How The Fake News Media Affects Our Lives

Along with the rest of the country, I’ve been watching what’s been happening with the BLM protests and accompanying riots.

I am sickened by the mayhem and destruction, with people’s businesses and their lives being destroyed. Sadly, many of the people who have lost their businesses come from the very community that BLM claims they want to help.

It is clear that BLM is not what they claim to be, or perhaps I should say that the BLM that we see in the news is not the BLM that started the demonstrations after George Floyd’s death. In fact, we can say that there are three different BLMs out there today:

  • The BLM sentiment, which is a concern about black men being killed in confrontations with police (regardless of whether it is justified or not)
  • The BLM organization, which was started by a couple of women who are avowed Marxists and whose statement of beliefs on their website includes strong support for the LGBT+ community and a desire to destroy the nuclear family
  • The BLM protests that have been taken over by anarchist organizations, which are trying to foment a revolution, destroying the United States we once knew

The true villain in this story isn’t actually the anarchists; they’re merely a minor villain. No, the real villain is the news media, which has been working hard to create a dangerous narrative; one that is fueling division in this country.

I want to talk about this because I see it as a very real existential threat to our nation. While we are always faced with dangers from natural disasters and renegade nations, we also face internal dangers from our own fragmented society. The Roman Empire, one of the largest and longest-lasting empires in the history of the world, wasn’t conquered by any enemy; they were destroyed from within.

How does such a thing happen? Author G. Michael Hopf postulated in one of his books, “Hard times create strong men; strong men create good times; good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. While there are plenty of examples to poke holes in that philosophical statement, there is also some truth to it. Hard times will not make all men strong; some will be destroyed by it. Nor will all strong men create good times. The idea of “might for right” is a great concept, but way too many strong men see their strength as a way of getting more for themselves, not for bringing about right for society in general. While it takes strong men to create good times, perhaps it is the latter half of that quote that contains the most truth.

Of course, there are many kinds of strength. Moral strength and physical strength have nothing to do with each other. Likewise, intellectual strength is a whole different category. So when we talk about strong men or strong women, it helps to define what sort of strength we’re referring to.

Even so, there’s no question that this country has been through some of the greatest “good times” that the world has ever seen in the last century. Not everyone has participated in that prosperity; but even those who didn’t have it much better than a huge percentage of the people living in the rest of the world. Our poverty can be looked at as great wealth by the people of some countries.

Media Created Anger

Few of us would even know about George Floyd’s unfortunate death if it were not for the media. Today’s media is able to gather and disseminate information faster than any nation’s intelligence service. Unfortunately, what passes for “news” today is more likely to be commentary than actual reporting; and like any commentary, it is more about the commentator’s personal views, than it is about the facts of the matter being spoken about.

One of the bandwagons that the mainstream news media has been on for the last few years is that of reporting when the police kill a black man. I’m not sure if they have reported every such incident, but they’ve reported enough for it to be a problem.

What makes the problem isn’t so much that the media is reporting it, but how they are reporting it. Regardless of what’s happening, who the black man the police show was, whether or not he was involved in a crime or whether he tussled with the police, he’s the victim. In this narrative, the police have been made to look like they are Jackbooted Gestapo, on the hunt for every black man they can kill. It’s not a true narrative, but it is being presented to the masses as if it was.

How do you think this is making young black men feel? I’ll tell you. They’re frightened. While many of us can feel butterflies in our tummies when we’re pulled over by the police, the young black men I know are terrified of such an encounter. They’ve been told enough times that the police are out to get them, that they believe it.

As with any lie, this one has just enough truth in it to make it believable. There are two truths here. One is that the police do sometimes shoot a black man. Since it isn’t reported when the police shoot a white man and it pretty much dominates the news for days when the police shoot a black man, there is a very real perception that black men are disproportionally targeted. The other truth is that police are more likely to pull over a black man for “driving while black” than a white one. Between the two, there’s enough truth to support the lie that is giving blacks the wrong perception.

Would you be angry if you had been sold that lie? I know I would. And don’t try and say that you wouldn’t buy the lie; there’s no way that any of us know whether we would buy it or not until it was aimed at us. We all tend to believe what we are told, especially if it comes from a source we know and trust.

