Bill Cosby’s double jeopardy

Friday, April 27, 2018

It’s an incredibly sad day, hearing that a jury convicted Bill Cosby.

I feel almost the same way I did when prosecutors decided one trial wasn’t enough to get O.J. Simpson and changed the concept of law to say people can be tried twice for the same crime.

This is not to say Bill Cosby is innocent.

But no jury anywhere on the planet was free from hearing the crucifixion of Cosby in the media. So, it becomes very, very difficult to know if he got a fair trial at all.

We live in an era of new vigilantism known as MeToo in which media is complicit – willing to try and convict someone in the public arena long before the case is actually brought to trial.

Now, men wear the scarlet letter and Cosby’s conviction sets the stage for additional abuses, just as Watergate did in the political arena.

Media like the attack dogs we are has gotten the taste of blood, and nothing will get it out of our mouths.

This is not new. Guilt by accusation goes back centuries and has touched many cultures. Christ suffered it when Pilate washed his hands.

Like O J, Cosby was a black man that should have transcended race, someone who supposedly did everything right as far as the system is concerned but managed to cross an imaginary social line that society as a whole could not accept.

O J supposedly killed a white woman; Cosby supposedly drugged and raped scores of women. And this is unacceptable for a white or black man.

Yet there is something terribly symbolic in these convictions, a kind of ironic lynching since few trials of white men – regardless of how well-known or powerful – achieved such notoriety. This, of course, with the exceptions of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, both of whom have faced similar trials in the media and to date, both have survived.

I understand O.J. best, frustrated and enraged by a failed marriage, in which his ex-wife publicly taunted him until he snapped and allegedly killed her.

Clinton makes sense, too, since many political leaders have used their positions to elicit sex.

The whole silliness of Trump has turned The New York Times and The Washington Post into cheap tabloids, revealing for the first time just how pathetic the two most powerful newspapers in the country really are.

Cosby makes no sense.

Like Trump and Clinton, he had all the power in the world to get almost any woman he might have wanted without having to drug them.

But like some cheap skid row pimp, Cosby didn’t feel confident enough in his own manhood to simply ask. Maybe he was secretly insecure and could not handle rejection. Maybe he got off on the power the drugging gave him, not just to have sex, but to do whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted and could get away with it.

Like most tragic heroes, it is some flaw in his character that ultimately brought him down, exposing him to the worst elements of society – vigilantes and media – who like wolves waited just out of view to attack him – a very powerful black man who should have been far beyond their reach, perhaps too good, the way those Native Americans were when Andrew Jackson forced them onto the trail of tears. No matter how white those Native Americans were, or how beyond race OJ and Cosby seemed to be, in the end, they became the target of unrelenting attacks – inspired by their own actions, a lesson for any person of color who thinks doing all the right white things will make him immune.

The howl of MeToo will focus on Cosby’s victims, and perhaps rightly so. As with Watergate, there really was something at the end of this rainbow for the vigilantes to sink their teeth into. But just as in Watergate, this will inspired both MeToo and media to continue their campaign against all men, who will be tried in public long before they ever get to face a jury, and lacking the resources of an OJ or a Cosby, will likely plea guilt even when they are innocent, or get convicted in an obsessed arena for Cosby like crimes when they are not anywhere near as onerous.

This is the problem with the Cosby conviction, it will give these groups new license to kill.

I want to nominate Tom Steyer for sainthood

Sunday, April 22, 2018

I want to nominate Tom Steyer for sainthood,

Even if Jews can’t be saints in the Catholic faith

I want Steyer to be a saint because like all saints

He’s obsessed with bringing down the president

Who beat his candidate in an election

Steyer claims the Russians stole

And he’s willing to put his money where his foot is

Right beside the fork tongue Native Americans

Said all white men had, and Steyer’s living proof.

I want to name Tom Steyer for sainthood

Because he managed to get the New York Times

To write a slanted piece on his behalf,

Slamming his alter ego in the GOP everybody knows

Must be crooked because he’s spent even more

Than Tom Steyer has in trying to buy off public opinion.

