In my day job, I have to look at the news every day and track it. I’m an analyst and trends and events can have huge impacts on my client’s businesses. So, everyday, I read the news and select a few stories to repost on the news section of our website/portal. A few years ago, finding news was relatively easy. CNN, BBC, Bloomberg – all these outlets published the news. Then, slowly but inexorably, I started to see that news was increasingly becoming opinion – often politically-biased opinion to boot. Around that time, the idea of ‘false news’ started to get talked about increasingly. I now think ‘false news’ is opinion masquerading as news. Of course, once the charge of false news was levelled people become keen to defend their opinion and so we were then introduced to so-called fact checking services…
A fact checking service I have discovered is anything but … it is a group with an opinion and a way to promote it. Facts are no longer relevant as in today’s society, it seems beliefs, feelings and agendas are where it is at. So, when an outlet starts using a fact-checking service, you can bet they are publishing opinion not news and need to validate their opinion over someone else’s. It’s great marketing but pure bollocks when it comes to establishing news.
My list of news sources slowly diminished over the last few years. I will not read CNN (Crap News Network), nor the BBC (British Bullshit Corp). Bloomberg (Gloomberg) is now a politically-biased ‘news’ organization especially since the silly candidacy of Bloomberg himself and his news organization’s admission of deliberate bias that followed. Reuters had been the last bastion of half decent factual news until recently and now it too has succumbed publishing opinion pieces purporting to be news and backing them up with a biased fact checking service.
Dear media. I want NEWS. I do not wish for the opinion of a 26-year old graduate of a left wing, post modernist indoctrination establishment giving me their parroted ideological views. I’m not interested in PC and trendy thinking. I want facts. It is easy to provide facts – balanced facts if you want to. Black and white. No opinion, no writer bias, no silly fact checking by right or left leaning services that are riddled with ideological opinions and biases.
And, while I am at it. Please do not tell me you are on the side of Science in a ‘news’ article. Science has no side as science is in the business of creating hypotheses which are then subject to outright criticism. Science is not in the business of proof. Certainly not ideological proof.