Ever thought about what PURPOSE the media serves? Ever thought about why one piece of news gets picked instead of another?

I have always been surprised at how the media has changed, and I’m not that old, I’m 30 years old! I remember people joking about “… cutting the news for ad break…” which now happens all the time. I remember newspapers being a source of news, not a source of advertisement. I remember when the “News at Noon” were about IMPORTANT things. Now they talk about celebrities, reality shows, anything but what is happening in the world.

Do you remember when Russia dropped pamphlets informing Chechnyans that they had 48 hours to clear the land or they would be invaded? If you do, congrats, you are actually making an effort to stay informed. My country’s news media at that time talked about the new surgery by a Greek singer and how a footballer hurt his knee and will not be able to play for the next two games. Yes, I can see how those two pieces of news are more important.

Do you even know that Indonesia invaded East Timor in December 7th, 1975? Here is a small quote from an interview with Noam Chomsky:

“[…]Since the invasion in 1975 the West has supported it throughout … participated in it. The invasion was carried out with decisive U.S. diplomatic support. We know that from the memoirs of the U.S. diplomatic ambassador at the time, Patrick Moynihan. It was carried out with U.S. arms…. Illegally, because they were sent only for self defence. The U.S. immediately expanded the flow of arms, secretly. The arms increased again in 1977 and 1978 with the Carter administration as the atrocities really peaked … the figure of 200,000 dead that you now hear that was from 1977-78 […] Ambassador (Ed) Masters intervened to prevent humanitarian aid from flowing for about nine months. This was reported in congressional testimony by one of the leading Indonesian scholars of the West in 1979. He pointed out that Masters intervened for nine months to delay humanitarian aid while I don’t know how many tens of thousands of people died until they got a green light from the Indonesian generals who said they had the situation under control and therefore they would allow humanitarian aid in […]”

Where was the press for this bit of news? Want to go further back? Or forward?

Whichever way you go, you will only find that the news media serve one purpose; to hide the truth and dress it in a way that servers governments, not the people. You may ask where to go for the truth, but there is no one answer. If you are truly interested, research the web, find out about independent newspapers and magazines, find publications by world organization like the Red Cross, so many sources of information. But whatever you do, do NOT believe any one thing and never believe that if this source was right about this one thing, it will always be right. This is called critical thinking, and this is a requirement for a useful citizen.