Why Does Shit Float?

Why do the ISIS militants dress their hostages in Orange Guantanamo Jump suits? Why did FOX choose to show the ISIS video of the execution by public burning of the Jordanian pilot on their website?  Why does almost very other civilised and responsible media outlet on the planet refrain from spreading these images? In FOX's case,  is it the sheer depraved need to use these images for propaganda purposes, to incite reactions and fuel hatred or simply the the utter irresponsible greed of ratings hype? Which trumps what?

Which ever reason, ISIS learned the value of media exploitation a long time ago. They use social media and carefully choose the images they decide to release to the world knowing full well where they will end up and the panic they will create.

In the video from the NY Times I have embedded here, musing from their lofty aerie, high atop the NY Times Bldg on Times Square, they dare to ask the question,  regarding the measles vaccine controversy, "how did we get to a point where personal beliefs can triumph over science?"

Well goddamn, New York Times, I don’t know. Maybe something about a decade and a half of “it would be irresponsible not to speculate” and “both sides do it” and “if everybody’s mad at us we’re doing something right” and “hey, we don’t tell you the truth, we tell you what six competing people each say is the truth, individually, despite that one of those people is having paranoid delusions, and one of them can’t find a sentence with a torch and a posse. and one of them thinks vaccines not only cause autism but also that Jonas Salk faked the moon landing, and one of them is a pet therapist, and one of them has a degree from the American College of Sexologists and only plays a doctor on the radio, and the last person runs the fucking CDC, but hey, who are we to judge?”

We have spent the past 20 years at least pretending that the most anti-science, anti-progress, anti-goddamn-reality people in the world have a right to have their absurd bullshit repeated without challenge or inquiry. We have put these people in Congress, in positions of immense influence in media, with the ability to make pronouncements that are repeated ad nauseum at volumes unthinkable to, say, anti-war protesters or those who want to raise the minimum wage. We have told ourselves this is not only necessary, to listen to people like this, but it is unavoidable. This is just the way the world works now, we have said, so that we do not have to take any responsibility at all for the institutions we run.

As far as I am concerned, most mainstream media has contributed to the deliberate dumbing down of America. Profits and the desire to save their obsolete asses has enabled even the most once noble media outlets to pander to who ever will help them meet their profit targets to keep their erudite nostrils above the water. If you are plugged into the internet, you realise that most media is a few bubbles off center and and a few beats behind reality. I won't even look at or use CNN as an information source. They censor and filter the news you see and hear and try to tell you what to think with out offending the craziest of their audience, because they know the crazies are the most profitable! If you want facts, do your own research...if you want to know what the crazies are really thinking, check out Alex Jones once in a while...