A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. Mark Twain
People vote for familiar faces, buy familiar brands and wear familiar fashions.
Businesses and military can run harmful enterprises as long as they can appear benign or cast enough doubt on public concerns. When they have good press it can seem impolite, risky or ridiculous to question them.
disinformation
Churches, authorities, academia, military, businesses and governments each have stories they want heard.
Unsurprisingly there is money in this. There are thousands of multi storied buildings full of people interpreting research papers, and reorganising or inventing news to promote all sorts of governments, wars, products and religions and feeding the stories into the mass media.
Advertising, public relations, political and national propaganda and industry funded research are turned into press releases. The mass media buys or copies stories to attract readers so it owns the public mind and rents it out to anyone who can afford it.
Endless war propaganda masquerades as news and commentary. Genocide is peacekeeping. Allies are heroes. War is peace. Freedom fighters are terrorists. Atrocities are incidents. Foreigners are degraded. Their motives and political systems are questioned and maligned. They are accused of activities and intentions that better describe their accusers.
As a result of all this mainstream media is quiet about the real costs and risks of Western lifestyle. Most corporate and state media talk up popular enemies while real disasters creep up unannounced.
Individuals, organisations and countries that control the media can over-ride their communities with propaganda that lets them do what they want. However, without feedback from public opinion, they tend to become blind to their shortcomings and gradually lose their competence, over extend themselves, exhaust their credibility and given enough rope, eventually collapse spectacularly, The images they created of themselves are replaced by the reality that becomes too big to cover up.
independent media
News like history is mostly about the noisiest and best dressed. It takes some effort to sort accurate information from the white noise of politicians, commentators, researchers and public relations agencies making a living from influencing public opinion.
Monitoring and evaluating the differences between independent and geographically diverse news sites and following investigating journalists can provide a clearer view.
If we are aware of the world around us we are more likely to survive the rapid changes ahead.