OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD

TV news
I am surprised when I discover people don’t know TV news is part of the entertainment industry. I think young people know. They turn on “The Daily Show” for their “news.” It’s us old fogies that are stuck in the past.
We who grew up with Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite have a distorted relationship with TV news. Many still believe there is validity in TV news. There is not. Get over it. The left leaning politicos like to rant and rave about Fox News, but all TV news is bias and has been corrupted.
It has been corrupted in the same way almost everything in America gets corrupted by capitalism’s main component, greed.
Revenues from ad sales drive TV. Money is large and in charge.
If any business has a huge client and that client says, “Don’t do such and such or you will lose my business,” that business, depending on sales to survive, will do what it is asked including adjusting, in the case of TV, its content.
I heard a person say they were starting to have doubts that the American people are always told the truth about what is happening in the world. I almost fell out of my chair. Duh, were “weapons of mass destruction” not an obvious clue to the clueless? We are lied to all the time.
As a student of history, I can tell you lying is nothing new. Politicians lie, it’s part of their DNA. People seeking power have few boundaries in how that power is obtained. Have you not noticed that if you tell a lie often enough people begin to believe it? And, before you realize, even you believe it.
Some of my more radical friends like to say it is a conspiracy. That some small group of men make all decisions for their own best interest. Although I do believe there are small groups of men who make major decisions for their benefit and our detriment, I do not believe there is one small group in control of all. The men – and yes if there is a group of power hungry control freaks then they are men – the men in any such group would be too greedy and dishonest to trust each other. The drive of these power-hungry men would not allow them to team up.
Even if there isn’t a small group in control of all things, there are still small groups trying to keep control of most things.
We had better stay alert. Region-wise in the U.S., the South has not changed. There is still a lot of racism and sexism and homophobia. And we are starting to see that the Midwest is equally intolerant. The Southwest has developed into a Hispanic-hating region. What does that leave, the West Coast and the Northeast?  We who live on the left coast know that this state isn’t the bastion of liberalism that the rest of the country likes to think we are.
If you depend on TV news to get your information, you had better change, you had better start doing some self-discovery. Otherwise you are liable to believe that genetically modified organisms are not harmful, that there is no climate change, that people are poor because they have no ambition, that immigrants are a threat to our culture and a bunch of other lies.
Although I am concerned, I also know that throughout history men seeking power have lied to the American people, and yet we still seem to bumble along. We still are the best place in the world to live and we still are better off than most of the rest of those on this planet. But, please, please don’t swallow everything that is spoon fed to you through the tube. It’s bad for your health, especially your mental well-being.
Gabriel A. Fraire has been a writer more than 40 years. He is also the current Healdsburg Literary Laureate. He can be reached through his website at: www.gabrielfraire.com.