There is a fundamental conformity across the news spectrum… NEWSVERTISING.
Most of the time news, soap-operas, reality shoes, pornography, and adverts blend seamlessly into one another, which is to be expected given that, fundamentally, they are all the same thing… [making] their money not through sales to readers, but through sales to advertisers.
The news, in other words, is not a product, which the reader or TV viewer consumes, but a by-product. The product is the reader, which the newspaper and news-channel sells to the advertiser.
You may have noticed, while reading The Guardian, Le Monde or The New York Times, that no mention is ever made of the fundamental cause of conflict, the origin and nature of history, the best way to experience the center of the universe while making love, how another person can really be known, what death has in common with asking a girl out, how to be free of worry, what to do if you accidentally find yourself trapped in a prison, school or office, why things don’t go haywire anymore, what the coming world catastrophe has in common with cellular biology, why a beautiful shoe will always be beautiful, how to enhance empathy, why we have placed birth and death in the hands of experts, what trees have in common with improvised theater, why mystery and irrational generosity are illegal, the secret connection between modern art and corporate wealth-maximizing and what all this has in common with formality, play, metaphor, the oldest meaning of the word god, the color of Tuesday and why we smile when we meet a friend. Finally no mention is ever made of the reason why these, and thousands of other illuminating topics, never find their way into the pages of the news-media; why the reader has to look elsewhere for a beginner’s guide to democratic mind control…
One day–and the day is coming–there will be a genuinely alternative, genuinely independent news source.
It will sell nothing.