“News is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising.” – William Randolph Hearst
When I first created NewsBlaze, in 2003, one of the things we wanted to focus on was the enhancement of general knowledge and its availability to the American public as well as the global community as a whole. At that time, a large number of Americans appeared to know very little about the world around them.
Apparently, a majority of college educated adults in America do not have a fundamental knowledge of such basic subjects as geography, science and mathematics, coupled with low cultural awareness. If this is truly the case, then something is terribly wrong.
Currently, NewsBlaze seems to attract mostly older, well-educated readers. Newsblaze continuously strives to attract more readers that have a sincere desire to gain a better understanding of the world we live in. Over the next year, Newsblaze will work to raise the level at which we perform so our readers can gain a better understanding of the world we live in as well as the ability to find information with a simple click of the mouse.
I don’t often write editorials – I leave that to our writers and editors – but after watching a disturbing video that shows how uninformed some people were about governance, I decided it was time to write. The video and the amount of attention it received led me to the conclusion that we need to find a way to inform, educate and inspire many more readers.
On Election day, John Ziegler, a documentary filmmaker, interviewed twelve people who identified themselves as Obama voters, after they voted. Ziegler’s aim was to investigate how the news media may have influenced their perspective of the campaign issues.
The questions were Zogby Poll questions.
Ziegler says the people he interviewed were not chosen by him, but rather an “African American female,” unfortunately, he doesn’t say how she was chosen. He goes on to say the twelve people were intelligent, but he felt they were misinformed by the media.
These voters, for the most part were unable to recognize even the names of the Democratic party leadership and they thought the Republicans controlled Congress. They had never heard of Bill Ayers, and didn’t know that Obama said he would bankrupt the coal industry. On the other hand, they knew Sarah Palin, even attributing statements to her, that were made by comedienne Tina Feye and they knew she had a pregnant daughter.
Surprisingly, some thought that Palin said she visited 57 states and either McCain or Palin were elected by kicking their opponents off the ballot, when it was actually Obama.
A big problem for small newspapers like NewsBlaze is that the major campaigns would not speak to us, so we couldn’t get our issues raised or questions answered. The mainstream media had access, but they didn’t always inform the public preferring the role of entertainer, rather than educator.
Of course, some people get all their news from “FOX”,”The Colbert Report,” Bill Mahr or Rush Limbaugh which doesn’t always leave them with a fair and balanced picture of the political and global landscape that we live in.
I feel as though I’ve failed. But I’m not giving up. I hope you’ll watch the video and send your comments – we’ll publish them unless you ask us not to.
Always seeking knowledge,
Alan
Here is part of Ziegler’s documentary:
howobamagotelected.com
