In this day and age, it is nearly impossible to not know what’s going on in the world. Considering the majority of the student body’s unhealthy obsession with social networks, as well as the probability that at least one family member watches the news on a regular basis, the average MTHS student receives enough information to have a general idea of current events. Does anyone really stop to think about the validity and credibility of the information being forced into your brain? Of course not. Why should we have to? Surely if it’s on TV or the Internet, it is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Sadly, this is not the case, and one should always assume that the news is wrong until proven right.
For example, take news broadcasts. There is not a single news show on American television that fails to exhibit some sort of bias to the left or right. Fox News comes to mind for most people—dumbed-down, right-wing, corporate-controlled media garnished with awful jokes and blatant distortion of truth. Curiously enough, MSNBC can accurately be described as dumbed-down, left-wing, corporate-controlled media garnished with awful jokes and blatant distortion of truth. “Not MSNBC!” you exclaim, mouth agape in reeling astonishment. Yes, the ugly truth is worse than it seems.
Just because you want it to be right doesn’t mean that it is so. Even ABC leans to the left, and they often exhibit twisted statistics or quotes taken completely out of context, presenting misinformation in its most subtle form. Essentially, the nightly news, even the morning news, is now completely untrustworthy, filled to the brim with political propaganda at its most effective.
By now you’re probably inquiring into the identity of the culprit behind all of this skullduggery. Basically, anyone with enough money to buy say, a small west African country, controls what information is transmitted to the public. Most people with this money, acquired said large sums by being dirty awful political hell-demons for their entire life and have accumulated a complex set of political alliances. To maintain these alliances, and keep making more money, they change the news. Just a bit, a tweak here and there, and the public’s opinion is effectively pushed aside of the political spectrum through careful selection and modification. Long story short, both Republicans and Democrats alike are buying and selling your ignorance on the open market.
What’s the point of purposefully deceiving a whole nation of gullible children and adults, you ask? To perpetuate the two-party system, of course. If you keep one side rooting hard for their party and the other side rooting hard for their party, everyone will be rooting for their parties so much that they will fail to realize or notice the benefits of a third party. This is why you should not trust every tidbit of information you see. There is a good chance it is terrifyingly intelligent propaganda.
If you keep your eyes open wide and your mind open wider, and learn to take nothing at face value, you should be able to sail above the biased media hailstorm.