The Other Side of the Media

While much smaller than the mainstream media, there is a conservative media voice out there, mostly on the internet. We have our own commentators who look at the various things happening in our country and give us a conservative viewpoint on them. Those of us who are conservatives tend to believe those commentators while calling the mainstream media “fake news” just like progressives believe their media and call conservative news “fake news.”

But just like the left stream media gives their people a particular narrative, ours gives us a particular narrative as well. Since it is commentary, rather than “news” it isn’t so much about what happened, as it is about driving a particular narrative. About the best thing we can say of that is that at least they are honest enough to say they are conservative commentators, rather than the other side trying to convince us that they are “neutral” news reporters.

Here’s the problem though. When we allow our world view to be defined by those conservative commentators, we can become just as blind to reality as our cousins on the other side of the aisle. We can forget that there are people who have very real concerns, that are being buried under all the noise.

When George Floyd was killed, just about the entire nation was on the side of the black lives matter movement. It was seen as a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened. Even conservative commentators were saying that. But something happened. People started looking into Floyd’s past and finding out that he had a criminal record. Even so, those conservative commentators were still saying that the way that police officers treated Floyd was wrong.

That’s all changed now, as more information has come to light. It’s not that anyone thinks that Floyd’s death was warranted, but that people are getting sick and tired of how Georg Floyd and other black men who are killed by the police are being glorified as martyrs, while others are ignored and those who defend themselves are vilified.

Again, it is the media that is making us aware of this; only this time it is the conservative media who are bringing the disparity to our attention. It’s another sort of false impression, affecting another portion of the population.

The other thing that the right-leaning media is focusing on is rioting. Granted, rioting is a big deal and the destruction of property is something that should be covered in the news. The left’s narrative of “mostly peaceful protests” while businesses are burning in the background, is clearly false. But not all demonstrations turn violent and they’re ignoring that part of the story.

Researchers with the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project have put out a report stating that over 90% of the Black Lives Matter protests have been peaceful, with only 220 escalating to violent clashes between the police and protesters or destruction of property.

While I don’t agree with many of the conclusions in this report, there’s no question that the majority of those protests were peaceful, even if we expand the definition of “violent” that they are using. Yet what we are being told about is the violence. We’re being fed a perception that blacks in our country are a bunch of violent, hate-filled people who are bent on destroying our country.

In reality, the majority of the rioters and looters aren’t black at all but are white. Most of them are from ANTIFA, not BLM. Yet the cameramen who are taking the video are managing to get their camera angles just right so that the clips we are shown are of blacks rioting, vandalizing, and looting.

Then There’s Social Media

If all this misinformation wasn’t bad enough, there are social media to add to the confusion. If you want to find the wrong perception of anything, just look at what’s posted on your Facebook feed or what people are tweeting about on Twitter.

Even this is being manipulated, as the major social media companies are all run by left-wing technocrats who see it as their “duty” to be arbitrators of information. They are consistently suppressing conservative organizations and posts, even to the point of blocking or calling out as “false” some things the president has said.

Sadly, social media has become a platform of disinformation and commerce, rather than being a place for friends to talk to each other online. It has moved so far from its roots as to be indistinguishable. We would all be better off without it. But if you can’t get off it, at least be wise enough to not believe anything you see there, other than the jokes.

Don’t be Manipulated

It seems clear to me that there are people behind the scenes who are manipulating the narrative for the sake of getting a certain result. That’s not a conspiracy theory. All of the major media outlets are owned by a very small number of corporations and they are apparently following the same playbook.

So what’s that playbook? Since we can’t see it, all we can do is look at what they are doing. And what they are doing is sewing social discord, specifically racial and economic discord, creating division in our country by pitting one group against another. It seems more and more clear that these people are bent on starting a revolution, probably disguised as a racial civil war.

The lies run deep. Talk to any homosexual or transgender person today and they’ll tell you that Christians hate them. Talk to most blacks and they’ll tell you that whites hate them. Little of this is based on truth, it’s the only perception.

Where do those perceptions come from? Some come from the media, but in reality, the media is doing the same thing that everyone else does, they’re just doing it with greater authority. That is, they are assuming they know the thoughts and hearts of others. Those perceptions are reported as “fact,” allowing many others to believe the same thing.

We must all be on guard for this. If there is one thing that we can do to bring peace and sanity back to our country, it’s to stop presuming what others think and believe about things. Rather, we should hear what they have to say so that we can learn how to understand them.

