Melanie hosts Truthful Tuesday: https://sparksfromacombustiblemind.wordpress.com/2022/07/12/truthful-tuesday-7-12-2022/
So my question today will be:
What is your honest opinion of the news and how it is shared right now?
Are we being informed or fed Pablum designed to keep us uninformed and in the dark?
(Pablum: noun LITERARY bland or insipid intellectual fare, entertainment, etc.; pap.) I won’t lie and say I knew what this meant! 😅
I think the news is a disgusting forum for people to spread the information they want people to hear without caring about the entire truth or whose lives are being affected. Before meeting David and starting to understand politics, I never knew that different television stations supported different views of our government. I thought the news was the news, and yes I know there is always bias, but I never knew how far it went. Some nights we watch the news and it is so “one direction” that you get sick of listening. In another moment you are shown horrible tragedy. I think we broadcast what is going to cause the biggest reaction, regardless of content. I do think it is good to let the world know what is going on around them. I mean, without the news we wouldn’t know anything about other countries unless we knew people living there. When was the last time you sat down because you really wanted to listen to what the meteorologist has to say about every day life? Gas prices in the US is on for lets say, 30 seconds at best. What is being done about it? Are there solutions? Who ever works on that? Honestly, I believe Ukraine would be unknown to more of the world than anyone would like to admit.
About keeping us in the dark, I don’t think that regular citizens should know confidential information from Homeland Security, for example. There are people who are paid to keep the country safe. If it was supposed to be public knowledge then it would be. Too many people get these weird ideas from the news. You can’t tell me that some innocent, or crazy person, just came up with the notion that a 3D printer would be the best way to make a real gun. Yes, there are people who know these things and people who have details about it but for the crazies who don’t have that information, why give it out? My biggest issue with the news, and yes I know it is sort of changing, is that these mass shootings and horrible crimes seem to be sensationalized. I think putting them on the news is informative but to play the scenes over and over, day after day, makes it seem like a real big thing, that someone who isn’t in their right, common-sense mind, might think is kind of cool that “so and so” got to be on TV so much. That is just my opinion of course.
Stine Writing 
Excellent points Christine! I started saying that about the sensationalism when they started to make serial killers and murderers ‘news’. Sure people ought to know IF THEY”RE directly concerned, that so and so killed ninety people over the course of twenty years, but why make them celebrities? It has morphed into this ‘it’s cool to do a mass shooting” trend that so horrifies everyone rational. When Columbine happened, I remember thinking “Why are they making this such a cause? it was tragic and brutal and horrifying yes, but long before that kid was even thought of, people were bullying other people. Some kids just got targeted. You fought your own battles in them days though. Not saying that bullying ought to be allowed, and in my opinion anyone who does it ought to be publicly shamed somehow (fantasy thinking). But the people concerned – the bully, the victim, teachers and parents of the parties concerned are the only ones who ought to be aware of it. Because it’s a private matter, not a sensational 15 minutes of fame moment. But the media made that sort of thing ‘cool’ and now look where we are!
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Melanie, many years ago my son was having problems at school. It took a while to know that it was bullying, although he had fallen victim in other schools before. He was a bit odd, odd in the sense that he saw life in black and white. When he was a little boy he wasn’t into farting and being gross. He liked to imagine time machines and who knows what else! But in his final year in middle school, he had a really hard time. Seems the bullies were actually his friends. Of course, it was taken lightly. Well, it’s a very long story but right at the end of the year, there was a school dance. One of the girls he had known since moving to our town came to him and told him she was being bullied. Turns out he was bullied by the same kid, and not bullied like the “friends” were doing. Anyhow, he went and approached the kid. Another boy sucker punched the bully and when he was down on the ground my son kicked him once. Well, a bunch of parents apparently grabbed my son and it turned into my son assaulting this kid. He got a week of inschool suspension which he went to without argument. Skip ahead about a week and my son came home and said that they told him he couldn’t go to 8th grade graduation. I called because I was so mad. The other boy, that threw the first punch, was NOT told this. Anyhow, I went in fuming. So they told me they were afraid that my son was going to show up at graduation with a weapon. What!?!?!? They sent the state police to our house to see if his windows were “blacked out”, whatever that meant. Well, after that my son didn’t want to go to graduation. We got an attorney to make sure he didn’t have this crap entering high school. One of the things the police said was that the school had given them a picture of my son and his haircut….yes his haircut….looked like Adam Lanzas and that is why they were worried. In addition, they were concerned because he went to inschool suspension without being sad or angry. He had actually liked being left alone to get work done. So in the end, they said that he was a threat. It affected him horribly which went on to suicide attempts and other garbage. It wasn’t fair. He had never even gotten in trouble at school even ONE time! I still cry when I think of it. I still cry because I feel like now that he is gone those were so many years that got wasted because people made assumptions. But how many school shootings happen that people say the kid SHOWED signs? My son didn’t show signs.
Thanks for listening.
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The news is shoved to the sidelines, it’s sensationalism that we see nowadays
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