By Michael Skywood Clifford.
There is now an obvious realisation that most Western news outputs are spinning the truth. We have all – globally – suspected for decades that there was something not quite right, but people feel insecure about conspiracy theories, especially their own. We are now realising the stark truth: the news is being manipulated. Consequently our news media is being myopically observed by many of the public and getting derided with contempt and ridicule. And more disturbing for our masters it is switching people off and people are switching if off.
The newspapers that come out of Britain are full of basic news events – of which much is accurate – but the whys and wherefores of these events as explained in these papers is often utter claptrap. Their analysis is all wrong. And then there is the presentation of trivia they offer us and the omission of important events they fail to report.
Consider the Guardian. Some investigative journalists who work for the Guardian are fantastic. As a result culprits are banged to rights. But unfortunately most of the Guardian could be produced by Tony Blair and the Tory headquarters. This is a paper that is sold to the lefty middle class, but it's a joke – it pretends to be left – and then tells us all to vote for Nick Clegg. (And I cannot bear it's graphic layout or typeface!)
Personally I would rather read the Torygraph (The Daily Telegraph). At least with the Telegraph you know who you are dealing with. And the Torygraph's business pages are the most accurate of the whole press – that's not saying much because they missed the credit crunch – designed to be read by the city. The financial pundits have some smidgeon of knowledge.
The British newspaper press are always saying that newspapers are dying. I do not think this is true. Think of the profits. These papers are sold from Accrington to Delhi, from New York to Paris! I think the rumour of their demise is deliberate misinformation. One post master told me he could not get enough Sunday papers. There was a restriction on numbers that he could get. So why is that?
The axiom of mass media newspapers is propaganda. As a result newspapers will never close down. But if you make out the newspaper industry is dead, then it stops others creating newspapers. Why would anyone go into an industry that is dying? Clever strategy eh? The established broadsheets and red tops also make phenomenal profits in terms of international advertising. A major cost must be delivery, but they probably have some cuddly international cartel on that, which no one else can join. But at about £13 a week, The Torygraph (for example) at daily consumption receives about £52 per reader a month just from cash sales, so they are not doing that bad. Some phone service providers do far worse than that.