Maybe it wasn’t you, but someone who just read that said to themselves, “I don’t need to ask them what they think, I already know.” That’s what I’m talking about. That person is the one who needs to ask the questions and hear what the other side has to say, more than anyone. But they’re also the one who is least likely to do it.

If this country goes down; that will be a major part of it. We will fight a second civil war based upon false perceptions, rather than on the truth. And while we are doing that, we’ll all say, “If only the other side had listened” as we shake our heads in sadness and our country goes up in flames.

Written by

Bill White is the author of Conquering the Coming Collapse, and a former Army officer, manufacturing engineer and business manager. More recently, he left the business world to work as a cross-cultural missionary on the Mexico border. Bill has been a survivalist since the 1970s, when the nation was in the latter days of the Cold War. He had determined to head into the Colorado Rockies, should Washington ever decide to push the button. While those days have passed, the knowledge Bill gained during that time hasn’t. He now works to educate others on the risks that exist in our society and how to prepare to meet them. You can send Bill a message at editor [at] survivopedia.com.

Latest comments
  • Yes, If President Trump,his supporters and those loyal elements within the military and Intelligence Communities do not win this upcoming election America and the world will fall into a hell unprecedented on this planet.

  • An excellent article, Bill. Well said. There can be no doubt that SOMEONE has an agenda and is using the media to advance said agenda. We need to take everything with a large grain of salt, but we also need to have a free and uncensored media because a democracy cannot function without it. That’s why the Founders put ‘Freedom of the Press” in the #1 position in the Bill of Rights. The problem is how do we differentiate between what is truth and what is “fake news?” I’m going to say something, here, that a lot of people will disagree with, but I’ve found it to be true. The best, most honest and unbiased news outlet I’ve found is NPR (National Public Radio). NPR presents both sides of the story. Half the time I find myself cheering what they report, and half the time I find myself cursing them, so I know that their coverage is balanced. A quick example . . . The national news media has been reporting that the changes going on in the postal service is a conspiracy by Trump and the Postmaster General he appointed to handicap mail-in voting and sway the election in Trump’s favor. However, a report I heard on NPR revealed that it’s all a coincidence. The sorting machines that were taken out-of-service were obsolete and, according to postal employees, they won’t be missed. The “blue boxes” located on streets, shopping centers, etc. that were removed, were boxes that were hardly being used, and so they were removed in order to save Letter Carriers time, so that they didn’t have to stop by a box that had only one or two letters in it, or no letters, at all. As a former Letter Carrier, I can attest to this, last, as true, because I used to run a “collections route” where I stopped at all of the blue boxes in half the city, several times per day, and there were boxes that rarely had any letters in them and I used to hate wasting my time to visit them, but I had to, because that was the job, and every box had to be emptied at the posted times. It just so happens that these changes (which are good) were made right before the election. The national news media has ignored this aspect of the story. Only NPR (to my knowledge) has reported it. So, I find NPR to be trustworthy. I’m going to anger a lot of people, again, by what I say next . . . When it comes to turning Americans against one another, no one is more guilty than Donald Trump. When he began his campaign for the presidency in 2015 he did so by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists and murderers.” He called for banning Muslims from entering the country. After the tragedy in Charlottesville, where a white supremacist neo-Nazi ran his car into a crowd of protestors and killed a woman, Trump said that there were “fine people on both sides.” Just last week, Trump halted federal funding for any schools that teach “diversity” and tell the truth about slavery and the white man’s treatment of the Native Americans and other non-whites. Trump supports white supremacy and villifies non-whites at every turn. Now, it has been revealed that he considered WW I veterans to be “suckers” and “losers.” When America’s own president is doing everything he can to divide us and turn us against one another, we are in serious trouble. As you said, Bill, we need to talk to one another and learn what the other guy is thinking. We can’t take the media’s word on everything, and we certainly can’t take what we read on the internet as Gospel Truth. And, sad to say, we can’t believe Donald Trump.

  • You know, you had me…right up until you started re-spreading the inaccuracies about our president. Please do some actual research into what he truly said, all of it.

    For example:. He said that many illegal immigrants were good people, but some weren’t, and those people were “rapists and murderers”.

    Another:. He denounced white supremacy ideology (quite publically, on video) YEARS before becoming president, again repeatedly while campaigning, and again after Charlottesville. He clearly said, “I’m not talking about the white nationalists, they should be condemned categorically”….right before he made the comment to which you referred, about the people who objected to taking down the statues.

