MANHATTAN is THE Problem

Manhattan is where the majority of those who work in America's national media come from and/or are educated.

It is overwhelmingly Leftist (over 85% are self-proclaimed "Progressive" Democrats) and worse still, it is one of the most closed-minded and narrow minded places on earth.

Beyond that is the FACT that journalists are, by and large, English Lit and Humanities majors. They are neither grounded in, nor much interested in the mathematics and science behind the news, and tend to reflexively rely on paid "experts" (paid for by the media's corporate owners) that back up the "accepted narrative" on any given subject.

For the most part, they HAVE to do that, because few, if any of those in the national media have the ability to understand the math and science behind the news they talk about.

Moreover, they ASSUME they're talking to people who understand as little as they do, when, in fact that is often NOT the case. Within their audience are tens of thousands of researchers, engineers and scientists, along with thousands of others who DO very much understand the math and science behind the stories most in the media don’t seem to understand.

But that is not the worst of the national media's flaws. The very worst flaw of our national media is their outright disdain for the public they are paid to serve.

In fact, according to journalists like Jennifer Brandel and Andrew Haeg, “The culture of journalism breeds disdain for the people we’re meant to be serving, i.e., the audience.”

Andrew Haeg who now runs an independent media company called GroundSource after being a reporter for the national media for nearly a decade and a half says, "I had a colleague who referred to the audience as the “great, unwashed masses.” It was always said for laughs, and it was funny in a hard-bitten, grizzled news veteran kind of way. But that always stuck in my craw, and I realized that he was actually expressing what many, maybe most journalists felt..." (https://medium.com/we-are-hearken/a-serious-problem-the-news-industry-does-not-talk-about-346caaa6d1cd#.i0xznm4h3)

Andrew Haeg’s GroundSource (https://www.groundsource.co/) is a mobile engagement and research platform.

Jennifer Brandel, founder of an independent media company called Hearken has said, “In about two-thirds of the meetings I’ve had with newsrooms, someone in the room, often a manager, editor or some other higher-up says something along the lines of, “If we gave the audience what they wanted, they’d ask for crap!” Or “Our audience isn’t very smart, they probably wouldn’t have any good ideas.” Or, the big doozy, and the inspiration for this post, said by a manager during a meeting at a highly respected, hugely award-winning news outlet: “Our audience is a bunch of idiots and assholes. Why exactly would we want to hear more from them than we already do?”

Brandel’s company Hearken (http://www.wearehearken.com/) seeks to offer a less filtered, consumer-driven form of media.

A big part of the confusion over perceived “media bias,” is the confusion most of us have over WHO, exactly, the national media represents. We’ve been taught to believe that the media is “The 4^th Estate,” an independent body that is beholden ONLY to the public interest, without any favor to the government, or corporations. In truth, as our government has become more and more tethered and partnered to a consortium of international banks and multi-national corporations, the media, owned by various multi-national corporations and financed by those same international banks has come to seamlessly see the “public interest” though the eyes of its corporate and banking masters. In short, our media now serves corporate interests and NOT the interests of the people.

And THAT’S a BIG problem...and a huge part of that problem is the ideological ghetto found in MANHATTAN.