I want to nominate Tom Steyer for the Nobel Peace Prize

Just the way some fool did for the one Obama got

But didn’t deserve, Tom being rich but still a man of the people,

Because he believes all the hogwash the LA Times

And The New York Times, and even the Washington Post prints,

Anyone that stupid has to be someone in touch with

The common folks even though Tom is filthy rich,

I want to nominate Tom Steyer for the Nobel Prize

Because he’s proved snowflakes don’t melt in sunlight

Even when they live their lives in the Golden State,

Defying logic and science the way fundamentalist Christians do,

I want to nominate Tom Steyer for sainthood

Because like saints he just lets crap come out of his mouth

And he doesn’t care, spreading bullshit like gospel

And somehow managing to make fools believe he

Knows what the hell he’s talking about when he doesn’t,

I want to nominate Tom Steyer for sainthood

Even if he is Jewish or German, or not even American,

Even if he is a liberal living on the wrong coast

Even if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about

Even though he puts up billboards

Instead of crosses, to hand a president on

Just like people back in the old days did Christ,

I want to nominate Tom Steyer for sainthood

because spends millions maybe billions

and isn’t getting anything back for his investment.

I think.

Poem to The New York Times

Saturday, April 21, 2018

I want to believe everything

The New York Times tells me

Because, well, it is The New York Times

I feel the way the ancient Jews felt

Lost without their sacred text

To tell me what to believe

And what not to believe,

Or how I should feel or not

This breath I breathe

Edited to fid with some

Copy editor’s conception of reality

If it’s not fit to print,

It can’t be real.

I want to believe everything

The sacred Washington Post claims as truth

They brought down Nixon after all

So, they must be important

This lust for power

Leaving them with blood

Not ink on their fingers,

Like Lady Macbeth,

Driven mad by their own

Lust for greatness

I want to believe everything

I hear on PBS

Less stressed they paint my world

In painful color I cannot

Even contemplate for myself,

Newscasters hired for their smooth voices

And their liberal ideal

Like the snake oil salesmen

My plagued my grandmother

Forcing my grandfather to drive off

With a shotgun full of buck shot

I want to believe everything

Every talking head on TV tells me

Because they have press passes

To get the news straight from the source,

Those noble knights on a crusade

To save this holy land we live in

In the name of some new religion

That has no god

Pretending their want to keep the faith

When it’s the trade routes they fight for

Coin changers on the steps of the temple

Selling trinkets to us instead of truth.

Media polls are bullshit

Thursday, April 19, 2018

When you see a poll done by CNN or The Washington Post, run like hell.

Media organizations doing their own polls, as opposed to allowing real professional to conduct them, are generally a form of political terrorism.

The media group is most likely trying to drive candidates out of a political contest (mostly aimed at the GOP) or trying to drive down popular opinion through a bogus testing of sample voters.

This is part of media’s ability to create news. They make up the questions they know will get a reaction, and then go out and ask people, and then come back and report on it as if this is some objective slice of life, when it was merely media making news they want to report.

Most media these days when it comes to the GOP or Donald Trump are deeply involved in making up their own news and reporting it as if it was real news.

Media and associated interest groups are well known for creating pseudo events such as the woman’s march or the student walkout to generate a sense that public opinion is strong on issues media is trying to sell.

Media creates events for the express purpose of being able to report them as news, even when reporters are perfectly aware that they are staged or give them the results they want.

Media polls are one of the most vicious and underhanded ways of manipulating public opinion and subtly attacking public figures or candidates media dislikes.

When media wants to make someone look bad, they create one of these polls, phrasing the questions and the explanations to make certain the poll numbers come out as they want.

Even legitimate polls provide superficial results, like a wine tasting in which media assumes much about people’s opinions with less than a sip.

Media polls usually distort the results by phrasing the questions to get a negative result. Pollsters have long known that you can manipulate the results by how you ask the questions and in which context you ask them.

These polls provide misinformation which are then reported as legitimate beliefs.

Except for the best pollsters, very few of the polls can tell you what the data actually means or whether the result have any validity.

They can alter the results by discriminating against specific groups, and so by asking only certain groups, achieve the result they need.

These polls allow media to make sweeping generations that deliberately mislead their audience.

But they have the worst effect on politicians and other public officials, who are forced to take them seriously because polls have another nasty impact on politicians and their campaigns.

This, of course, is the real aim of most media generated polls, to provide a skewed view of reality that will scare the hell out of a politician, a political staff and more importantly campaign contributors.

