The Fourth Estate Nuanced

Around the corner, out of sight and beyond the confines of the Information Age is the truth. Try to wrap your head around this line of thinking: Reality is really, really relative... until you hit the Real Pot-Hole. But like a virtual brick wall, five guys aka corporate media aka Fourth Estate is sliming on a foundation of shifting powers with a zeal for engineering consent. If the mortar that binds the bricks is the state of things as it was before, an informed electorate is the wrecking ball.

"Absence of Evidence is Not Evidence of Absence" donald rumsfeld


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Wikileaks on the fourth estate: The hidden curse of Thomas Paine.

".... Any journalist, any blogger, any academic, and indeed any human being who could set aside a cumulative half a day to read and make a few phone calls could say something worthwhile, original and interesting using these documents. Professional journalists won't without intervention because it doesn't do anyone a favor that can be called in later and few can break even without plagiarism. In addition the respected press obtains its own power by mediating the conversation of competing powers--making sure each attack on a power group is supported by another power group. Secret documents from morally incensed secretaries upset this process. The Internet media certainly won't help--with few exceptions, it has relegated itself to revealing the mood of the amateur commentariat. Its members primary motivation is to demonstrate in-group loyality on the issue de-jour; consequently it slavishly copies from the very professional press it maligns, rarely adding more than is necessary to advertise peer value conformity.
What does it mean when only those facts about the world with economic powers behind them can be heard, when the truth lays naked before the world and no-one will be the first to speak without a bribe? Wikileaks' unreported material is only the most visible wave on a black ocean of truth rotting in draws of the fourth estate, waiting for a lobby to subsidize its revelation into a profitable endeavor. The truth is the only guiding beacon civilization has at its disposal. If we are to flourish we must ultimately use it to chart our course. To do otherwise is to drift aimlessly in the dark, decoupled from the world and hearkening to every imagined wave.
But I leave you with a quote from Paine: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."