The war to control information

A free press is the cornerstone of any democracy; it enables the population to be properly informed about the goings on in the world. It should be able to get both sides of the story and be able to do so freely without the intimidation of Governments or other forms of organised crime. Investigative journalism is fast becoming extinct and this is not only bad for the industry but also for society.

As I have said before, high quality investigative journalism allows for a well informed public, a rational public. In most parts the type of journalism we get now is mostly just talking heads spouting their own opinions, objectivity has been replaced by a media that perpetuates sensationalism, which then inevitably leads to a rather anxious and somewhat misinformed and sometimes even a violent society.

This is why you have to question the Government.. why would they want the public to be constantly afraid and angry?? The simple reason why they would want the public to be in a constant state of fear is quite simple,  it thus becomes that much easier for them to take away rights and freedoms under the pretense of guaranteed safety. First of all, you can’t guarantee absolute safety, so that’s a lie and secondly how is giving up your freedom and rights helping to protect your freedoms?

The simple explanation is that if you are foolish enough to give up these rights you also give up your right to voice your dissent when the Government does anything harmful towards you like spying and snooping!!!  And how can they control this…. By taking away the means of getting information.

The “ news” media is guilty of being  lopsided or they always seen to have their own agenda, and that is because in most part they are owned by multi- million pound corporations or the Government has a large stake in it and if they decide to report anything that displeases the overloads, they will lose their funding or be cancelled. When the Government get their hands on what information we have access to it quickly turns into a propaganda tool.

The recent horrific attack on Palestine has opened the eyes of some people, because in the first days of that conflict the BBC had a rather different slant on it, more pro- Israel, but because of the wonders of the internet and the people actual wanting to know what was really happening, people soon realized that what the BBC was trying to make us believe was not what was really happening. After getting a ton of backlash about their “reporting”, they have decided to show what’s actually going on. ( for a while at least)

And this was achieved thanks to our access to the internet, but that may soon be gone as we know it because the powers that be do not like the fact that they can’t control the flow of information, so they are putting as many restrictions on the internet that they can.

Unfortunately the people are not always so proactive and thus let the nonsense of the mainstream media pollute their minds and that is why investigative journalist are so important to a democratic society.  A good investigative journalist will not let themselves be bullied by the Government into only reporting what they approve off, a good journalist will ask probing questions and probe even further to get to the truth.

The public also has to question why the big old Government would resort to bullying to get what they want, and is what they want really in the public’s best interest.