The media coverage of events has a religious bias. The criteria for newsworthy events is based on what impedes the overall growth of the human species. These impediments take the natural forms of war and lesser forms of violence, disease, and very bad weather. That is all the “news” is really about. If something threatens us or some of us, we want to know about it. Anything else is at best less newsworthy.
Why is the news biased this way? Is it a collectively unconscious drive to further or dominance over the world by learning from our mistakes? So much human effort is aimed at protecting and increasing the population. But aren’t there already far too many of us on the planet?
The weather, diseases, and violence only occur as natural, necessary checks and balances to the global human overpopulation crisis. That is to say, almost all the events reported by all the media are the result of the rampant overpopulation and overconsumption of one species, ours. If these events weren’t happening, then the laws of nature would be such that all life would grow at a ridiclious rate like influenza and its sheer abundance and proliferation would make life and the struggle for life meaningless. So, events in the media are a reflection of a human, not a non-human catastrophe-being that there are far too many of us, given the size of our planet. Moreover, it is a catastrophe not for us, but for the planetary biosphere, including all the other plants and animals with whom we share limited resources.
If the plants and animals had news media, it would be biased in a way that is antithetical to the bias of our media. That which is newsworthy would be anything that results in a substantial increase in the population of humans: peace, prosperity, medicine. Their news would serve the purpose of educating them on how to better limit the devastating effects of this global epidemic called humanity.
The problem is that news stations are businesses. They run the stories that will sell so instead of the purpose being to inform us they’re keeping us there to watch the commercials 'cause that were the money is. I thought about this when I watch the news one time and I get to hear what’s all the hot items this holiday.
PBS is pretty biased, too, depending upon what part of the country you live in. The only station I listen to in my car is MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) and they don’t display a lot of editorial bias, but they don’t have much news or talk, just classical music. Of course, the Prairie Home Companion (Garrison Keeler of Lake Woebegone Days fame) is pretty left-leaning.
Still, PBS is very very liberal in much of the country.
‘The’ media? Look closely - the media isn’t one entity…
Hardly…
It is based on a multitude of different forces that are constantly subject to review…
Well, the Reuters site has recently added a ‘natural disasters’ link on its sidebar, but to identify all media as having the same agenda is ludicrous…
By what measure?
Yeah, those superbugs that only exist because they’ve mutated to cope with the disinfectants used in hospitals are just part of the natural compensation, because nature is really in balance, isn’t it?
By what measure?
By what measure (both the ‘abundance’ and the 'meaningless’ness)?
Again, by what measure?
Plants and animals do have media, or at least have methods of communicating over distance…
Now you’ve flipped and seem to want us to increase the population even more despite the fact that we’re apparently an epidemic. Your post is very confused…
I meant that from the perspective of other species, the greatest threat to their survival would be human prosperity, and so this would be what is most newsworthy to them.
By a religious bias I meant the subjective “good” and “evil” value judgements that (the majority) of the media ascribe to events.
I guess I was trying to make the argument that it’s mostly all meaningless and superflous, a philosophical point of view anyway; it is much more entertainement than something that is crucially important to anyone and everyone. And I mean this philosophically- all media. Not that it should be done away with; on the contrary, this “real” entertainement feeds our souls in many ways. But it’s helpful to be very aware of the nature of the biases of the media, especially their branding of what is good and evil. As a purelely secular natural environmental and necessary check and balance to human overpopulation, I don’t believe disasters are evil at all. Nor am I evil for thinking this.