What has happened to the news. At one time the news press referred to itself as 'the fourth estate', a reference to the three estates of the nation, the government, The Monarchy and the church The news and commpent journals assigned to themselves the task of objectively and impartilly holding the others to account by investigating the background to events and reporting the facts. No more it seems.

There are no journalists now, neither the reporters in the feild, a job my Dad did for years, following tips from stringers and leads from rumour and gossip, digging into the background of stories, finding out the who, what, where, when, why and reporting it without embellishment, nor are there the independent commentators, the columnists and freelancers whose task was to analyse news stories in the wider context, join the dots and ensure an alternative to government propaganda was presented to the voters; today news organisations are simply broadcasting or printing whatever they are given by the anonymous "sources" of government and corporate public relations departments.

They show no curiosity, no suspicion,. simply swallowing everything they are spoon fed, too credulous to be real journalist they simply provide sensational titbits for a cusomer base with an ever shortening attention span. These are really end times for the MSM unless things change and soon.

True journalists about as relevant in this world of political and corporate control freakery as cordwainer (a worker in Cordovan leather), a higgler (a travelling buyer and seller of dairy products) a pargeter (an ornamental plasterer) or a fletcher (maker of arrows) These skills, trades, professions and <a href="http://www.worldthroughthelens.com/family-history/old-occupations.php">hundreds more</a> have been exterminated ... along with the need for truth in media. Since 9-11, all over the world there has been a concerted and determined effort to target and remove all those who would stay true to the principles of the reorter's craft.

Just think for a moment of the enormous effort expended by governments and mainstream media to suppress discission of the all too obvious flaws in the official narrative surrounding that event. Or, over several decades, to silence those who dared to question the rispible official account of the assassination of president Kennedy.

And, to raise up in its place, a raft of imitators who style themselves reporters, but need have no accountability, nor do they take the trouble to ever leave their computer screens to go and "follow" a story, their job being to simply rephrase official press releases, tailoring their hackneyed accounts to the prejudices of the intended audiences.

What most people are unaware of is that this faux-journalism is a direct consequence of the centralisation of power on the seat of government (Washington, London, Brussels, Paris etc.) and of wealth (control rather than ownership of) in the hands of global corporations and financial institutions. When leaders and academics start to talk of the need for a world government, they cannot be thinking of the interests of ordinary people who work hard for a living.

At the time of writing The European Union is failing simply because it tried to merge the interests of Sicilian almond growers and Greek sheep farmers with those of Urianium miners in Kiruna, northern Sweden or the indusrtial workers of Germany under a single control point. Realists would have seen the sheer impossibility of creating a one size fits all economy and culture to serve these vastly different groups.

The ideologically diven elitists arrogantly assumed that by controlling everything they could impose their cultural Marxist vision on the world, and have controlled mainstream media because news organisations were controlled by the corporate and financial elite. But the public saw through the managed news outpuut they werre being offered and turned elsewhere. Now it falls to new media, alt_media, to challenge the special interest groups controlling all communication channels and oppose the control freaks.

It can be, and has been, argued however that alt_media represents just more special interests with even less accountability. And the defenders of liberty are finding some unexpected allies. "There is no longer any attempt to maintain the illusion that makes events capable of adopting the force of news reporting that provides an accurate reflection of reality. Only the medium can make an event - whatever the contents, whether they are conformist or subversive. AND - There are no more media in the literal sense of the word - that is, of a mediating power between one reality and another, between one state of the real and another", billionaire Peter Thiel said in announcing an initiative to support independent media.

The role of news media then has changed from 'mediating' between events and the reader, to acting as a narcotic, medicating the reader against reality with trivia, celebrity gossip, and concocted storylines customised to appeal to the target audience in order that the central authority can control the narratives and thus shape opinion. "The Deep State, the Shadow Government, call it what you will, has usurped the role of "the media" in informing the public and "speaking truth to power" to borrow a phrase from the BBC, an organisation which has abandoned that principle.

Likewise the state has re-defined the terms "democracy" and "free speech" to serve it's own ends, and is now picking off the social media tools which had formerly belonged to the user community as a network of contributors, thus relegating "the media" to the role of a harem eunuch, a jongleur, an entertainer. All of this has been meekly accepted by a web addicted audience which has forsaken critical thinking skills to a cabal of experts and gurus determined to put the lie to that old adage - 'you can't fool all of the people, all of the time. What a lot of people do not understand about web techology is its ability to make doing just that very easy.

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