Pondering With a Purpose - Venting

Venting
Has anyone watched the news lately?  When I was growing up, I was taught that a journalists were important to the sanctity of democracy.   A free and unfettered press was a lynch pin to maintaining integrity of our whole political system.  To a journalist like Walter Cronkite, his integrity was his greatest trait.  News was about reporting the 5W's and getting to the heart of the story through reporting the facts to the general populace.  Media played the role of guardians of democracy.  In this new corporate media environment, it is about editorializing and edu-taining.  It is about shaping the thoughts and ideas of its audience rather providing a source of information so that others may come to their own conclusions.  Media is about titillation and conflict as opposed to being about information.  
In fairness, there has always been bias in media.  If human beings are involved, there will be bias.  There was however, a pretense of trying to be 'fair and balanced'.  That pretense has now been completely disregarded.  There is no news, there is editorial.  The corporate media structure is outwardly attempting to manipulate their audience.  Where integrity was once the lynch pin to media; it is now easily traded for a few points.  sadly, there are enough in the media that are willing to trade their integrity for ratings points that one must question all now.  The fourth estate which was a once pit bull has become a poodle who will turn over its belly for a scratch from its corporate entity owners.  The media is not part of the solution but rather part of the problem.  Perhaps we need this guy more than ever... 

but I am sure the corporate masters would ensure he met the same fate the character did in the movie.  The media which used to be our guardians from those that would use their power to corrupt and exploit have become the very thing they use to protect us from.  Sad.   Thanks to Brenda for hosting Pondering With A Purpose.  It is a great hop that I encourage as many as possible to participate in.