The Fourth Estate

“The Press. -- If we consider how even to-day all great political transactions glide upon the stage secretly and stealthily; how they are hidden by unimportant events, and seem small when close at hand; how they only show their far-reaching effect, and leave the soil still quaking, long after they have taken place; -- what significance can we attach to the Press in its present position, with its daily expenditure of lung-power in order to bawl, to deafen, to excite, to terrify? Is it anything more than an everlasting false alarm, which tries to lead our ears and our wits into a false direction?” -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Don Henley may have put out Dirty Laundry 42 years ago but it's kind of hard to tell from looking at the news. Quick, someone give Rupert Murdoch a Lifetime Achievement Award before he marries again. More often than is probably healthy I find myself in close proximity to the working press, naturally the camera gets turned on them as well.

By and large they're a pretty decent sort, for people. Somehow though, in the process of making that product we so loosely refer to as 'news,' it turns into something that resembles what actually happened much like a chicken nugget resembles a chicken. Come to think of it, the process for making the two isn't too dissimilar.

Can't speak to how or why that happens, but there's been numerous occasions where I was at something and then caught the media coverage afterwards, only to be left wondering if we were really at the same thing. The Cat from Huế by John Laurence is a book about his experiences covering the Vietnam War, in it he speaks about same thing happening with his reporting. First read the book back in college but when the protests broke out here in 2020 I was constantly reminded of it as we experienced the same disconnect here. I still want to know how anyone can report "They were loading bleach into leaf blowers!" with a straight face.

Another thing the book gets into that's still just as relevant today is the pretentious pretense of objectivity. The act of choosing what to cover, much less how, is a subjective one, and with that start it doesn't matter how you cut it, that deck is stacked. Good to know some things never change, eh?

“Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.” -- A.J. Liebling

Everyone knows the Golden Rule, 'Them that has the gold makes the rules,' and that seems to go double for the Fourth Estate. Billionaires seem to have developed a keen hunger for media companies lately, and with all the stories about them hemorrhaging money you can't help but wonder what's in it for them?

Livestreamers were an integral part of the protests here in Louisville in 2020, and really changed how they were experienced and perceived. Who needed 'Live at 5!' and the old slice and dice soundbite when you could follow along in real time? Even though protests have ended several have continued on, should be interesting to see how the decentralization of media plays out.

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Time for me to sign off. Remember y'all: Most news, isn't.