If it's on TV, then it Must be True

Another important evil fnord is "If it's on TV or in the newspapers, then it must be true."

Even before I achieved greater awareness, I figured out that newspapers don't always get the facts straight. I was involved in non-controversial events that were covered in the local newspaper. The newspaper still got the facts wrong. This wasn't a censorship issue, just getting details outright wrong. I knew they were wrong, because I was at the event.

A pro-State troll thinks "There are a lot of people who make sure that the content presented on TV is important and accurate. They wouldn't lie to us!"

A pro-State troll says "The editors make sure that all the content presented on TV and in newspapers is of a high quality! There's no editor filtering bloggers on the Internet, but there should be!" Is the editor ensuring a high quality of content? Or, is the editor enforcing unwritten censorship standards?

The mainstream media is losing market share to the Internet. I'd rather spend an hour reading my favorite blogs, than reading a newspaper. The problem is not "The Internet is evil!" The problem is that the mainstream media is a bunch of pro-State trolls, but writers on the Internet bypass the State censorship engine.

If I had to get my article published in a peer-reviewed journal, I'd never be able to publish "The Compound Interest Paradox" or "The Black-Scholes Forumula is Wrong!" My article would be calling out my peers as frauds, and they'd never consent to publishing it.

Even though there are 100+ channels on your cable service, they're owned by a small handful of corporations. This provides the illusion of openness, when it's really a cartel.

If I wanted to create my own TV show or TV channel, I'd have a hard time getting a cable network to carry it. A pro-State troll might say "Good! Someone is making sure that all content is of a high quality!" This also leads to censorship.

There's also "lie by repeated assertion". If the same lie is repeated everywhere, then people act as if it's true. Some lies are never explicitly stated, such as "Taxation is not theft!"; that's merely an implicit hidden assumption in all other political discussion.

Most people assume, by default, that everything they see on TV and in newspapers is true. If there were some important issue like "Taxation is theft!" or "The USA has a corrupt monetary system!", then surely some newspaper or TV news program would have covered the topic. In this manner, mainstream media censorship assists the evils of the State. Most people think "The mainstream media is an independent auditor of the government!", when the reality is that the same insiders control the mainstream media and the government.