We've all had a moment (or series of them) where we realized that there were soft magic hammers and pulleys operating behind the scenes to gently influence and persuade us. For me, it started when I was around 12 or 13 and came from a relative one or two times removed that was a musician by trade, but part anthropologist and philosopher who was just trying his crap theories on anyone who would listen. Mixed in all of the bull, were some nuggets that cracked some of the straight-line doctrine I'd gotten to that point.
Later on, I took some subversive classes early in college that exposed me to the dark secrets of news media and advertising. Subliminal messaging, linguistic control, etc. All is not what it seems. Anyway, I swung by Fred Wilson's blog A VC early today and saw his post titled Truth. It's a great read!
In it, Fred counters the argument that we need journalism to surface the truth. A concept that has long been gone in the this country. Media is crumbling because they still think their brand of news matters. It doesn't. Fred argues that there is no absolute truth; only mine and yours cobbled together from our own individual perspectives and experiences. He goes on to extol the virtues of social media as a more efficient mechanism to surface ideas, concepts and perspectives to consider so we have a wider view. I personally think there will be societal consequences for our virtual lives, but that's for another post.
This coincides with the newspapers whining for a bailout on the premise that they are the last bastion of protection against institutional control; they've been wielding mass institutional information control for decades, so funny to use that argument. Let's be honest, recent events indicate a considerable bias in the mainstream media as all were nobly pulling for and complicit in our President to be elected. I don't blindly fall on either side's rhetoric, so it isn't hard to see; I don't like Aikman calling Cowboys games either.
I won't make any media friends here, but journalistic integrity is long gone and the idea of absolute truth wasn't even hanging in the balance as traditional journalism and mass media teeter on extinction.
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