I am an avid news reader, the first thing I do in the morning is turn on the news, I have numerous news feeds updating me on my phone, on various occasions I have had the paper deliver to my home and even follow a few news outlets on various media platforms. I love the written word, and like many I had dreams of becoming a wordsmith. Sadly that was not to be my path, and from rereading some of my past post it was probably for the best.
And yet here I am again trying my best to start up a blog. With the intent of being entertaining, vulgar, inappropriate and maybe even a little informative. I have always felt that words have power, sometimes more power than any weapon known to man, and it bothers me to no end when I see the stuff that is passed off these days as ‘Journalism’.
We live in the state of ‘Me First’! This is where news outlet want to be the FIRST to post about the big story, even if means running a story before sources are checked. Anyone remember the fuckery that was aired live back in 2013? This was when the Asiana Flight 214 from Seoul crashed at the San Francisco airport. An intern feed a local Oakland news station incorrect names of the pilot and crew, no….they were given OBVIOUS erroneous, racist joke names that anyone that was not pressed to be FIRST would have seen on contact. Two teenagers and a child died in this horrible accident and all the media outlets were out to be was FIRST. This greed for the thirst of being FIRST happens on the regular, but most of it nowhere close to the newscast of Flight 214. These days most of the Me First movement consist of semi-truths and click-bait articles, the editors seemed to have learned at least something from past mistakes.
Proof to this fact is the picture I have set as the featured photo on this post. While doing my best at being the multi-tasker I say that I am on my resume; I have one eye on my desk job and the other scanning the drivel that passes as news. My eyes land on this article: ‘Aviation Experts See Links in 2 Boeing Crashes’ from AP. Ok, a semi trusted news outlet has an article I want to read!
Nope! The article was about two sentences in length that literally said that aviation experts have found links to the two crashes of the Boeing 737 Max………Yes that was the whole article, which to me was just a place holder for the Associated Press so they could cry ‘Me First’. To me this was nothing short of a click bait advertisement. And if you go and google: ‘Aviation Experts See Links in 2 Boeing Crashes’ you will find a much more robust article with all the workings of actual journalism. The new version of their original post does not really shed too much light on what they found but at least I felt more informed about what is going on and actually got what all news articles should have: Factual Information.
I am not one to poke at another person’s writing, I am a hack at best, but I put serious effort into my post and fact check everything. I will never say I am perfect but then again I am just a momo typing out my thoughts for shits and giggles. I am at the point now that I will not even comment or click on anything that is listed as ‘Breaking News’ until 48 hours has past. I feel that is enough time for the ‘Me First’ honeymoon vibes to die off and the actual facts start coming out. I am even add this idea to my categories, it happens so often I think this could be a regular thing I post about.
It is time to end this rant, I was going to go to be early but I had to get this out of my system. I have been thinking about this ever since I feel for the click bait article. I want to get up tomorrow at a decent time so lets just end this here,
So till next post; journal often, journal more and take pictures of everything.