I know that there are a lot of events going on in the world that deserve our attention and that are more pressing, however when days like today come along and pass by unnoticed it makes me wonder what will be forgotten about today, what will be remembered and what will be miss-remembered.
We have Fake News all about us and now that the fairness doctrine has met it's maker the local Corporations posing as news broadcasters are taking on their ancestors mantle of trading the truth for headlines and news for "stories" .. Pages of propaganda where editors , who are to cowardly to run for office themselves see it as their sacred duty to manipulate the world into the images of their paying advertisers.
When I was in High School , Many years ago now, my teacher in language arts asked the class, " What is the purpose of a NEWSPAPER?"
Some said Information, Some said to report the news and defend our right to "know"...
I raised my hand and said
1 "To Sell Newspapers and to Sell Advertisements ...." I did not know about communist infiltration and fascist manipulation to move the people to BUY or Sell or Fight or Die for deeper causes back then... but I touched on a nerve...
Watching the headlines and reading the paper back then, was to me, just a curiosity.... I was more interested in baseball..
Yellow Journalism.... AKA FAKE NEWS. has been around for quite a while..
REMEMBER THE MAINE to HELL with SPAIN... cries of William Randoph Hearst and that famed Mr Pulitzer as they took a disaster of complete horror, where over 260 Americans Soldiers quickly lost their lives on this Date back in 1898. ( Three months Before Spain Declared War.. on the USA.)
According to the national archives Only 90 of the 350 men on board the USS Maine at the time of the explosion survived.
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1998/spring/spanish-american-war-1.html
PBS Tells it this way:
"Led by newspaper owners William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, journalism of the 1890s used melodrama, romance, and hyperbole to sell millions of newspapers--a style that became known as yellow journalism. ... But it was the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor that gave Hearst his big story--war."
According to The History Channel website: “Hearst and Pulitzer devoted more and more attention to the Cuban struggle for independence, at times accentuating the harshness of Spanish rule or the nobility of the revolutionaries, and occasionally printing rousing stories that proved to be false,” the office states. “This sort of coverage, complete with bold headlines and creative drawings of events, sold a lot of papers for both publishers.”
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-american-war-yellow-journalism-hearst-pulitzer
I am not saying that Spain did not need to leave Cuba or that the USA should have not gotten involved, that is another study altogether, what I am concerned with the high and holy attitude that the NEWS MEDIA tries to hide behind when , as far as I can tell, nothing has changed. THEY ARE ALL ABOUT SELLING Newspapers and shaping public opinion to their, and their advertisers will. And using the deaths of hundreds of Soldiers who may very well have died die to an accidental explosion of a magazine on the ship to do it is disgusting.
Oh and then to HIDE behind the 1st Amendment and anonymous sources ..
Frederick Remington, who was hired By Hearst to go to CUBA and create sensational pictures the events in Cuba told the News Paper Owner
"Everything is quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return." ... to which the News Paper Titan wrote back ’You furnish the pictures, I’ll provide the war!’
and they give these jokers a PULITZER prize for their clever craft....
Let us bow our heads and remember February 15th 1898 as the Day 260+ Americans were killed on the USS MAINE.. and let us also bow our heads at the death of a Free and HONEST PRESS that died along with them...
And Remember the MAINE...
