Right and Wrong

I find that I am getting most of my news from the six o’clock news and the internet. The TV news is mostly local and has a conservative slant which irritates me because I hover somewhere in between NDP and Liberal in my politics. The internet makes no promises that anything is true and honest and it is certainly biased as well. Sometimes it is difficult to tell which side is reporting the propaganda.

Thankfully, most of what happens in the world around me has little effect on my lifestyle. I don’t have enough money or possessions for anyone to want and I have zero influence on anyone. Tax me, don’t tax me…raise the price of gas, don’t raise the price of gas…elect some moron, elect the other moron, my life will just keep on moving inexorably to my eventual death.

A facebook friend spent his working career in journalism and has recently retired. I suspect that his “retirement” was more downsizing than personal choice. He recently made a comment that he cancelled his subscription to the paper that he worked at for so many years. The paper was bought up by a multinational conglomerate that now owns most of the newspapers in Canada. Effectively they can sway political and corporate decisions, back political parties so that their interests are looked after and put what ever initiative forward that the corporation deems to be the “best” for our country, province and city.

They may have our best interests at heart and perhaps we will all benefit, but I doubt it.

I liked it better when there were two or more newspapers in the city and they generally had differing views on how the country should be run. The conservative leaning people would read the right wing paper and the liberal minded people would read the centre left paper. The fringe whackos would have their own papers or two page pamphlets so that they could get the message out to their readers. What I liked about the system is that most papers would make an effort to discuss both sides of any issue and you were given the opportunity to see the reasons why the other people thought the way they did. They were still wrong of course, but not as wrong as you originally thought.

I now try to read papers online from other cities, provinces and countries so that I can get a more balanced view of the things that interest me. It is all propaganda, but somewhere in the middle is the truth if you take the time to find it.

I’m not sure the search is worth the effort, but we can’t trust that the information coming to us disguised as “NEWS” is truth. I don’t have an answer; maybe go back in time to when news outlets knew the difference between right and wrong.