The news media is very clever at distracting the public to real threats like the abuse of power by governments: mass surveillance, climate change and the fact that society is becoming increasingly into 2 major categories- the haves and have nots. They dedicate maybe the last minutes to issues of real importance and even when the do they try to trivialize and make it seem unimportant or they try and make really complicated issues simple by portraying one group of people as the "bad" guys and the others as good, but you see life just isn't that simple and our news media shouldn't pretend it is. Mainstream media are particularly guilty of playing on our fears and there's a very simple reason for this- people are more likely to agree to something they might regret at a later date if they think it might help them now, and politicians play to this and use our fears to stay in power.
Does anyone remember the horsemeat scandal and how everyone was just shrugging it off and not realizing that if they don't check to see if it's beef.... what else are they neglecting to check? In many cultures they do eat horse but they KNOW they are eating horse and it's probably been checked for any kind of disease- can you be sure that Tesco or Iceland checked for these? It's not an accident that nearly all the reporting conveniently left this out! The early 90's Show about a Canadian Mountie in Chicago called Due South dedicated a storyline to this exact issue and what it shows is corruption and collusion and ultimately the harm this can do to people
Sometime the mainstream news can do an adequate job when covering certain issue like the NSA scandal, but again the mainsteam media neglects to tell you salient parts of the story and they quickly try their best to dismiss any real concerns. They forget to tell you the dangers of this type of mass surveillance and they neglect to tell you that the UK is just as bad if not worse, and the try everything to destroy the credit of the person who brought this to light and make the story more about him and forgetting the fact that the government is breaking the law.
Leaving the worst reported issue but ultimately the most dangerous for last: CLIMATE CHANGE. The issue gets little coverage in the mainstream news despite the fact that it is the most pressing issue for humankind. People are so casual in the way the talk about it and many people still deny that it is a cause for concern despite the fact that people around the world are suffering from its effect which are: draughts, flooding, hurricanes and tornadoes- but unless it happens in your back yard no one cares! Early this year when the UK was the victim of flooding, there was a flurry of documentaries and news reports about the issue and then they dies down, I guess people were more interested in the Kardashians than the fate of the only home we got!
Planet Earth is a living organism that is only habitable by us because of a delicate balance of eco- systems. But people refuse to think of it like that instead they are continuing to pollute the Earth and are continuing to FRACK the Earth looking for energy. Humanity is only looking out for the short term gains they don't give a thought to all the negative effects they are having on this planet and other species- people are so selfish! People have forgotten about the disastrous oil spill in 2010 by BP or the devastating effects that the people of Japan are still facing but because the "news" have stopped reporting on it people have forgotten about it.
And that is why it is so important for the news media to remain the news media and not be so focused on being entertaining and remained focused on the facts, and the facts are that the world is in dire straights, from rampant inequality to the rise of the far right and the flagrant corruption in our societies Things are looking grim.. but they can be fixed but only when tou all acknowledge there's a problem in the first place and that will not happen unless the news media stops censoring information.
