The Blaze
And now a short note about The Blaze for Israellycool regulars. The Blaze is a news site established over a year ago by Glenn Beck.
I’ve become a big fan of the site and I think they’re doing something well beyond what has become normal today and this will explain why. I saw a story about families returning to Itamar in Arutz 7 and emailed it to someone at The Blaze who often covers Israel. Glenn was hugely affected by the massacre in Itamar, travelled to the town himself and gave the mayor of Itamar an award at his Restoring Courage event in Jerusalem. Last night (Sunday) The Blaze published the following story:
MORE FAMILIES MOVING TO ISRAELI SETTLEMENT WHERE FOGEL FAMILY WAS MURDERED
Amir Yosman, his wife Miriam and their one-year old son Eitan moved to the West Bank community of Itamar in September, six months after the brutal murder of the Fogel family in the same settlement. “We moved to Itamar as a way to express strength and not weakness, to show our faith, and the justice of going down the correct path,” Amir Yosman tells The Blaze.
Right there at the end of the first paragraph you can see something that marks The Blaze out as special in today’s world. They have not re-hashed someone else’s story, re-written a press release or any of the other lazy tricks that pass for journalism today. Somebody picked up the phone and made some calls. It doesn’t matter that they don’t have a “Jerusalem Bureau” to drive out there, they don’t have the budget of the BBC or CNN or Fox, but they’re doing the work and on a Sunday morning in New York you can quite adequately research a story like this.
They’ve written a good account, with personal interest and direct quotes. That is journalism and I wish it weren’t so conspicuously exceptional today but it is.
The Blaze is clearly founded on solid principles and it will be successful because they are telling the truth.
GBTV: You Are NOT The Product
When you watch just about every form of commercial TV today you need to know a fundamental truth: you are the product being sold to an advertiser. I’ll say it again in another way: the program you are watching is not the product because you, on the whole did not pay for it. An advertiser paid the TV station to make the program and the program delivers YOU, the product, into the grip of the advertiser.
Now re-read that paragraph again twice because it’s a mind twister.
Nearly all TV shows made today, including comedy, drama, news and documentaries have become a commercial tool to find and hold people and deliver them, with brains wide open for suggestion, to advertisers who pay almost all the bills for the production and distribution of those programs.
Of course there are a few exceptions: subscription channels in the US like HBO and various sports channels and true public broadcasting such as the BBC in the UK. Note: PBS in the US is fully commercial and merely lies to call it’s advertisers “sponsors” so it can suck revoltingly at the government teat too.
Lets say you want to bravely examine why the major drug companies in the US have skilfully managed to achieve a complete removal of all product liability for vaccines or any damages a vaccine they sell may cause. Great idea, go make the show but then you have to ask your station controller to check with the huge drug companies who pay for all most all day time TV and news. Because it’s mostly old retired people watching those, as you can tell from the types of advertisements that punctuate those shows. And what will those drug companies say to a hugely critical report on the news program that THEY PAY FOR?
You didn’t know that vaccines are free of all product liability? But you’re a well informed person who watches the news every night, how come nobody told you?
It all stems from you being the product, and you are sold to the advertiser.
So, getting back to Beck, that is what makes Glenn Beck’s GBTV venture so interesting. Sure, he does carry some advertising, but given his ideological make up it’s fairly well aligned with him. The main point is that because the bulk of the channel is funded by direct subscription from the viewers of either $50 or $100 per year, the show is now the product that is being sold to the audience. It’s a much more honest relationship. If you don’t like Beck or his show, don’t subscribe!
What is truly revolutionary is that this is now possible on a small enough budget to make GBTV a viable commercial venture and I hope it succeeds because in the end it may signal a slow and steady collapse of the dishonest system of news we have today.
