Things that upset me....

I did my degree in Literature with a minor in drama ~ which should tell you several things: I am enamoured of language; I know how to use it; I know when it is being abused.

Some people are really, really smart but may not be linguistically clever & may struggle to put their ideas together in a coherent format.  This doesn't make them wrong.  It can make them appear stupider than they are.  As an exhomeschooler I immediately think *different learner*.  Here's someone who is not primarily an auditory or visual learner.  Probably a hand's on kinesthetic who is practical & thinks mathematically, 3D visuals, like a businessman or architect. They are unlikely to be the touchy/feely sort.

For a long time I have avoided the mainstream media.  Here is why.  It is biased. I know emotive language when I read it.  I understand the use of emotive imagery to elicit a particular response & sway public opinion .  I know when I am being presented with only one side of an argument & I find it hugely offensive to being treated as if I am a grade one idiot. I am gobsmacked that the media has the gall to say they are being treated unfairly when someone has the gumption to call them out on their bias.

Now I'm Australian & I thank God I wasn't an American in their last election faced with the sort of choices they were left with but we watched the election.  Like it or not America has a huge impact on the rest of the world & the result was going to affect us. We had been praying for the election & believe that God had told us all that Trump would be the next American president.  This doesn't make any of us pro or anti Donald Trump.  It just means we believe God told us His choice ahead of time. Then we watched the election.

If it wasn't so horrifying it would have been funny. The mainstream media was so blatantly for Hilary they mocked & denigrated Trump until even they could no longer deny that Hilary had lost the election & their attempts to backlflip & achieve some sense of impartiality were painful to watch.

Sadly it has not ended there.  I am not interested in the media's opinion about anything.  I couldn't care less what any of them think about any issue at all. Let's be very clear about this. Their job is to report the facts: impartially, without bias, minus preconceptions, free of emotive language &/or imagery & then let people weigh the facts for themselves & make an informed decision. The failure to do this is called propaganda.

As this has not been happening for decades & the media has taken upon itself to be the social conscience of a nation they can hardly cry foul when people no longer trust them! They are not trustworthy.  All it takes is a slight misrepresentation, the cutting of one word from a speech, the taking of a sentence out of context & the whole slant on a report changes.

Let's look @ the Calais jungle ~ widely reported as having appalling living conditions; which was true. However nearly every news article I saw showed images of children, giving the impression that the camp was mostly made up of the most vulnerable of refugees: women & children.  This was not true. According to fact file, In October 2015 the camp only had roughly 100 women & children.  The other 4ooo residents were mature males.  Another 300 women & children were located nearby but by no stretch of the imagination were the majority of residents in the Jungle children!

Similarly we have seen photos of dead children from the boats landing in Greece but not the images of angry, single men swarming over border fences, threatening local residents or abusing & throwing back at volunteers the food & water they offer. The mainstream media is strangely silent about the raping of white women by immigrant men across Europe.

Or take our own media.  SBS is presently running a segment on racism ~ but you have to be Indigenous, or Muslim or black to qualify as being discriminated against yet I can cite from experience cases of reverse discrimination ~ & that's before we query how much of what is being shown has been staged by *actors*.  One of the muslim women was an *actor*.  In other words our media is staging lies. This is not the Truth by any stretch of the imagination!  This is manipulation. This is a blatant attempt to manipulate people's perceptions of what is happening in our country & how we should think about it. Does racism happen?  Yes!  It happens to Indigenous people.  It happens to Muslim people.  It happens to black people, Indian people, Asian people & white people! It happens to homosexual people, straight people, single people, & married people, people with kids & people without.  No one is exempt because there will always be some people who think it is ok to be rude & disrespectful to other people.

Our media is biased.  I do not trust our media.  If you are smart you do not trust yours either. The only way around this is to do your own fact checking.  Read & watch arguments for both sides of an issue because the Truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.  Don't believe anything you're told without checking. Look for emotive language, emotive imagery.  What are you left with if you cut that out? Look for what is not being said. The things that get left out are as important as the things that get included because that is how to skew the content. Remember sensationalism sells. Sensationalism is never the whole story; not even part of the story, just the bit meant to obscure your critical faculties enough to swallow a larger lie. Yikes, but I dislike the media!