The results can chase away important professional campaign staff, who want to avoid a losing cause.

The polls also may damage small serious and better candidates from running in the first place.

These media polls have often affected the outcomes of primaries elections where they chase candidates out early in the game, limiting the field to savvier political people.

Some of the most prestigious and respected publications such as The New York Times fail when doing polls to conform to the standards set by the American Association for Public Opinion (AAFPO). One report showed the Times’ compliance with these standards at a dismal 25 percent.

CNN is probably worse. No telling what standards the Washington Post follows since it hardly abides to basic journalistic ethics in the first place.

You can’t always tell who is actually sponsoring the pool, or even who conducted it. Unless you’re lucky enough to actually take the survey, you can’t tell just how the questions are phrased, the exact wording, or how slanted the explanation leading to the questions are.

Many questions and explanations are framed in a way to elicit the response the pollster wants.

You don’t even know who was actually polled, whether they were straight, gay, white, black, men, women, or even the geographical location such as a primarily liberal or conservative part of the country.

It is almost impossible to know if a poll is slanted when it is reported about, and considering the viciousness of current liberal media, you can bet the poll was a push poll, meaning every aspect was created to build on a pre-determined result.

The thing to watch most is where these liberal media outlets focus their attention. Are they publishing polls in areas where they hope to create an upset against the GOP? Are they deliberately manufacturing polls that will chase candidates out, or create a public perception that the GOP candidate is weak or vulnerable when in reality they are not?

Boycotting elite media news

Monday, April 16, 2018

Timothy Leary had it right when he told people to "Turn on, tune in, drop out.”

Although he was not talking about contemporary media, he should have been.

The secret to finding inner peace is not listening to CNN or reading The Washington Post. Their purpose is to make you as uncomfortable as possible – something they are very good at.

The path to enlightenment isn’t via The New York Times or any of the power media players who shape reality to their own liking.

And so, in following Leary’s advice, the way to reach personal fulfillment is to avoid all things that distract you from the pursuit of truth.

Since it almost impossible to get “truth” or even reliable facts from media these days, the best a truly enlightened person can hope to do is to avoid media outlets entirely.

In other words, stop buying the bullshit the big media players are selling, and the best way to do that is to stop reading or viewing their phony products.

Local media tends to be better at reporting local issues. But the minute they step over the line into state, national or international reporting, they give you the same bullshit, largely because they are getting it all from the same three or four elite news organizations: The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times or PBS – all of which are so bent to the left you would need a chiropractor with a welding torch to make them seem even remotely straight.

Except for Fox or more recently Brietbart news, there is very little national media that lens to the right.

So nearly everything we read or see on TV beyond the borders of the state comes from the same few elite and biased media outlets, repackaged by local media who take their word as gospel, and so help spread the misinformation infection though even more devious means.

Since ordinary people cannot possibly have access to the same sources as the army of so-called objective journalists, we are forced to take their word that what they are reporting is accurate or fair, if not objective – when nearly all of it is filtered through some propaganda mechanism such as The Washington Post board.

If it has a Washington Post byline, he can almost be assured you’re being lied to – or at best, manipulated.

As noted before, objective press is a joke, myth gullible journalist students are subjected to and then get taught to ignore.

Media has always been slanted. The concept of “an objective” press came in reaction to the yellow journalism of the 19th century, when media reformers adopted a page of the already discredited Enlightenment and encouraged journalists get degrees, the presumption that they would become immune to personal prejudices everybody has.

This movement for more enlightened and thus objective journalists never envisioned the change in universities that soon brainwashed these poor souls into becoming “activist” journalist, an over educated self-important and arrogant troop bringing to their reportage the belief that they know better than the public and will force the truth down the public’s throat whether the public likes it or not.

These are a crusading lot that avoid the whole idea of objectivity, pursuing their own idea of truth. They are tainted by the misconception that they should take sides in a story or force change through their reporting, rather than giving the public accurate representations of all sides and letting the public make up its own mine.

The colleges spit out these like popcorn, and the elite media hires them.

 The elite media – as with most other media – also have their way of forcing these young journalists to bend in specific ways, forcing them to adopt the media outlet’s slant or find another job with a media outlet that slants in some other ways.

Most reporters already conditioned by college adopt the editorial policies of the media organization was.

