pretty much a daily basis as we always have had in spite of the world ending calamities that fill the front page, and lead the evening news broadcast.

How much of this 'news' is really news that affects our day to day lives? How much of this 'news' is just what the 'News Hawkers' have to put together in the interest of their own job security?
Switch on any television station that has time alloted to 'news' and you will find an institution that exists only because they have sold a business advertising during that time slot. They HAVE to fill up the dead air between the ads or they go out of business.

A similar observation can be made of the print media as well, they have so much unsold space each issue,whether it is daily, weekly or monthly which simply must be filled. However, the real reason they exist is to deliver advertising messages on behalf of the people who pay the bills.
So, is all that 'news' really necessary? People will read advertising simply to be informed about products and services they may be interested in. After all there are pages and pages and pages of flyers every week in the local papers, which are nothing but pure advertising. No 'news' filler in them at all, and people will still read them.

Yet, these different forms of media have either time or space to fill with a combination of 'news' and sales pitches from business.

The point? The media HAS to fill up so much time or space with what they pass off as news, with the result the average viewer/reader is simply bombarded with what is absolutely useless information.

So, rather than keep sorting through all the chaff the media keeps spewing out, the average person chooses to ignore it all, in the interest of maintaining their sanity. After all, the media keeps overloading us with so much information we can do nothing about whatsoever that the only intelligent thing to do is tune it out all together.

The big loser in all this of course is the REAL news which we should take an interest in, which does have an effect on our daily lives. but sadly is the baby which gets thrown out with all that bathwater the media keeps drowning us with.

Locally, everything we REALLY need to know and take an active interest in can be learned in less than an hour per week if it were available in one easy to digest format. Unfortunately there would be no money in that, and so it is not likely to appear anytime soon.