When the only journalist worth respecting is fictional

Maybe I'm oversimplifying again, but I thought allowing a government to make a choice for the governed is the point of having an informed electorate. And unless veritas has changed its lesson plan, I thought ensuring an informed electorate is the point of having freedom of the press.

It isn't free anymore, though, when media outlets still publish foreign propaganda in return for funding, and clicks and followers still translate into sales where traditional advertising can no longer reach. You don't need me to link to the stories that prove it, partly because I already have, and partly because more examples are still coming up*. (Unless whoops-delete-delete cuts the branch behind itself again - this aggregator spits out articles with some interesting thumbnails.)

So you want to bust some flyboy's balls because he's an immigrant with legal citizenship and a job in a field that's been instrumental in its own current loss of credibility, or slam an actor who's switched suits and speaks for the people hated by those they work to protect, you go right ahead. Because unless things have changed that far for the worse, the ability to do so is still the point of this place, despite the mess in its own history that other (and in some cases older) nations choose to face (rather than delete) in theirs.

In the here and now of this election year, I choose to consider who is erasing and has erased information, and who has rewritten stories to reflect opinion over fact. (Thank you, news outlets, for the information that a drug actually has a beneficial effect on the current pandemic no matter the much-maligned person who touted it.)

And since this place very clearly has its own steaming mess to deal with, maybe it's for the better that those who need help against a foreign aggressor have turned to their own resources and to their nearer neighbors. Oxygen mask rule and all - though I'd like to see that mask on sooner rather than later.

Addenda:

If anything removes doubt about an organization's focus on discrediting a political opponent through slanting the proven benefits of hydroxychloroquine in its particular uses, this has.**

That fringe spoken of in this article won an election - the current situation only proves the aggressor's adherence to its gentleman's adage. (If 十年不晚 , then what is one year in comparison?)

* Took me a while to find the ones I was thinking about for this sentence, but this linked to this, which starts on page 58.

** Thought this was an appropriate addition in relation to this note.