Who should you trust?

The older media with the journalists who are used to the light and comforts of rubbing elbows with those in power are apparently getting more and more frustrated. And one of the larger newspapers in Sweden has an editorial today which doesn’t say anything, but in the end, they ad the question:”who should you trust in the public debate”. Referring to the blogs and private citizen doing their own journalism and digging without the help of those in power.

I went through several coursers during my time as active politician and learn to know and understand the journalistic elite. First of all they are unbelievable lazy. If you hand them a story that they can print during their coffee break, they will love you. If you put a little bit of spin on it, great, but the important thing is to send it in before 10am so they either can take it with them on the morning meeting and/or can skip doing anything during the rest of the day; they already got their story. And if they need to write something else or fill out the paper, all their stories comes from other journalists or newspapers, often they don’t even check the story or even reflect over its authenticity. If you don’t believe me in this regard, sit down and check the biggest newspapers and stations around the world late at evening and the day after most of those stories will end up in your local paper. And during the course of day those little headlines that you can read on BBC will pop up on your national papers, often with a little poll attached to it. So they are very lazy and easy to get onboard with a story. Secondly the elite journalists are very close to those in power. It can be government officials, high ranking politicians or big business owners, but all journalists with some “respect” knows who is who. Very often the journalist even gets married or sleeps with those in power. I know it sounds like a bad movie, but it is true, it happens much more often than you think. And thirdly, which is the most important part, they need to spin things. Even if they are lazy and sexcrazy and desperately needs attention, they do posses a large amount of creativity. So then we come to the headline game; which means that the journalist can take anything and make it into a story and I really do mean anything. With some colorful words and a catchy headline you can always fool the idiotic populace to buy the paper. It can be a statement, harmless and completely fuzzy wuzzy, but exchange a word and put it in a different context and presto you have destroyed someone’s life, but you got to sell those 26 extra papers. And if you read/watch the old media, anything is a death trap and might kill you. 30 extra bags of chips every day for 20y increase the risk of getting cancer by 11%? The headline will show: Chips causes’ cancer!

Against this old, stuffy and very very lazy group of people we today have the Internet were anyone can get information, from all over the world with just a couple of searches and you have the ones who uses this and their own intellect to form opinions and maybe debate some or write blogs or comment on the older news media’s lack of self-awareness. This is your neighbor, your school teacher, that beautiful girl next door and its happening all over the world. Most of it is crap of course, peoples idiocies shines here too, but there is lots of good stuff being done and of course the old and repressed stuffy media feel threatened. Some regular Joes without a degree and without snuggling with those in power write stuff we should be writing? No way! Let’s thrash them! And when politicians seek to destroy the freedom that comes with internet, these journalists really don’t mind. Okay, they might say or write that they mind, but really, in their hearts, do you think that they are against some fascist rules that will keep them in power and keep people listening to them instead of some pesky bloggers?

So, who should you trust? Basically no one, I believe that people are morons and idiocy is a way of life on this planet. But you make the call, just remember to stop eating chips, stop smoking, drinking, eating fat, and work out to much or too little, don’t sunbath and don’t use cell phones or whatever crap the papers are telling you today. If you don’t listen you might just die someday…