Trust Me or not....

It comes as no surprise that the motivation for all the misgivings that Ryan Holiday describes in "Trust Me I'm Lying" revolves around the pursuit of money and thus leads back to the central theme of economics that has been the topic of discussion throughout the progression of media. While the pursuit of profit in itself is not an issue, the pursuit of profit at the expense of others is. When news media that is commercially owned is brought into the equation, it is clear to see that profit trumps journalistic integrity. 

This then leads nicely to my thoughts on government enforced/funding of basic services, specifically in this case a news media outlet. The prime example of this is that of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Without going into too much detail, the BBC is funded mainly by tax payers through licence fees and as a result cannot have commercials or advertising (when viewed in the United Kingdom - BBC News/Not to be confused with BBC World News which is funded by advertising). Although there are certainly controversies in areas of the organisations news media, as a whole its journalistic integrity and reputation is world renown. 

Does this simple fact of guaranteed Income/"profit" create an environment where journalistic integrity can be upheld? I definitely think so, having the pressures of turning a profit taken off the shoulders of news media allows it to focus on its content and subsequently the accuracy of said content. That being said, other factors do influence the trending of what content is being consumed/produced, but that's for another time.....

It was said by some influential figure (I think! can't quite remember who) that you're better off  reading news about the US from news media outside the US, and no matter how true or false one feels about this statement, it does make one wonder about the current state of the news media in the US.

Just to lighten the mood a little and briefly touch on the topic of media convergence and the emergence of the participatory nature of "fan/user" generated content, here's two animated GIF's of an "alternative" lord of the rings storyline. (make sure you watch it from the start!)