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By Joanna DelBuono
Brooklyn Daily
Ever since man decided to write the day’s events and post it on a pole in the fork in the road, we the public have had an unhealthy fascination with all things news. What once let us know how many ruts there were in the road and how to avoid them has become a giant media circus with huge corporations running the show and vying for the number-one spot.
It’s not that I’m complaining. Hey, if it wasn’t for the news business I would be out of a job. No, it’s just that the old-fashioned job of the town crier has changed over the centuries from just keeping us informed to just keeping us entertained.
Last Sunday’s premier of the “The Newsroom” on HBO was more fact than fiction in its portrayal of the industry. In an age where everyone and their mother is clamoring for the latest scoop, today’s purveyors of news are more interested in “I call it as I see it, and if I don’t see it, I just make it up,” than “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” Many no longer take the time to check out those facts before blurting them out. And many others do check them out, then skew them in a different light.
Many of the current crop of news jockeys have traded in the goal of a coveted Peabody and Pulitzer to winning an Oscar, Tony, or Emmy.
Some members of the Fourth Estate can now apply for their Screen Actors cards, because they ain’t reporting the news any longer, they are spinning tales. The sole purpose of the news show is to increase sales, up the ratings, and forward the corporations’ own agenda. And many newscasters follow the patterns of the wind instead of the threads of fact.
It’s sad to say, but some of today’s news gatherers are more worried about keeping the big corporations that run the media in the black, than making sure those that read, listen to, or view the news are in the know.
Who cares if what is reported is the truth or not, as long as the corporations that run the outlets make their profit margins.
So ask yourself, what happens when the media panders to the numbers and the bottom line and not the truth? We the knowing public get a lopsided view of reality, which leads us to make uninformed decisions and assumptions that we shouldn’t be making. Not reporting the facts as they are prevents the knowing public from knowing.
In 2013, fiction has become truth and truth has become fiction. Point in fact is that it is a sad, sad commentary that our reality has become less real than the reality shows we covet.
We can no longer always trust what we see, read, or hear, because some of it isn’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Some journalists no longer journal, they create works of fictionalized, non-fiction when reporting the current events. Sort of like the world of “The Newsroom,” but not quite.
Not for Nuthin™, but a dose of Edward R. Murrow right about now wouldn’t hurt us any.
Good night, and good luck.
Follow me on Twitter @JDelBuono.
Joanna DelBuono writes about national issues every Wednesday on BrooklynDaily.com. E-mail her at jdelbuono@cnglocal.com.