News, of course, is managed by a string of similar activist editors (this particularly true with the elite media) who are selling stories out a point of view the media organizations wants. We hear a lot of people complain about Fox, but this is equally true of The Times and the Post. The only difference is that they are selling a different kind of propaganda.

Media – particularly the elite media – are largely unregulated political entities, answerable to no one, and protected by the First Amendment against government interference. So, they do what they want, attack who they want, with no oversight, even by journalists’ organizations.

Of course, few journalists would dare take on any of these media giants.

What reporter with a career in mind would criticize the Washington Post or the New York Times, when these represent the top of the career ladder? So even honest reporters stay silent and leave the questions of these media giants to political cranks or those who have been victimized by media.

The purpose of the elite media is to shape public opinion, but not always in a good way. These media outlets have their own motivations, destroying political lives at whim and without shame. When attacked, other media rally around them because nearly all media organizations, elite or not, value the power they have, and do not want to see things altered.

Even when these media organizations have good intentions, they are little better than benevolent dictators, who at a moment’s notice can turn vicious like a mad dog, even on people they previously supported. These elite media are king-makers, who cannot be trusted – from the beat reporter inside the beltway to the talking heads on TV.

As said earlier, the elite media feed smaller media outlets and so infect lesser news organizations.

Even the once potent TV networks have surrendered to them, allowing these few elites to control how national and international stories are processed for public conception.

This makes it impossible to get “a balanced” view by seeking alternate media sources since all news is tainted. You can’t even rely on going from right wing to left wing media with the hope of figuring out if the truth lay between them, since both are spinning you in different ways, and in most cases do not have a shred of truth. All you get is media static, a radioactive diatribe that spreads hate and disinformation until you can’t tell what is real.

With the 2018 election looming, this noise has been ratchetted, especially in the elite media who is now selling the idea that a Democratic sweep in inevitable.

It might be, but partly because voters tend to believe what they get from these media organizations and act like lemmings to make it reality.

But to remain sane, to not be tainted by all of this ruckus, the best informed are those who are the least informed, and have learned already to turn off this crap, and when going to vote, flip a coin, because it’s likely to be about as accurate at media reportage.

Framing Trump on Sports Betting

Sunday, April 8, 2018

I love reading Charlie Style, because it’s like looking at a broken watch and knowing it will always say exactly the same thing, except for twice a day.

Style is a front man for a brand of journalism that insists on spreading anti-Trump propaganda.

Sometimes, he’s right, but most often his is simply framing stories to support hate mongering that disguises itself as political correctness.

This isn’t too bad when is stories only appear locally in Northern New Jersey. But because he is riding a mean-media bandwagon, a national outlet has given him a platform.

So now, no matter where we are, we can know the wrong time of day.

Style’s job apparently is to maintain the anti-Trump media drum beat so that nobody forgets what kind of bad guy America elected in 2016 – although if you believe Style, America really didn’t elect Trump, the Russians stole the election for him, or Hillary got cheated by a system we ought to change because Style didn’t like the outcome.

Style along with some of his fellow reporters seem determined to tie GOP candidates in New Jersey to Trump so as to allow Democrats to take back the House and the Senate later this year.

It is unclear who is giving Style his marching orders. Maybe nobody – which is the problem with self-appointed arbitrators of truth in media these days, and their need to sway people into a specific way of thinking.

Style is more columnist than journalist. So, there is no need for him to be “objective.” And since media today is not objective at all, he barely stands out against the crowd.

But Style has certainly learned modern-media’s ability to frame a story to imply something about Trump that may not actually be true.

In his latest diatribe against Trump, Style is trying to show how Trump – back in the day when Trump was the kind of Atlantic City gambling – tried to bully the GOP into pushing for sports gambling in Atlantic City.

Style takes his literary style (pardon the pun) from The New York Times in which his excessive descriptive rhetoric is sprinkled with loaded negative adjectives. This is a type reporting where facts are not enough, and reporters such as those in The Times, arrogantly believe readers are too stupid to judge for themselves and must be hit over their heads with a brick load of negativity for them to get the point.

This, unfortunately, is the fate of journalism today where we desperately need to tell people what to think about politicians rather than give people the facts and let them judge for themselves – even if we are selling them a broken watch, recalling past incidents the way Style does that have little or no relationship to what is going on today – this need to beat the anti-Trump drum like we are beating a dead horse.

