The Media Matrix
February 6, 2008 by Laura | Trackback URI
There are “truths” that most people accept unquestioningly. For example, rich and powerful corporations are the beneficiaries of tax loopholes that allow them to avoid paying their “fair share,” the Tet Offensive proved Vietnam was a quagmire and an inevitable loss, and New Yorkers permitted, by their apathy, the murder of Kitty Genovese.
As it turns out, Exxon Mobil alone pays as much tax as literally half the country. Conservatives have long known about the media’s culpability in the loss of Vietnam, but this article is a timely reminder. And the Kitty Genovese story, which I always believed and referenced just yesterday in Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn and Secondary Crime Scenes turns out to be equally untrue.
It’s very sobering to think how much of our lives is shaped by the media. Even people who invest the time needed to be well-informed are usually forced to rely on the “facts” they feed us. With the rise of the blogosphere we’re learning just how shaky that reality really is. Recently we learned that Yassir Arafat faked his blood donation - with full media complicity - on 9/12. There’s good reason to believe that the event on which the Palestinian intifada was based is a lie. Milbloggers and independent journalists have documented a very different picture of Iraq than that portrayed by the media. Patterico documents lie after lie - even the most generous person can’t honestly call this demonstrable pattern “errors” anymore - in the Los Angeles Times.
It’s a bit like realizing you’re living in the Matrix when you realize it goes back much further than Tet and Kitty Genovese. Remember Walter Duranty? How about over a century of global climate change hype? The question isn’t when did the press stop being honest brokers of information. The question is when will they start?
h/t Instapundit, Instapundit and Five Feet of Fury
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