Mental Health Warnings

[poliphilo]

I'm all for freedom of the press, but maybe newspapers ought to come with warnings (printed across the front page in banner headlines) like those that are now mandatory for cigarette packets.

For example:

This paper is owned by tax exiles and contains Conservative party propaganda

or

This paper is written by and for left-wing people living in Islington

or

This paper is howlingly right-wing and once supported Hitler and Oswald Mosley.

or

This paper is owned by Rupert Murdoch (nuff said)

Most of us buy our newspaper for things other than its political bias; we buy it for the footie or the women's page or the arts coverage or the pictures of celebs- but the bias comes attached- like a virus- and- unless we're extremely self-aware- it'll infect us. I think we should be alerted to the risks we run.

Comments

[kamomil.livejournal.com]

I don't know about where you live if you have these, we have talk radio stations, they seem to exist to gather listeners, and to do that, they are not above getting the audience angry so that they call in.

I used to listen to one. The host hammered it home every day about how we pay too much in taxes and I thought, yeah we do. (well at the time my dad did pay a lot in income tax) So I drank the kool aid and voted for the guy that he talked about, who would lower taxes.

Years later I realized that it was not necessarily the truth, or what was good for society, but put-on opinions to get people to listen passionately.

When I heard that Rob Ford, our buffoon of a mayor, was interviewed on one radio station, I was not too shocked that he got voted in.

I feel that hearing an opinion, every day, passionately expressed, instead of balanced journalism, damages the brain eventually, or at least its ability to think straight.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We do have talk radio but it a niche phenomenon, not the huge cultural force it is with you.

I'm a leftie, but I do make a point of reading some of the right wing media- so as not to become totally indoctrinated.