Time to Embrace the Alternatives

I apologize for not posting any new content over the past month. There have been a few changes in my life that has made research and a deep dive into topics that are important to me very difficult to pursue. Like everyone, I have a complicated family life and the needs of the family come before the drunken ramblings of a Cultural Studies Master’s Major. With this blog, I want to make a quick point about something that is occurring right before our eyes in real time. A war has started and the voices of good and evil are as clearly defined as the morality shown in the LORD OF THE RINGS universe. One side is represented by the Hobbits, Gandalf, and the rebels standing up for the forces of good. The other side is only interested in power, control, and shutting down any opposition to their dictates (THE EYE OF SAURON). This battle is currently ongoing in the legacy media. Whether the hobbits (New Media) are able to destroy the ring and bring some positivity back into our lives is still unknown.
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As I promote on my own website under the WEBSITE RECOMMENDATIONS category, many of the independent media websites listed have become part of an important contradictory political force whose influence on our culture continues to grow as the 21st Century continues. These websites are trying to change a medium that has been completely taken over by government sycophants and left wing authoritarians and bring back the ethical standards that used to define the journalism industry. Since I first began working in television in 2002 (Until finally leaving in 2014), I have been a first-hand witness to the state-run propaganda. This really changed me psychologically during the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War as information that questioned the narrative proposed by the Bush administration was usually attacked full force by opinionated journalists while the lies that helped lead to the war were defended and often never analyzed. The grade for the major media outlets since this disastrous war remains a gigantic ‘F’ for their massive FAILURES. The lesson of this humiliation still has not been learned. The list of things the media has been wrong about could fill a book the size of a Bible. Here are just a few of the worst egregious examples over the past twenty years.

SADDAM HAD WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION - FALSE
SADDAM WAS INVOLVED IN 9/11 - FALSE
OBAMA ENDED OUR TORTURE PROGRAMS - FALSE
Since Trump got elected, the lies from the media have only gone to 11 (Thank you SPINAL TAP!)
RUSSIAGATE – FALSE
RUSSIA HACKING OUR ELECTRICAL GRID - FALSE
COVID-19 Lockdowns have really expanded “fake news” narratives to every corner of the world.
THE VIRUS WAS NOT CREATED NOR DID IT ESCAPE FROM A CHINESE LAB AND WAS NOT CREATED WITH TAXPAYER DOLLARS - FALSE
MASKS WORK - FALSE

This is just a small list of the crimes that our media have committed against us over the past 20 years. As you can also see, the lies occur on a bi-partisan level (Unless you are Donald Trump where anything you do is actually THE LIE). Could it be that party affiliation has nothing to do with this problem at all? In actuality, the real problem is that the media is acting like stenographers for our own government and its interests.

With just a small sampling of these problems (If I put all the things the media and government have lied about over the past 20 years, this post will be 30 pages long), should it be any surprise that people are looking outside the traditional forms of media for new information? With the loss of legitimacy continuing among the mega-corporations FOX, ABC (Disney), CBS (Viacom), NBC (Comcast) and the increasingly propagandized social media networks FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE (Google), and TWITTER, why would people continue to trust these sources for important information with this failing track record? 20 years on, there has been no reflection or “apologies” ever issued for the media’s egregious behavior. In fact, the biggest source of “FAKE NEWS” continues to be these corporations and the large newspaper outlets like THE WASHINGTON POST (Amazon) and the NEW YORK TIMES (Sulzberger Family).

But there is hope. Even though it is only one example, many of the ethical and classical journalists who have been dismissed from their jobs over the past have started blogs on SUBSTACK. This website runs on a subscription-based model and has attracted some of the most famous journalists over the past couple of years. I currently pay for five subscriptions on the website as my own form of protest against the failings of the mainstream media (Who will never again receive one second of my time unless they change their ways). People I subscribe to are ex-INTERCEPT co-founder Glenn Greenwald, ex-Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi, ex-YOUNG TURKS journalist Michael Tracey, ex-NEW YORK TIMES journalist ALEX BERENSON, and whistleblower extraordinaire Edward Snowden. Other wonderful bloggers are Caitlin Johnstone, Doomberg, and Quoth the Raven who have a free subscription from me. Right wing journalist Bari Weiss is also on the website. Michael Moore is also. So are other journalists with notoriety like Matthew Yglesias and Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski who used to have a popular morning show on THE HILL. The revolution in journalism is here. It is time to bring attention to it so the American people can get on board and send a message towards the mainstream companies who still believe that they are the only important purveyors of information for the citizens of this country. It is time to jam a gigantic middle finger in the air and let them know that they no longer have any influence over us.

I wish everyone a good Holiday season. I will be back after Thanksgiving with Part 6 of my educational blog on the present-day disaster that is the American higher educational system.

FINAL NOTE: My book is complete. I am going back over the content for final edits, while adding photos and reference links for final publication. More information on the release of my book will be discussed in the 1st quarter of 2022.