Style’s slant involves the current Supreme Court case where New Jersey is trying to establish sports gambling, something Style claims Trump championed in the early 1990s after then Sen Bill Bradley passed the Bradley Bill opposing it.

Style even quotes Bradley in saying how sports betting is bad.

But as with all good spin doctors setting up a deceptive frame, Style leaves out a significant number of relevant facts.

Trump, who then had a significant investment in Atlantic City, was proposing that New Jersey take advantage of a loop hole that would allow casinos to host sports betting in the way Las Vegas already did.

Like many people at the time, Trump saw the handwriting on the wall concerning the slow decay of Atlantic City gambling and saw the loop hole as a way to bring more venue to the city before it fell into complete ruin.

He was pushing GOP legislators at the time to take advantage of the loop hole while they could.

The state failed to act in time. So, casinos closed, and Atlantic City edged towards bankruptcy.

Anti-sports betting advocates are trying to prevent sports betting to expand beyond Las Vegas, including sports franchises fear a repeat of the Black Sox scandal that would risk the integrity of sporting.

Oddly enough New Jersey politicians Democrats and Republicans have been seeking for decades to expand gambling including sports betting throughout the state. Over the last few years, under Democrat and Republican governors, The Meadowlands and others have quietly created a kind of off track betting centers throughout the state in anticipation of legalized sports gambling.

Indeed, the current Democratic governor has assigned a strong advocate for gambling expansion to head the Sports and Exposition Authority.

Style, of course, frames his story as if Trump is the big proponent of this move, when in fact, Trump’s motivation two decades ago was to only expand sports betting to Atlantic City.

One of the facts that Style left out of his account is the fact as president, Trump actually opposes expansion of sports gambling the way current New Jersey legislators propose.

Style implied a lot of dirty dealing behind the scenes, but clearly frames his story to imply one thing about Trump, when facts show a different story.

This sleight of hand comes via a quote from Bill Bradley about how bad sports betting would be for sports, when an attorney Neil Francisco, representing the Trump Administration, has submitted a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the Bradley Bill’s restrictions.

