The fact of the matter is that almost all of the "news" today, is sensationalism and tabloid junk. Whether that be political, national, world, tech, entertainment, or the various genres of pop culture. It's all being pushed out the backdoor and posted up to the world and broadcast to the millions in the name of clicks, views, and advertising. It’s always been this way but now, it’s much worse due to the internet.
Several years ago there was a 6 part special on A&E about the Laci Peterson murder and it was shocking to find out, that even then, before the internet, the news media was showing us 98% crap. If you look at that case on just the facts, then we probably have an innocent man on death row. Several people on the jury have said they regret their verdict because they were wrapped up in the sensationalism of the media and the narrative the media was telling versus the case that was playing out in the courtroom. When the media lies and sensationalizes, justice is NOT served.
Cut to today and add in the internet, zero verification of any story, stories created from Tweets/posts, and deep fakes… and you have an entire media that is essentially a tabloid entity, with the sheep of society just believing the fake narratives that are being told (all of those NPCs). Oh… and for those that want to politicize the sides, both sides of the slanted media, do the exact same thing with narrative creation. This is why I don't like sharing news via social media anymore. It's all unverified and fake for the sake of clicks, views, and ads.
The normal MO for the news media, is to rush to put out the gossip, first thing in the morning. Remember, this is all unverified when being released. Then, the rest of the media will take that original story and push that out with passing mention to the original media platform, adding their own take to it. Now the entire news media has pushed this story out by 9 AM and no one has verified anything. The public generally consumes the news in the morning, so the unverified news that has been plastered everywhere, becomes the FACT of the day. However, by afternoon, the truth starts coming out and the original media platform will quietly start walking back their original release, usually with a retraction or amended footnote to the original story around 5 pm to 6 pm, too late for it to make the 5 or 6 pm broadcast news and go out. Never mind the fact that most people get the news in the morning anyway so the retraction is seldom seen or even spread via social media. Point blank, journalism and ethics are dead. And none of those smaller media outlets that pick up the stories EVER post a retraction.
I get tired of seeing the stories that are nothing but sensationalism, and then knowing they will spread, and then right on schedule here comes that late night retraction. The "I told you so," just doesn't do it for me. Not only that, but it makes me angry that there are no ethics in journalism. About the only thing close to an ethical version of journalism will be a long form story, and even then, we've seen several that are just patently false and indeed, ruined people's lives, in the past. You have to take it all with a grain of salt. Frankly, I think people on social media should just stop sharing the breaking news out but that won't happen. Most of them have been duped by the false sensationalism anyway. And then a large amount of them are now monetized by social platforms to get those early clicks, views, and impressions. The whole damn internet is a mass propaganda machine based on advertising and market/ad share.
Correct, the establishment is afraid of the sunlight of truth
Fairy tales have happy ending though.
That said, it is like I keep saying. Dystopian futures always prove remarkably optimistic, as no one can predict just how bad "reality" will be in the future. I was aware of this beforehand and still invoked it - the Clown World in PRO era 2024 written in 2021 looks far better than the 2024 we got and that's even after discounting the possibility of leaving.
One particular example stands out from a different author, because he intentionally made both worlds as shitty as possible, yet they still came out better than Clown World because his Clown World follows the rule of pics or it didn't happen - you cannot be accused of wrongthink based on fabricated evidence or no evidence, so avoid the cameras and you can do what you want. That is a substantial improvement over the 50 or so years, as this Clown World still has dieversity being their (not your) strength, kids getting raped by trannies while naive, out of touch boomers claim America still exists, etc.
And then the isekai world is also a revolving door of Might makes Right where every race acts like orcs except the NPC who remain clueless and domesticated. But even that is an improvement, because you have a non zero chance of gaining power and improving your situation.
There's many other examples, but none as directly relevant here.
It's a living example of the meme where it talks about a dystopian hellhole where the government enslaves everyone and the soycattle is very excited until it learns that you aren't talking about some work of fiction, but about "reality", after which you get triggered NPC dialogue.