Where is your source?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Where is your sourceIsn't it strange that each and every time that a Blogger writes a controversial piece on the Internet, or someone posts something on Facebook or such, someone who does not agree with it will come along and question it with “where is your source?” or “without listing sources this has no validity” and other such bulldust.

However, those very same people would not ever even as much as think to make the same statements and ask the same questions as to anything that is written or broadcast in the so-called mainstream media. They simply believe (almost) everything that they read in the papers and magazines or what they hear and see on radio and television. Amazing, isn't it.

As soon as, however, some “alternative media”, a citizen journalist and -editor writes something on the Internet which they do not want to believe even though it is true they scream for the source and say that it cannot be true unless one can link to a source.

The truth is that the majority has been so blinded and deafened by the so-called main stream media, by the propaganda of the state through those media streams, that they cannot and will not believe anything that those media have not reported. They would have told us on the TV or in the papers, I hear so often. Yes, sure, in the same way that the Nazis told the German people about the concentration camps and the ovens.

Aside from the fact that the world's “mainstream media” is but owned by a few corporation today and many of them are so tied into government and corporations and certain groups that the truth is not something that many of the are prepared to present to the readers, listeners or viewers but only entertainment masquerading as news.

There are some of the mainstream media who do go out on a limb at times and those are worthy of watching but the majority are bound by editorial policies that are decided by their owners and their masters, including government.

In Germany under Hitler the media was used as a propaganda machine to dumb down the people and have them follow the decrees of the Fuehrer and his minions and it is not much different, only somewhat more subtle, in our so-called democracies of today. It was for the very reason that it was forbidden for Germans of the Third Reich to listen to foreign radio stations, for instance, and it is for that reason that the powers-that-be would like to be able to silence the citizen journalists and the Bloggers. In fact not so long ago the Italian government actually tried to make citizen journalism illegal as newspapers and media in Italy, theoretically, need to be licensed ever since after the Second World War and Mussolini's fascists. However, it would appear that they decided to leave it at the status quo.

It does show, however, that the established media and especially the governments do have a serious issue with alternative media, whether run by citizen journalist and “ordinary” Bloggers or alternative media groups.

The sources of a Blogger may not be other newspapers or other websites, often they are not at all, but real life, inside knowledge and what they have discovered for themselves through investigative work. Hence there is may be no web-link that can be provided, just the story, much like in your “normal” newspapers, radio and TV channels.

© 2014