Why Has Everything Turned Sour? Is it the Press? Or is the Press Part of the Cycle?

QUESTION: Hello Mr. Armstrong,
I´d like your opinion on this,
During 7 Decades in which our lives got better, longer, richer, safer, healthier, better educated, more peaceful and more stimulating. Even World poverty has decreased in a rate never seen before, still, news coverage got increasingly negative

What explanation could there be for this? Is it excessive competition for attention as media sources multiply or an excessive any deeper reasons? I compare it to Markets, seems to be similar like trading on news, which is impossible because when the news is the worst, usually its the low and when everything and everyone is optimistic its the high.
regards

ES

ANSWER: Coming out of World War II, society really advanced in many ways from technology to medicine. This is the part of the societal cycle that is best to live in. Then what happens is corruption. The news becomes corrupt in sync with politics. I believe this becomes the case because news becomes institutionalized as it is owned by big firms who then direct the news to slant to their personal benefit. This is a funny skit on British News. It is so true here in the States as well. The Democrats love CNN and the Republicans love Fox. The news gravitates to a political slant and is no longer about news – it is always about selling more ads and pushing their propaganda like some religion handing out flowers in airports.

Yellow journalism was created by the battle between Pulitzer and Hearst. They created the Spanish American War to sell papers. Pulitzer’s name was worthless. To rehabilitate it he donated money to create the Pulitzer Prize for good journalism, which he never practiced.

Now we are in the downtrend of that cycle. The corruption has taken over everything. Just look at the list of presidents since Jimmy Carter. There is not a single president who has not been subjected to a special prosecutor investigating some action, which is always brought by the opposing party. I really fear who will come after Trump. Trump is probably the perfect president at this moment for he has such thick skin. Who else is going to run? If they do not have thick skin, what is the point? Will any rational person want to put their family through such scrutiny?

Even Melania Trump’s decision to wear a custom blue Ralph Lauren suit to her husband’s presidential inauguration in January 2017 set off a firestorm to the point that a staff member at Ralph Lauren publicly stated: “We immediately started to get complaints about Melania Trump wearing [the label]. And people [on Twitter] are using the #boycottralphlauren hashtag.”

Even a First Lady is now targeted for what she wears. This level of criticism was unheard of decades ago. Now everything offends someone and they seem to be looking for issues to claim they are offended.

 

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