Media, the great divider.

[Purrrrrrr]

Media is my largest bugbear. I stopped buying a newspaper in the early 80s, I stopped watching TV in the mid-90s*. I hated what the media was doing, forcing a celeb culture on us rather than giving us news. My hatred of it has continued to grow

They divide us to distract us and it was never so noticeable as it has been since the covid outbreak.
The new one is the elderly are now breaking lockdown after months of saying the young are breaking the rules.

The truth is the rule-breakers are a tiny minority but the media like you to believe everyone else is having a good old time except you


left and right
black and white
old and young
men and women
gay and straight
leave/ remain
on and on the divide goes if they can get a fag-paper between a group they will do it.

Have you noticed it? Or do you agree with the media?

* I do now watch some TV before bed but never live TV

 

[Cloff]

I despise the media in this country. It’s just clickbait nowadays designed to outrage people and create bickering division.

I found the first lockdown infuriating when they would take pictures of people sunbathing in the park and shout about how they’re breaking lockdown rules. I’ve generally followed the rules throughout but I do think this country has lost all evidence of common sense!

I also saw an article yesterday about how someone is in ICU after taking the vaccine. How unhelpful is that when we’re starting to worry that we won’t have the herd immunity we need because some people believe a load of bollocks they saw on Facebook. No mention of the tens of millions of people who have been vaccinated and are completely fine!

 

[Warpaint]

I've noticed that some of the old school papers and a lot of local papers are always asking for donations or making you pay to view content. I think in the next 5 years many of them will go under. Camera phones and social media have basically done them out of a job.

 

[Pinkblush]

Pretty much the same worldwide. My husband is australian and reads their news and its no different. The media's job is to shock, manipulate and influence. Common sense has never been on the agenda. If people believe everything they read then more fool them.

People complain about celebrity news but then they fuel the thirst by reading it. They don't realise clicking in an article is raising ad revenue for the paper. The more clicks an article on the kardashians gets the more articles they post about them because its bringing money in. People may not buy a hard copy newspaper but the readers of online news do very much fuel online content.

 

[Chateau Marmont]

I feel exactly the same, OP.

Take the Meghan & Harry situation. Rather than even attempt to have mature and constructive discourse about race, the royals, the UK, etc, the media are being as inflammatory as possible and making sure they are getting everyone at each others throats. It's disgusting.

The worst thing though is you can't just ignore the press. Even going in a shop and trying to mind your own business living your life means you will be subjected to rows of tabloid headlines whether you want to see them or not, often those headlines being graphic and upsetting. Though the worst for me is how you can't even check your emails without tabloid style news being forced at you. I still don't understand why email providers think checking our personal messages means we should automatically want to see the headlines of the day as well.