    The Muslim ban:. Again, you seem to have missed the fact that he CLEARLY stated “until we can vet them”. And the ban was aimed at anyone from countries with strong terrorist presences and poor vetting abilities, not only muslims, but jews and christians and anyone else from that country.

    Before you post inaccurate conclusions, please delve a little deeper into what our president ACTUALLY says, and, more importantly, what he DOES.

    As the article stated, if you can’t read minds, you need to look objectively at what is ACTUALLY there, not regurgitate what has been exposed as inaccurate by truncated reporting.

    President Trump doesn’t spread division nearly as much as you, apparently. How sad you must be, to have that much negativity in your life.

  • No, Sue, I’m not negative. I have a very positive life. I just base my observations on what I observe and I sure the heck don’t overlook Trump’s transgressions for any excuse to justify his divisive actions. I notice you failed to mention the fact that he said he didn’t want immigrants “from sh*thole countries” and he’s always saying “Where are the immigrants from Norway?” Makes his stance on race pretty clear, to me when he dismisses non-white countries as “sh*itholes” and calls for immigrants from Norway, which is 100% white. You’re one of those people who is going to defend Donald Trump, no matter what. Remember when he said, “I could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue, and my people would still support me?” Well, you’re one of those people. You’d defend Trump if he committed cold-blooded murder in broad daylight. There’s no point in trying to reason with you when you’re not going to let something like reason get in the way of your loyalty to Trump.

  • Congrats Bill on another poorly thought out and articulated article. You have single handedly turned me off from Survivopedia.com since about the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • Wow. Leftist rhetoric for sure. I do not defend him categorically, I criticize the president when it is deserved. Which it sometimes is. He uses hyperbole way too much, which gives people like you ammunition to use against him. He’s not a polished politician, he’s a New Yorker. Brash, outspoken, and often blunt to the point of rudeness.

    On the “s-hole” countries.. I have no plans to visit them, and do not consider them high on the list of wonderful places in the world. His choice of words may have offended you, too bad for you. I live in the real world where people may use those words to describe areas that are not in high regard. Apparently you took his words as a slur, and missed the point he was making.

    On “diversity training”. Stop being a baby and grow up. Real people are sometimes rude, and say insulting and offensive things. Some do it purposely, some are just that socially inept. “Freedom of Speech” is more than a catchy phrase, and is specifically aimed at offensive speech. Training that requires special treatment of a particular demographic is divisive and insulting to the group being sheltered. I do not need any government, company, or person to force others to respect me. Being an adult, I am perfectly capable of defending myself.

    Speaking of which, you have no basis for your statements regarding what I would or not believe. That is offensive and insulting, not to mention uncalled for.

    Revisionist history is a tool of oppressors. I was taught history that included the founding of this country, to include the stain of slavery, betrayal and genocide of the Native Americans, the complete exploitation of many immigrant groups, and all the other warts. But I also learned all that we did to right those historical wrongs. I also learned how we have helped the entire world in some ways, and harmed it in others. We are a country made up of imperfect people, but that is no excuse to stop trying, and blaming people today for “the sins of the fathers”.

    All I ask is that you look at all that he says, not just the excerpts that say what you want to believe. It’s out there. We have video.

  • Dale, it’s almost as if you didn’t even read the article. You are falling for media lies. You also ought to throw your white guilt complex in the trash.

  • To You who Hate SUE ! . . . When you paint a revisionist, leftist Billboard on your face – It is impossible to miss. To SUE: You know as well as I do, when you state a Verifiable FACT, You will receive an emotional, Panic based outburst. Keep going, Gal – my Best to you.