How the Washington Post lies

 Saturday, April 7, 2018 No news media organization has been so heralded as an icon of free press as the Legendary Washington Post, the absolute epitome of The First Amendment.The First Amendment, however, does not guarantee an honest or objective press.In this regard, The Post has lived up to all the unethical and corrupt perceptions modern America has come to expect from its media outlets, a symbol of complete abdication of journalist ethic in pursuit of influence and power.This is not unique to The Post, of course.Most if not all media today have taken a huge step back from the concept of objectivity, reverting to an older tradition many once called “yellow journalism.”The Post simply stands out in the crowd as one of the arrogant, self-righteous manipulators of public opinion and when taken to task by angry victims, becomes a martyr of free speech that equally disreputable news organizations must rally behind to defend. Because to question the integrity of The Post is to question the sacred traditions behind journalism and the orthodoxy of The First Amendment itself.This makes clear just how out of control all media has become, this self-centered self-appointed industry that lays claim to serving as watch dog for public interests, a fallacy laid bare with each slanted headline or news report issued.First and foremost, there is (and perhaps never has been) an objective press.We are an evil breed seeking to influence the public, not inform, and so we slant each bit of news in order to sway the public to whatever end we want.And the Post has become one of the leaders of this insanity.Even before The Post engaged in its holy crusade to overthrow President Trump, or if possible, undo the popular movement that allowed him to win over a candidate already coronated by media, The Post was little more than an outlet for insider cranks feeding petty gossip from inside the beltway in order to damage real or imagined political rivals.
Everybody knew if you wanted to damage someone you didn’t like, you leaked something to The Post, and this began a tirade of attack that eventually undermined some public official’s credibility.This was made obvious during Trump’s first year as president when Jared Kushner and Steve Banon used the post to undermine each other, through a series of leaks that the Post trumpeted and other media picked up on such as CNN, and The New York Times.Despite these two being The Post’s primary inside and unnamed sources, the Post thought nothing of savaging them both in bold headlines.So much for loyalty to sources.The Post had bigger fish to fry, since it’s primary objective in doing everything possible to undermine the credibility of the Trump Administration and create the illusion that Trump’s victory was the result of a Russian conspiracy, and that Trump himself was either unqualified to be president or at best, nuts.Some editor somewhere in the upper management of The Post must have studied journalistic ethics to have violated so many of what most of us consider unbreakable rules. Or perhaps, the Post simply believed it had become so powerful that in a Machiavellian sense did not have to follow rules we all got taught in school as far as fair and objective reporting.The Post – as well as most media that echoed its reports – set aside rules of journalism in and open and unregulated campaign to manipulate public opinion against Trump. Part of this may have to do with the fact that Trump on the campaign had dismissed the post as not relevant, a severe blow to the ego of the nation’s premiere political media group.The Post needed to flex its muscles in a power game to show that it still has the ability to bring down a president it didn’t like, and to remind people how its ace reporters had done as much back in the good of days of Watergate. This, of course, require The Post’s ethically challenged staff of politically-connected reporters to engage in a campaign to brainwash a sometimes-unsuspecting public, or at worst, ignite a fire under those groups that oppose Trump but spreading questionable information.It would be a mistake to blame The Post completely for what they did, since it has become common practice for media to manipulate the public in the guise of providing information.Nor is The Post (or for that matter the rest of media) as powerful yet to actually control what people think (although The Post thinks it is).But media has the ability to control what issues get discussed and those that get ignored, setting a pre-arranged agenda of its own choosing.Media has the power to silence discussion about issues it does not want discussed.This is a kind of slight of hand that happens right under the nose of Joe Blow and is hardly discussed in the trade because nearly every news organization is guilty of it, some worse than others such as Politico, The Hill or The Washington Examiner, and others with a more subtle touch such as the manipulative purple prose of The New York Times or that silly elite magazine, The New Yorker.One of the best examples of how media steered the national discussion is the Parkland shooting where a madman with an automatic weapon killed 17 people.This tragedy happened despite the fact that school officials knew the killer was a problem before this violence occurred and did nothing.The FBI knew about the killer beforehand and did nothing.And when the shooting was underway, local police were ordered not to go into the school and stop the shooter.The Post and other news organizations did not want to discuss the failings of the system for a number of reasons.So, the media steered the story to the gun instead of the killer and the failed system that allowed 17 people to die unnecessarily, rather than the massive failure of a system that is supposed to protect innocent. And after nearly two decades of telling people “if you see something, say something,” and when someone said something, authorities did nothing. This was a tragedy against repeated in the YouTube shooting, when the father of the shooter told police where the shooter was going, and the police didn’t go there.By focusing the story on the gun, the Post and other news organizations allowed liberal groups to attack the NRA, a prominent GOP campaign contributor. The media then in a follow up series of stories showed how gun sales spiked after each shooting, suggesting that “gun nuts” were buying up automatic weapons against the expected back lash to limit gun access.To some degree this is true. People did buy automatic weapons.But what The Post and other media suppressed was the fact that people also bought up massively handguns because they were terrified about the fact that the police and schools – those institutions liberals claim will protect the kids – had completely failed. While the idea of arming teachers isn’t very bright. Media could not afford to go after the FBI, the police or the schools and still remain politically viable to the left.The Post made such a huge deal about defending the FBI against Trump’s accusations that they worked against him in building a bogus Russian conspiracy, that the Post would look stupid in calling the FBI incompetent regarding Parkland.Media could also not scold the cops