Editor’s Note: Indian River News is not responsible for the contents of this Editorial. The author has agreed to assume all responsibility for its’ contents.
There is little doubt that the local Press Journal/ TCPalm, digitally, has shrunk over the last generation. So have most “rags”. Due to massive shifts in the technology culture, higher costs of paper, ink or the gas prices that affect the distribution of our “news”, print journalism has a serious infection. Maybe it’s just that folks don’t read anything anymore. My take is a little different.
Rush Limbaugh repeated a survey from 2016 that showed only one newspaper across the nation, including the top 20, endorsed Donald Trump for President. What I would have given to see a giant zoom of the editors of those major lefty mouthpieces, watching Trump hand out the Medal of Freedom that night to Rush, during a State of the Union address. I’ve never seen apoplexy up close, but if those images were zoomed across the meta verse in hi def, I’d collect it for wall art at my house. The problem is that the national media has taken control of the Democrat Party, just like the cartels have taken over willing border crossers. Trafficking? Willing “fellow travelers.” The Party of Clinton, Obama, and Pelosi would not exist without the broadcasters and the “rags”. By 2020, throw in high-tech co-conspirators Facebook, Google, and Twitter, so we can see fully, our adversaries.
However, these days we see deterioration of newspapers, with one folding weekly in states far and wide. Just this week my favorite propaganda sheet, The Washington Post said goodbye to its “Outlook” section, which turns out to be their “Opinion” pages. The editors wept at its demise, as if thousands of folks would hold a vigil outside the building in D.C. In a city that voted 98% for Hillary and 97% for Biden, the gathering could have served as a death knell to American journalism, if the car jackers didn’t scare them off the street. Similarly, our own Press Journal let loose it’s Wednesday “Newsweekly” section, which ironically contained more news than the other 60 pages. More weeping.
Yet all is not lost. We still have newspaper news for the Treasure Coast. Just not all that useful. With all the razor edged acumen our scribes could muster, we see the headlines in HUGE PRINT on the front page Friday. MIGRANTS SENT TO MARTHA’S VINEYARD! 8,000 illegals just crossed the Texas border that morning with no vaccination cards, no money, no ID and no thoughts of being a “migrant”. They were here to stay, and the Press Journal follows the leash of their corporate overseers, USA Network, and falls for the story of 50 military aged men wandering around Obama Island. “Kidnapping” the left screamed. Good story, but where is a story on Biden going to the Queen’s funeral? The huge Earthquake on Taiwan, the Chinese nuclear build up?
Not at all like the relevant front page headline on Thursday: “DeSantis Mum on Fla. Funds’ Source”, which mumbled something about the money the Governor was disbursing for transportation infrastructure was actually Joe’s money. Not nasty Ron’s. The headline was a piece about something that was NOT said. And the story came from a news conference DeSantis gave LAST MONTH. Is this worthy of our news hunger? What about Lindsey Graham going on about a national abortion law, deadly floods in Kentucky, drought in India or the lack of hurricanes here so far? Instead we have, “Trump openly embraces QAnon”, 09/18/2022.
Inside the Depressed Journal’s Commentary Page, lies scores of USA Today moles that have bylines from The Palm Beach Post, The Tallahassee Tattler, The Sarasota Sniveler or the Jacksonville Jiver. Today’s non-story told the sad tale of dictionaries being held back from some Sarasota schools for no good reason. The reader couldn’t really find the answer due to the snarky approach of the Palm Beach Post writer who is tangentially scolding the Parents’ Rights crowd. His take is that the word “boob’ was one of three definitions of the word in the yet unnamed dictionary, so the Rotary Club couldn’t donate the books to the desperate students. Who is the boob here? But today’s front page of the Press Journal was a new low for lower class journalism. Underneath the absolutely useless headline, “Covid Cases Decline” showed garishly decorated bookcases inside a Storm Grove Middle School classroom. This boob of a teacher took the “Stop the Woke Act” way too literally and red taped all the books she had ever acquired, and placed a “Library Closed” sign over each section as the Parents’ night attendees could all gasp with feigned outrage. She’ll show them Moms for Liberty folks.
The news of the day is too important to our democracy to ignore its devolution. Even here on the Treasure Coast where the usual blue skies rule, and “nary is heard, a discouraging word’ and the manatees and turtles idly cavort all day, we can’t allow these sculptures of our culture to succeed in dumbing us down. There is trouble right here in River City, since more than ever we are connected intimately to the world around us. You can stare at your navel, or at your fishing line, but for others, well chosen news stories should guide our awareness. The legacy media are not here to serve us. And it’s certainly not what the New York Times says it is, “All the news that’s fit to print”. It’s motto should be “All the Malarkey that Fits”.
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