  • Sue, you are so typical of right wing extremists. When someone shoves the uncomfortable truth in your face, you let fly with the insults. Who’s the baby? No matter. The “diversity training” that I referred to isn’t some BS, feel good, Kumbaya crap like you falsely claimed. I’m referring to school curriculums that Trump is now defunding because they are teaching the same history that you say you learned in school. But, that was a long time ago. Many school districts in red states have “sanitized” their school curriculums and no longer teach about slavery or the Holocaust or the white man’s attempted genocide of the Native Americans, etc., etc.. Other school districts are re-instating those lessons that have been purged by white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis . . . call them what you will, they’re all the same flavor, different label. Now, Trump is defunding those school districts because he wants to maintain the “sanitizing” and wipe out all trace of the wrongs committed by the whites. Just because you learned about that stuff thirty or forty or fifty years ago, doesn’t mean that the kids who are in school, today, are learning it. And, I’m sure that YOU won’t teach them about it, will you? Teaching the truth is not “revisionist history,” but I wouldn’t expect you to admit that. “Revisionist history” is another term used by the right wing who want to suppress the truth and deny the past. The TRUE revisionist history is what the white supremacists are doing when they remove slavery and genocide and the Holocaust, etc. from school curriculums, or distort the truth to make it seem like slavery and the Holocaust and trying to eradicate the Native Americans were GOOD things. Either you can’t grasp the irony of that, or you simply don’t want to face up to it. And, I never said anything about blaming anyone for the “sins of the fathers.” Actually, that comes from the Bible — “And the sins of the father shall be visited upon the son.” But, I suppose you have a problem with the Bible, too, huh? What the whole Black Lives Matter movement is about is that black people want white people to live up to what you said, and I quote “We are a country made up of imperfect people, but that is no excuse to stop trying . . .” The problem is that white people AREN’T trying to correct the sins of their fathers. They’re happy with the way things are. They have their white privilege. They’re on top. They’re calling all the shots. They’re the business owners. They’re the politicians. They’re the bankers. They’re the brokers. And, on, and on, and on. If whites hadn’t been doing everything they possibly can to keep black people down, then black people wouldn’t BE down and there would be NO Black Lives Matter movement, because black people would be accepted by whites as equals and black lives WOULD matter. Black people just want to be treated like everyone else. But, excuse me. I’m sure that the very idea of black people being equal to white people and that black people deserve equal treatment to white people is just more Leftist rhetoric. Let’s see, didn’t Jesus say something along the lines of “Whatsoever you do unto the least of my brethren, you do unto Me?” I’m pretty sure that He did. But I guess He was just spouting Leftist rhetoric, too.

  • Wait a minute…”slavery, the Holocaust, and trying to eradicate the Native Americans”….last time I checked, America had nothing to do with the Holocaust. We stopped it. Or did you miss that in your history class?

    Slavery was ENDED by Republicans, the relocation (and betrayal) of Native Americans was perpetrated by Jackson, who headed the party that later became the Democrat Party, segregation was championed by Democrats…need I go on?

    Since African Americans make up roughly 17 % of the american population, it is statistically impossible for an African American to win the presidency without MANY “white” Americans voting for him. Are you saying a large number of the evil “white supremacists” accidentally voted for Obama? Seems unlikely.

    The last time I checked, the richest woman in the WORLD is Oprah Winfrey…an african american. Did she achieve her wealth and fame through “white privilege”? Again, unlikely. She achieved it through hard work, dedication, extremely intelligent decisions…and all in America! Seems like that would not be possible in the racist America you seem to believe exists.

    Are there white supremacy advocates in America? Yes there are, but 80 years ago there were thousands, who marched through the streets of DC, with the full support of the Democrat Party. Today they mustered a couple of hundred to parade through a small town for a couple of hours, with no support from anyone. There are also Muslim jihadists, neo-nazis, communists, marxists, and fascists. This is America. You can believe any despicable ideology you want, including calling anyone you disagree with a “racist” or “white supremacist”. That is what Freedom of Speech is really all about. The fact that Republicans do not try to regulate what people think or say is not agreement, it’s simply adherence to the Constitution and the First Amendment. You should try it. Tolerance is a virtue.

  • I was all set to dislike your article. Especially when you went against mainstream media. Then you started talking about the problems with conservative media. And I was like, Yes! Someone who understands the problem. Each side has an axe to grind! Each side is pushing a narrative. I have been saying this for years, each side gets its news from two different narratives. Its why most of us can’t get our heads around how some of our friends seem to take the “facts” and come up with a totally different narrative. It because they each get different “facts”. The only problem I see with the news is that finding a totally non-biased source is increasingly harder. One site will be considered non-biased, and then an affiliate site will become biased, dragging the non-biased site down by one side or the other. Or they will be seen as promoting one side or the other by their corporate side of things. USA Today and NPR are good examples. BBC seems to be non-biased, but I am sure there are people who see them being one side ir the other.

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