Kiser: Last evening, KRNV, the local Fox News affiliate that masquerades as an NBC affiliate (they are owned by Sinclair Media, a Fox News group that buys up local stations and supplies biased national news feeds, regardless of whether the station is an affiliate of NBC, ABC, or CBS,) was providing live ‘team news’ coverage of the local pot stores, and the start of recreational marijuana sales. This was a perfect story for KRNV. It was something that would rile up old conservatives and it promoted tourism for the casinos. KRNV doesn’t do a story if it doesn’t rile up conservatives or is favorable to casinos and mining. It would be nice if they would apply themselves to real issues like Nevada’s consistent high ranking in violent crime, and/or why casinos like high unemployment rates.
Me: I kind of studied Sinclair after being made aware of who owned them and what they were about, this during an election cycle three or four back. I did not know they owned KRNV, and I do not think they did then. But knowing now causes me to again think of this, that people in this country have a right to own media outlets and even the right to lie and deceive–advertising is all about lies and deception–so the answer is not about who own but about who buys, the products advertisers sell and the information the media presents as truth. The failure in American society, the most debilitating, is people’s inability to make sense of the world for themselves, to find ways to inform themselves of what really is, to determine truth from lie, and to make reasoned decisions based on the good information they have certified to be valid information. No one wants to point the finger I have been pointing for a very long time at the people at whom it needs to be pointed, those who run the school system that consistently fails to prepare citizens of this want to be democracy for effective participation in the societal decision-making process, the kind of participation that would help to bring about a better society in which all for whom the system of government exists would be properly and adequately benefited by its existence.
