Thoughts on mainstream media

Scattered thoughts on mainstream/corporate media.

I grew up reading New York Times, watching TV news. I graduated from New York University with a B.A. in journalism in 2005.

I’ve since written for New York Times, New York Magazine, Vice, and other mainstream media outlets, as recently as this year (so my analysis in this post is extra credible, in my view—I’m not writing out of bitterness from being excluded).

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At age 41, I think the worldview promulgated by mainstream media—also known as corporate media—is simplistic, tragic, disempowering, destructive, and bleak.

Regular consumption of corporate/mainstream media, which politics-wise is mostly liberal (New York Times, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Vice, CNN, etc.), seems to lead to the conflict-generating, blame-oriented belief that the main problem in the world is that there are bad people out there doing bad things. Conservatives, “trolls,” “far-right” people, Trump and RFK Jr. supporters, terrorists, insane people, racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, anti-vaxxers, “truthers” of all kinds, and “conspiracy theorists”—if these people were eliminated, the world would be fine, is the message.

In reality, the main problem seems to be corporations, which are constantly committing crimes that harm people and Earth—not out of maliciousness or misanthropy but because corporations are existentially required to grow at a competitive rate every quarter-year. If they don’t sufficiently grow, they shrink and eventually stop existing. Governments are supposed to regulate corporations, but the profit motive has been so powerful that corporations now control governments.

Meanwhile, mainstream media can’t uninhibitedly report on corporate crimes because corporations control mainstream media via ad money and direct ownership.

(Another problem on Earth besides corporations seems to be the Deep State, but I don’t need to discuss that in this post).

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In my view, mainstream media is the biggest disseminator of disinformation and misinformation, in part because it parrots governments and corporations.

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Corporations, governments, and media destroy the lives of whistleblowers when the information that is uncovered is too consequential to be allowed out. The whistleblower is labeled a “conspiracy theorist” (a term popularized by the CIA to dismiss doubters of the official story re JFK’s assassination), a money-wanting sociopath (Andrew Wakefield), an attention-seeker, and/or a liar. Or they are framed for a crime (Judy Mikovits), assassinated (William Colby), or just ignored (William Thompson).

This contributes to the comforting, false worldview that corporations and governments are doing their best—and doing a good job—at caring for everyone and the main problem on Earth is that there are terrible people out there, ruining things for everyone else.

This worldview leads to resentment and self-righteousness. People get outraged and spend their time roiling in Trump Derangement Syndrome—which seems to be caused almost entirely by mainstream media—or being upset at gullible, unserious “conspiracy theorists” for indirectly killing people by tricking other gullible people into not getting vaccinated or not going on statins or not using sunscreen, etc.

Corporations love this worldview—it distracts from their crimes and puts the blame on the very people working to uncover and stop the crimes.

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People can find specific examples of all these things in my other writing, especially my autism essay and my forthcoming book Self Heal.

Mainstream media’s message on health is that disease is mainly genetic/unavoidable and that the only thing to do about autism, diabetes, dementia, etc., is to take pharmaceutical drugs to treat the symptoms. This leads to hellish ends of lives, with people on five-plus drugs in hospital beds, blaming nature itself for their misery instead of corporations and their toxic products, such as glyphosate.

The corporate, media-assisted distortion of reality goes beyond health to cosmology, physics, climatology, UFOlogy, extraterrestrials, history, energy, technology, space, and virology—mainstream media distorts nearly every topic in a reductive, anti-nature, pro-corporation/government way.

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It took me a long time to realize how deep into lies we are. It’s a gradual process that’s ongoing. It began in middle school, when I started listening to independent punk music, which helpfully taught me to distrust corporations, governments, and media.

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One thing Trump has done that I like is his non-stop criticism of mainstream media, constantly calling it—accurately, in my view—“fake news.” Casting doubt on mainstream media seems good for reducing pain and suffering in the world.

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Joe Rogan has done a lot too, in decreasing the power and influence of mainstream media (and thus decreasing the amount of misinformation/disinformation in the world and decreasing the ability of corporations to lie to people and commit crimes).

Other podcasters have done a lot too. Podcasters often interview scientists and doctors and whistleblowers that don’t get coverage in mainstream media.

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These days, I get most of my information directly from scientists and independent researchers via interviews with them and from their nonfiction books and from their essays and articles and tweets and scientific papers.

Nonfiction books are good sources of information, but only the ones that are aware of the biases I’ve discussed in this post and offer perspectives that mainstream media does not offer. Many of these books aren’t in bookstores but are on Amazon.

See what I’ve read, books-wise, here. I read mostly nonfiction these days. Somewhat related note: Contemporary fiction that is not heavily influenced by by mainstream media, promulgating its worldview, seems rare.

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Thank you for reading my scattered thoughts on mainstream media.

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