Ahhhh the mainstream media - a lesson about the "news"

I was reading an article on MSNBC about the Greek financial crisis, and it mentioned how people there withdrew almost $900 million (Euros) on Monday and the concern that it could signal an all-out run on Greece banks :

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/16/11729795-greeks-withdraw-894-million-in-a-day-is-this-beginning-of-a-run-on-banks?lite

Of course, this is a bit spooky considering the fact that from what all the big economists say, if Greece drops out of the Eurozone, there will surely be some ripple effects in other places. Ok, got it.

So I thought to myself, “Hey, what say I go check out a Greek news site and see what they say about it? I mean, it must be front page news there, right?” Yyyyeaahhh… Not so much. See for yourself :

http://www.athensnews.gr/#3

The front page mentions something about the elections, something about the Golden Dawn neo-Nazi party, and a little something about some soccer team winning some big game. Now, because I am some silly American who admittedly knows little about Greek news outlets, that site may well be the “National Enquirer” of Greece. So, practicing due diligence (as much as possible sitting here in front of my PC), I checked another outlet, and this one had MUCH more important news to share :

http://www.ekathimerini.com/

Yes, it’s true – the Olympic flame arrived in Athens today. Shocking. Nothing about the whole “run on the banks” thing.

Now out of all fairness, if I were living in Greece and running a news outlet there, and was concerned about the financial and social stability of my nation, I probably wouldn’t go running any stories like “Get your money now, before it’s too late!” on the front page either. That would only incite more fear and possibly even contribute to something that I myself would suffer greatly from – and that’s never fun. So the point I am making is not that the Greece media is being deceptive and a little manipulative – or at the very least, avoiding the real depth of the truth about what is going on.

The point I am making is that ALL mainstream media outlets, to some extent, are deceptive and manipulate information in a manner they believe reflects the highest form of responsibility. Now whether or not this means they actually, knowingly withhold information or mis present it, I can’t say. And I am not suggesting some big conspiracy theory – I am just making an observation. And it positively works in reverse. Here’s a an example, a little front page article running on the Russian Times website :

http://rt.com/news/us-iran-attack-nuclear-468/

Yeah, funny – I don’t remember reading anything in any of the US News outlets about “The Pentagon has a ready plan for a military attack on Iran, the American ambassador to Israel warned days before a key meeting over the controversial nuclear program of the Islamic Republic.” (from the article). Gee, I wonder why not? Lots of stuff about flesh eating bacteria, one of the Kennedy exes dying/being murdered, politics, blah blah – but nothing about something as (in)significant as a US ambassador stating this. So yeah, it goes both ways, and it’s entirely obvious that the best way to get the news about what’s REALLY going on, what’s really important, is either to visit the websites considered “whacky” or silly sometimes, like /, or to check out the news on the websites of other countries.

In other words, I think we all need to remember that we only know what we are told, and that is entirely up to who is doing the telling. If we blindly trust that all of the mainstream media outlets, or surely at least SOME of them, are telling us everything, then perhaps our trust is a bit misplaced. Perhaps we need to be ever vigilant and seek out the truth wherever it may be found. Perhaps we need to be aware and mature enough to realize that sometimes people do things in the spirit of protecting someone else that, in the end, ends up hurting that person. The fact that it is nations or corporations that do this should be no surprise. At least not if you’ve been reading the news.

Read the original article on my blog : http://thethoughtbuffet.blogspot.com