I love America. These, however, are treacherous days—for me, increasingly frightening days for our country. Some call me old fashioned, but I love the newspaper. A free press is, it seems to me, necessary for a democratic society (note, I did not say an impartial press—the press has never been objective or impartial). This last week the Lancaster paper went from 2 papers to one. I believe that the paper is doomed. More people are getting their information from online sources. Expectations for web-news (or web-anything) is different. I expect anything that I find on the web to be free—unless I want to pay for it.
I found free news on the web. . . .
After reading the article, I pondered it, something did not seem right. I went searching. The article was very positive concerning the issue it was exploring (VERY POSITIVE). As I looked more closely, the article was written by the chief executive of the firm who was involved in the issue being explored. Hummmmmmmm…… It looked just like a story in a paper. It was really just a human interest story on an entity written by the chief executive of that very entity. Yuck! It seems that this free press is, well, less than free. Just as our ability to think rationally seems to be drying up (remember we are in the midst of a project that is speculating that we are able to spend our way out of debt), the media is increasingly becoming—not an advocate for a position (I would be ok with that whether it was FOX or CNN) but a infomercial meant to sell you on something.
