new research reveals….
“New research reveals that those aching knees are a sign of worse to come”. A typical story in the middle pages of “The Daily Truth”. We then turn the page to reveal adverts for walk in baths, stairlifts and mobility scooters. What a coincidence.
“New research reveals that the UK is set for wetter summers, it’s all due to Global Warming”, is another headline. Turn the page to a further 4 full pages of sunny cruise adverts. News about bad summers typically run after a particularly wet spell when the paper knows it will have your attention. Even though inviting hundreds of thousands of Brits to jet around the world undoubtedly contributes to global warming, the paper isn’t concerned, it’s existence is funded by the holiday industry not the likes of Greenpeace..
“New research reveals the Artic ice cap is melting more quickly than thought”. Turn to adverts for green energy switchers, composters and electric vehicles. Even bad boy news media can look good, as long as there are advertisers to pay them.
“The FTSE 100 index fell by 3% today (it probably didn’t) wiping £billions off the value of individuals pension funds”. New research reveals that financial stuff is complicated and it’s best to get help. Cue the adverts for St. James Place, Hargreaves Lansdown and Fischer Investments to name just three mass marketers, without whom much of the financial media available on-line would not exist.
“New research reveals (insert whatever you want to say here) That the UK leaving Europe will……”. Let’s not go there, but just one Brexit/Remain story a day, allows a newspaper to cram it’s pages with adverts for anything now they have almost everyones attention.
Nobody reads the new research.
We don’t look at the facts or the actual research. We simply believe what our chosen news media supplier is telling us. We have got lazy. And believe me, the new research probably isn’t new. It’s been sat there for ages just waiting for the correct combination of an advertiser who want’s to flog something and a recent tenuous event unfolding.
lies amplified
Even worse than the news rags, social media now gives a platform to everyone including bare faced liars. From Presidents and Prime Ministers, Chinese controlled propaganda networks to everyday crooks and fraudsters, twitter and Facebook has given an air of authenticity to their lies. It’s because their lies sit within facts that we know to be true. Cousin Stella has actually had a baby so Dave from Essex must have made £15 million during lockdown trading derivatives. Click here.
Here’s a tip – never click here.
What’s worse is that well-meaning family and friends have often already been sucked into a skilled marketing pitch and are now endorsing the bare faced lies as true facts themselves. We always believe our family, friends and colleagues without question. It would be rude to ask where they got their information.
Why am I telling you this?
Because you do have a choice. It’s important to know when you are being informed and when you are being sold to. Seek out the unbiased. The BBC isn’t funded by adverts. It’s a national institution there to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Many don’t think we can believe the BBC anymore. Maybe bias has entered the BBC, maybe we have just reached a point where we don’t believe anything anymore. We must understand that the BBC has to compete with Social Media these days and so has just adopted the same attention grabbing tactics to survive.
here’s a question
How much has Facebook, twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat or Google cost you over the years you have used those platforms? Where are those direct debits? Duh, they are free, that’s why we have all used them. So how come those companies are worth multi-billions? Who has paid them if you haven’t? Can you see why you can’t trust anything you have read on those apps and websites. Advertisers are funding the lot by being sold your stolen data. I say stolen, but you will have just clicked agree, allowing them legally to take it and use it anyway they like.
clickbait
We’ve built a news media system that rewards sensationalism, and doesn’t condemn misrepresentations, which means that the best way to earn money as a publisher is to churn out nonsense. The only way to really change that is for all of us, everywhere, to question what lies behind the headlines. The difficulty is trying to find a reliable source of news which doesn’t add a spin. That spin can be political (Brexit), ecological (climate change) but mostly financial (to enable the sale of a product).
There, blog over and I never mentioned Covid-19 once. However my guess is some of the biggest porkies of all time are being told currently to flog face masks, turmeric, green tea and hand sanitiser.