The public's assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans' views of media bias and independence now match previous lows. Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media's performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade. Similarly, only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased. And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20%) or are willing to admit their mistakes (21%) now also match all-time lows. – Pew
Dominant Social Theme: The race is on for a higher gold price?
Free-Market Analysis: We are often identified as the strongest, if not the only, continual proponent of the idea that the Internet is mimicking the Gutenberg press in terms of its impact on Western society, especially in America which has a cultural affinity for the Internet's impact and tends in fact to magnify it. Anyway, for all of you who believe such an analysis is simplistic (all right, it may be), we point to this latest Pew poll which is uncanny in our opinion in the way it presents numbers that track the ascension of the Internet.
The Internet has really been around for about 20 years, and the Pew poll tracks the slumping of the public's opinion through just that period. "It's at the lowest level in more than two decades" according to Pew, and while it may have been up and down in previous times, or over this time period, we are not surprised that it has arrived at this point. Nor are we surprised that few people believe news organizations are independent of powerful people or are willing to admit mistakes.
Our position has been that the monetary elite has lost control of their message in West and especially in the West's military lynchpin, America. The Federal Reserve is under attack, the controlled (right versus left) political system is a mess and the Internet explains daily to those who wish to read it what newspapers, TV and magazines will not and cannot.
The Daily Bell regularly presents the monetary elite's dominant social themes with an eye to explaining their promotions – thus showing readers how they are put in place to generate wealth and power. These promotions rest on the three-legged stool of government (and military) power, religious passion and informational presentations. The government leg is shaky, the religious-institutional one is nearly destroyed and the informational element has been fairly well undermined by the Internet.
This is perhaps (just perhaps, dear reader) a reason (we would venture) why America has been increasingly militarized and why Homeland Security is suddenly the driver of an ever-more extensive and intrusive US security apparatus. Some see this as a strengthening of the authoritarian streak in recent US culture. We tend to see it as an admission of weakness, given what has happened to the rest of the monetary elite's toolkit. Western cultures, even now, are the most sophisticated on earth. The monetary elite, in the last 300 years, has never sought to rule by frank force because, in fact, the risks are far too great. They are too few and the world is too vast.
Conclusion: Throughout the West a vast security apparatus is arising. Right now it is fully visible only to a few. But the monetary elite should consider the implications carefully. It is comforting to some, because it indicates business as usual. But in our opinion, there is no business as usual these days. The security apparatus, fully implemented in the West shall not stand. As soon as it is entirely perceived, it will crumble. Erected, it will be pushed aside. It is, to put it bluntly, a waste of time and money. 1984 is a phantasmagoria. Fascism of any sort is unsustainable. The Internet trend will continue to its logical conclusion and people will be a lot freer at the end of the journey than at the beginning.
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