One of the most notable things I’ve noticed since mov­ing to the United States from Europe and specif­i­cally Eng­land is good media… or rather, the lack thereof.

I per­son­ally think the prob­lem is the pseudo-xenophobic pre­de­ter­mi­na­tion of the gen­eral media. Sim­ply put, instead of approach­ing some­thing to report on it effec­tively to the point that the gen­eral pub­lic is edu­cated on the sub­ject, the media — neutered as they are in recent times — sim­ply does not approach these sub­jects because they explain the true vision of a world out­side our own… an uglier world we, as the peo­ple, do not need to see appar­ently. This deci­sion is not ours, but it is made by the peo­ple who con­trol the infor­ma­tion. Infor­ma­tion, as always, is power — whether it’s what you know, or what you sim­ply do not.

The media decides instead to focus on the generic, the unim­por­tant and often down­right ridicu­lous. What fruit is on sale, where you can get the newest and fancier car and ulti­mately what the celebri­ties are doing. Celebri­ties, you can con­clude, are the media-perpetuated ‘dis­trac­tion’ that those who seek to cen­sor us use to such a degree it’s almost suffocating.

What colour is Timberlake’s hair? Where is Matt Lauer? What did Kanye West say when he didn’t get any VMA awards? You don’t know? Oh my… you need to pay atten­tion to the honest-recessive news cor­po­ra­tions who seek to imbue their pub­lic image with these often unin­ter­est­ing facets of west­ern society.

The basic point is, the truth is out there. We can find it, but we have to search for it. The inter­net is a likely spouse in this endeav­our (unless you live in China and want to know what your gov­ern­ment is doing, some­thing in which Microsoft and Google help to cen­sor and con­trol via China-specific agree­ments to help the com­mu­nists keep their peo­ple under the ham­mer). Another is out­side sources. We can use the BBC to keep abreast of what is really hap­pen­ing out­side our walls — I men­tion them because, in all the media-related com­mu­ni­ties the BBC s still the world’s best in my view. Heck, even news­pa­per (broad­sheet not tabloid) can tell us a lot of recent events.

We can find out what’s hap­pen­ing (if we want to know) by look­ing for it. It’s just unfor­tu­nate that in a soci­ety tht prides itself on equal­ity and free­dom of speech we are con­stantly, as a peo­ple, put down and strapped up by our lack of gen­eral knowl­edge when it comes to the world beyond our front step. Chil­dren are still starv­ing, women raped and men mur­dered… noth­ing has changed beyond what chan­nel four or five tell you. The planet is still in decay and our blind­ness — vol­un­tary or not — is still a damn­ing trait to incur because we sim­ply lis­ten to what we’re being told.

The next time we see some­thing com­ing up on our ‘respected’ news chan­nel that dis­plays noth­ing more than a want for glam­our, glitz and the usual crap that comes with it turn the damn chan­nel or sim­ply shut it off. That crap belongs on E! — a chan­nel that iron­i­cally does a good job of giv­ing a true vista of what it’s demo­graph­i­cal audi­ence is look­ing for. Your news should be telling you what’s going on, so that you may want to act and do some­thing to help… or even to have a view and vocalise it.

But wait, I have just realised… that’s the point in isn’t it. They don’t want us to have an opin­ion or act. The last thing a crum­bling government-controlled media needs is some­body speak­ing up and say­ing, “TELL US THE TRUTH!”