Below the line poetry: Social media vs newspapers

Critical thinking skills FTW!

If you send the canary down the tunnel

and it comes back dead,

 you don't salute it for its brave sacrifice

and go down the tunnel anyway –

you turn the hell around!

Facts are sacred, cross checking mandatory.

But fear is addictive.

Journalism follows

it no longer leads..

a race to the bottom.

Just because it's your opinion

that the moon is made of green cheese

doesn't mean that opinion should be given

the same weight as, say,

Stephen Hawking's opinion

on the physical nature

of the moon.

Why is the public mistrustful of the mainstream media?

Because they have proven themeselves to be untrustworthy,

time

and time

and time

again.

Angst and Anguish

the Guardian's raison d'etre!

Rather than post truth politics

we should call it

post-professional journalism

as there was a time

when things used to be checked

and lies were harder to push.

I think the hard truth is

that

those days

are unaffordable now.

Social media,

for all its faults,

has empowered

and enabled

the public

to discuss and coordinate

its response

to matters of the day.

The mainstream media

no longer

controls

the public's discussion.

Mainstream politicians

no longer

control

the public's coordination.

The problem being

that everybody is now

a

super savvy

one man

"Che Guevara"

with an ipad.

The Guardian sells

to a pessimistic and guilt ridden middle class,

and it's obvious that

this is often

a deliberate editorial policy.

Too many opinion pieces,

not enough investigation.

Too much reporting,

not enough journalism.

Scientists are not supposed to defer to authority

in lieu of evidence; 

normal people kind of are.

And yet you're still here...

Huge paradox.

Information spreads so fast,

and so widely

that false information

can be embedded in the social sphere

fast enough

that once proved false it is too late.

140 character reporting in action.

That and GroupThink.

How do you combat a simple lie

with a complex truth

in the face of

140 character news reporting?

We live in an age where

people will tell the lies

that

people want to believe

as the truth

I think there is an argument

to be made

for serious people

to withdraw

from the world of social media. 

So much hate in the btl comments.

To the police,

the land of post-truth

is nothing new:

they've been occupying it

for years.

Social Media.

Full of Corbynites, Kippers and Cybernats

railing against Bilderberg and lizard men.

Starting

boringfacts dot com

 anyone in?

(From: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth)
Below the Line Poetry takes online article comments as its source material; they are formatted and re-edited to create a poem.