for failing to be aggressive in going after the shoot when the Post and much of the liberal media had spent the better part of a year supporting Black Lives Matter’s claims that cops were overly aggressive.Media dared not attack the system because it might feed into the fear many in the GOP and the NRA are spreading that the system is unable to protect its adults or kids, and that people might have to defend themselves.In going after the guns, The Post’s objective was to undermine a strong GOP contributor, the NRA, and placate Democrats who would like to find a way to cut into the support in order to win key congressional races in November.This is only one small example of media manipulation of news to steer people into a certain frame of mind.The whole point of framing a story in a specific way is to get people to react in a specific way.In the Parkland case, the strategy worked as democrats managed to orchestrate massive student walkouts across the nation on the heels of the manipulated media coverage.Sometimes, framing stories doesn’t quite work out the way media plans, partly because there are other factors working against the framing, and other groups framing the story of their own ends, with each side using the public as pawns in a massive grab for power.The Post and other media rely on the fact that in most cases the public does not have access to the actual facts.People depend on media to know about what goes on in the world outside their immediate orbits. While a person might know the mayor in a small town, he or she may never even see a congressman or a senator, and certainly know very little about them or other powerful figures such as the president.And when events transpire beyond the borders of their town, they don’t know about it, except through the extremely jaded lens of media.In a small town, most people know about events even before media does.But when it comes to distant events or national issues, people have come to rely on media to inform them.In fact, people have become dependent on media and have come to mistakenly trust media to tell them the truth.Unless someone deliberately seeks out alternative information from other sources (an activity few people in the real world have time to engage in), the only information they get comes from what they read in newspapers or watch on TV or get in a news feed on their smart phones.The Post and other media rely on this, and spoon feed the public angles on news the media outlets deem as the truth.As I said before, the First Amendment guarantees a free press, not an honest one.And The Post lives up to this dishonest legacy, but so does almost every other news outlet.What we get as news isn’t fake, its framed. Relevant facts that might counter the angle the press is selling are often left out in order to create a specific emotional response and to get people to believe the myth that media is selling.Media deals in myth and symbols, not in facts.By limiting people’s access to information, media creates an illusion that serves as truth.The Post is particularly good at this, first planning seeds with slanted and biased headlines (or suggestive briefs) then watering these with more polluted information, and then repeating this skewed take on reality until people come to believe it is authentic.Headlines, tweets, breaking news on TV all serve to plant thoughts in people’s minds – sometimes called priming – creating specific impressions that later slanted news reports build on inside a person’s head.When a person takes in this information, he or she later remembers the original seed so that the slant seems authentic when it is not.This is what made other news organizations so dangerous when they picked up and repeated the slanted stories The Post was publishing.  Many people began thinking that if these organizations were saying the same thing, the slant must be true, unaware or unable to realize that the source of the story was always at heart The Post.Framing as news story comes in two stages.Media selects and limits the facts to fit the agenda it is selling, then starts planting in the public’s consciousness, later publishing additional slanted stories that build on the original lie.And these reports get repeated again and again like the old 45 singles we used to hear on top 40 music stations. After a while, you can’t get the tune or the slant out of your head.The Post’s obsession to paint Trump in a bad light becomes very obvious when you look at the pattern of their news feeds over the last two years, painting Trump at corrupt, or unfit or crazy.This has been a nonstop media campaign that other news organizations repeat and give credibility to. Not all the stories are unreal or completely manipulated. Bad stories about Trump are clearly there to be had. But for an audience with no other source of legitimate information, this is like being trapped in a movie theater being subjected to perpetual assaults on the senses. So that eventually, you come to believe as real whatever media chooses to put on the big screen.The Post and associated media outlets are desperate to control the agenda, creating images that even some of the most well-educated people accept as face, because there is little choice.In many cases, people do not seek alternatives because they’ve been told other media outlets like Fox news spread misinformation – when in fact, all news does.Most people simply accept as fact what they are told by mainstream media, unaware of how they are being manipulated, or not being allowed to view the whole set of facts that might alter the perception media is attempting to create.After enough of this, people simply believe what they are told as truth, and even begin spreading it among themselves.Media’s ability to frame a story comes from three primary places. One, media’s direct access to the news scene or the people, and steering the audience to those facts that support the message media is trying to convey; two, strategic alliances both with political parties and other news outlets so as to make it appear that a slant posed by an organization like The Post is supported by more than just claims made by The Post. Three, support of social and political groups that benefit from the story’s slant – such as anti-gun lobby or Democrats.It is very difficult to fight back against a corrupt media such as The Post.When you attack media, other media rally to its defense, not unlike the AMA does when a doctor is accused of wrong doing.But part of it is because media in general does exactly what The Post does, manipulating people to specific ends and so the last thing media wants is someone to expose the game and reduce the power of press to manipulate its audience.To call what The Post “fake news” is to invite a fight, not just with the post, but all journalists who are either too timid to call for reform or so deeply involved in the game, they’re scared to lose power.Media won’t police itself, and fights anyone outside the industry who tries to.This is why so many rallies to the Post’s defense, knowing if the mighty Post is brought to its knees, so does the questionable practices of a largely corrupted industry called journalism.   

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