We're being fed lies

It seems a new fad is going around: corporately funded news and propaganda. Right now it is so easy for public relations to promote their companies; there is a flood of public relations professionals and very little journalists. Journalism, a way for the public to get accurate and important information, is struggling in comparison to public relations. Corporations are influencing both journalism and public relations more and more, creating “fake news” and propaganda. It seems as if the journalists and PR professionals are having a hard time getting scientific facts straight.

A few years ago I read a book for one of my media classes on journalism and public relations, which I was reminded of when I was reading Toxic Sludge is Good For You. It Ain’t Necessarily So talked about what journalists and PR were leaving out of their stories, and how the statistics were false or, for lack of a better word, bent to create more news than there actually was. It mentioned various stories this had happened with, and gave the real statistics versus the ones published. It was a very surprising book with a lot of disturbing truths to the stories mentioned. While It Ain’t Necessarily So focused on journalists and public relations and their false statistics Toxic Sludge is Good For You was a little more specific, focusing on public relations and how they manipulate the public.

Public relations has started filming, editing and producing their own segments that are being called news that are anything but. PR is presenting us with advertisements not news, but we are fooled into thinking that this advertisement is filled with hard facts and scientific proof behind it. Every day the public is being fed news funded by corporations and are completely unaware of what news is real and what is fake. The news we’re receiving is manufactured so how can we know if it is really news or not? The public has started to focus more on what products to buy rather than world issues and actual news.

Works Cited

Murray, David. It Ain’t Necessarily So: How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001.

Stauber, John, and Sheldon Rampton. Toxic Sludge is Good for You. Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995.