The source of information about our government is the all powerful, all knowing media.

Sex sells, drama sells, and dramas about sex really sell. When mega media giants report government activity they need either sex or drama. Politicians rarely stimulate the imagination and so media outlets force drama into debates, laws, and elections. Ratings, everything revolves around them; on television ratings matter, news paper ratings matter, Internet news source ratings matter. Each form of media revolves around a particular set of subscribers and those subscribers participation in advertisement. For the same reason we work the media advertise, money. The likelihood of the media separating itself from advertisement parallels the likelihood of the government separating itself from lobbyists.

Responsibility for knowing our government, therefore, cannot come from the media itself. This knowing must come from one outlet, the government. In history class all students learn from primary sources and from those sources come our understanding of the past. In the present day our government’s laws, transcriptions, and debates are the only genuine sources for information. Our media, however, twists and tangles raw facts with costly bias creating sound bites; only removing the middleman can elevate our commonly accepted misdirection of the government. Misdirection comes from one source, our collective inability or failure in engaging our democratic rights.

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Sir Winston Churchill, Prime Mister of England and Nobel laureate.

Government foundation consists of people choosing for themselves the course of future endeavors. Citizens under a democratic government must take upon themselves the responsibility of debating and understanding the government and not allow another mediums, like the media, to cloud facts. In our beautiful government in which we make all the decisions about our leaders, policies, and laws why should we allow a middleman to step forward and taint our thoughts; allowing another person this opportunity deludes our duty to democracy. Politicians depend upon our opinion and not the media’s. As the day ends citizens allow politicians the privilege of working for our interests.

(In my utopian society the media has a simple function, report facts. All those reporting would have a set wage, be run by public television and radio, and advertisement in cooperation with the media would be illegal. The government would go out of its way in accommodating requests by individuals for information and explanation of the law. All laws would be available online without searching 500 pages and need twelve logins. Information would freely flow.)

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