Just a short note here, nothing much out of the ordinary in today's American culture. Seems that the major media’s refusal to accept even the possibility that the pandemic started with a lab leak was an example of irresponsible reporting based on politics. The Chinese government’s Wuhan lab, which was devoted in part to genetically altering bat viruses “for study,” was in fact, the source of that pandemic as many once labeled as "conspiracy-theorists" had suggested.
But the narrative didn’t suit the media or the politicians. So, like the sycophants of any political organization, reporters accepted the political story without unwavering inquisitiveness that, I believe, should be the foundation of journalism. Go where the story takes you, and not where the politics point.
But what’s new here in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? Didn’t we just spend three or four years and two impeachments on “Russian collusion” in spite of knowing about the fallacious sources of information? And the snide and smirking pundits who pushed the stories about the collusion and the pandemic’s origins happily collected pay checks for advancing what the reporters obediently reported for the sake of politics. Goodness, the media even published and praised a book by the NY Governor they labeled the darling of their cause, regardless of his having sent the elderly into care homes rife with the disease, leading to the deaths of many.
And so on it goes, the increasingly more tiresome coverage by anti-conspiracy conspirators who either recognize what they are perpetrating is false or fail to recognize that what they are perpetrating is false. In the former, they are guilty of intellectual fraud. In the latter, they are guilty of being just plain stupid. Where’s the relentless inquisitiveness in the name of the truth?
Of course, the anti-conspiracy theorists will claim that too many conspiracy theories (actually hypotheses) are “out there” for them to trace and fact-check. But, are there?
How about the biggest of “conspiracy theories,” the ones that determine how much of a population sees reality? Humans have always been subject to rumor, but rumor’s control is exacerbated by a 24/7 media intent on avoiding any truth that runs counter to the media’s left-leaning.
It’s not that the media could not have easily found hints of evidence to pursue in either the collusion or lab leak stories. There were many such hints, many avenues of inquiry to run. But that failure to pursue hints suggests another problem in our contemporary media: Laziness, pure, unadulterated laziness. And that laziness seems to be common in the martinets who write and speak for the mainstream media.
So, we end up with a press whose most in-depth questions amount to “What kind of underwear do you wear, Mr. Clinton, boxers or briefs?” And “What kind of ice cream do you like, Mr. Biden?” The inquisitive press skims the surface, and rarely dives beneath the ripples to experience the depths of a story.
But maybe the pressure exerted by editors and producers is too great for reporters. For every 33 feet of depth in the ocean, the pressure increases by one atmosphere (14.7 pounds per every square inch of surface at sea level). Go deeper, the pressure starts to crush, to squeeze. Does diving deeply into a story frighten reporters that when they try to surface, they will experience the bends?
When everyone remains on the surface, no one knows what lies below. In the instances of at least two recent stories that the media insisted on telling, what lies below is lies.
But the narrative didn’t suit the media or the politicians. So, like the sycophants of any political organization, reporters accepted the political story without unwavering inquisitiveness that, I believe, should be the foundation of journalism. Go where the story takes you, and not where the politics point.
But what’s new here in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? Didn’t we just spend three or four years and two impeachments on “Russian collusion” in spite of knowing about the fallacious sources of information? And the snide and smirking pundits who pushed the stories about the collusion and the pandemic’s origins happily collected pay checks for advancing what the reporters obediently reported for the sake of politics. Goodness, the media even published and praised a book by the NY Governor they labeled the darling of their cause, regardless of his having sent the elderly into care homes rife with the disease, leading to the deaths of many.
And so on it goes, the increasingly more tiresome coverage by anti-conspiracy conspirators who either recognize what they are perpetrating is false or fail to recognize that what they are perpetrating is false. In the former, they are guilty of intellectual fraud. In the latter, they are guilty of being just plain stupid. Where’s the relentless inquisitiveness in the name of the truth?
Of course, the anti-conspiracy theorists will claim that too many conspiracy theories (actually hypotheses) are “out there” for them to trace and fact-check. But, are there?
How about the biggest of “conspiracy theories,” the ones that determine how much of a population sees reality? Humans have always been subject to rumor, but rumor’s control is exacerbated by a 24/7 media intent on avoiding any truth that runs counter to the media’s left-leaning.
It’s not that the media could not have easily found hints of evidence to pursue in either the collusion or lab leak stories. There were many such hints, many avenues of inquiry to run. But that failure to pursue hints suggests another problem in our contemporary media: Laziness, pure, unadulterated laziness. And that laziness seems to be common in the martinets who write and speak for the mainstream media.
So, we end up with a press whose most in-depth questions amount to “What kind of underwear do you wear, Mr. Clinton, boxers or briefs?” And “What kind of ice cream do you like, Mr. Biden?” The inquisitive press skims the surface, and rarely dives beneath the ripples to experience the depths of a story.
But maybe the pressure exerted by editors and producers is too great for reporters. For every 33 feet of depth in the ocean, the pressure increases by one atmosphere (14.7 pounds per every square inch of surface at sea level). Go deeper, the pressure starts to crush, to squeeze. Does diving deeply into a story frighten reporters that when they try to surface, they will experience the bends?
When everyone remains on the surface, no one knows what lies below. In the instances of at least two recent stories that the media insisted on telling, what lies below is lies.
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