[GlenBarrington]

I don't see how them charging money at this point will change my life any. The quality and reliability of modern journalism is abysmally low.

As near as I can tell, journalists are, for the most part, lazy and incompetent. They've ALL become shills for whatever political or commercial agenda that pays their bills.

I've heard the term, 'the fog of war' before, but there is also a phenomena that should be called 'the fog of truth'. That occurs when the hacks on all sided of an issue start pumping out huge quantities of 'facts' impossible for a reader or news consumer to independently validate. This reduces us to accepting those 'facts' that 'feel' right to us.

A similar problem I've noticed, is the HUGE number of junk tidbits of 'news' reported in a story that later prove to be fiction.

I point to the story of that tragic school shooting in Connecticut.

The wrong man is identified. The man's mother is a teacher at the school, the mother was the teacher of the class that was killed. The mother had no connection to the school, the mother was a substitute teacher. The man was buzzed in to the school, the man shot his way into the school. There was a related murder of the man's father in New Jersey, no, we don't know who was killed in NJ, The father is alive, the brother is dead, no, he is alive. the man's girlfriend is missing, no, SHE is alive, no SHE doesn't exist. (Damn, there goes the sex angle). (Who's dead in NJ now?) Well he dated a girl once or twice, but not enough to call her a girlfriend (DAMN! we lost the sex angle a second time!) The mother owned the assault weapons. No she didn't, and they weren't assault weapons. But the mom was REAL strict, not really, she didn't know how to handle a son with emotional problems. Well the family was all messed up, no they weren't, well, maybe a little, we don't know.


And that's the point. We don't really know any more than we did 2 days ago. The news media just plain sucks.