By Spiegel
Once upon a time, when laypersons chance upon information they deem of relevance to a wider audience, they’d be inclined to pay deference to the professionals – they couldn’t disseminate the information themselves anyway. So they tip some reporters off and leave them to it.
Appraised of the potentially newsworthy information, the paid word-slingers would then employ their repertoire of journalistic skills, garnering information to craft a succinctly informative news story. Inevitably, at the end of this process the original source disappears behind layers of legwork and prose, occasionally surviving in the story as a quote or a gracious acknowledgement by the reporter.
Enter Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web. Et après internet le deluge. For the first time, the world was any old punter’s oyster, so long as he or she had a word processor and a modem. A growing proportion of society could bypass the prohibitively high entry costs of the media industry and circumvent the whims of idiosyncratic media moguls and finicky editors. Laypersons, once only capable of being news sources, could now if they wished become their own publishers, editors and journalists.
Close to two decades into the internet epoch, new media operations – blogs, news aggregators and alternative news media – have flourished. Americans have their Drudge Report and Huffington Post, Britons tuck into insights from Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes, and our neighbours swear by their Malaysiakini. Singapore, however, has nothing quite like them. The gap in local new media landscape yawned enticingly, too good for the Straits Times to pass up.
Stomping into the market
In June 2006 the paper forged into this virgin frontier with the launch of the Straits Times Online Mobile Print. Or Stomp. An amalgamation of news, gossip, entertainment and social networking functions, the new $2 million integrated web portal prides (and markets) itself on its journalistic pretensions. On its Singapore Seen page, where its journalism goes, visitors are told:
“You generate the content. You write the reports. You take the photos. You shoot the videos.”
In essence, Stomp cedes journalistic responsibility to you – the reader/consumer/netizen. You, an amateur untainted by professional prejudices, can try your hand at deciding what is or isn’t newsworthy, snapping some shots to document the event and writing it up into a short report. The result is sort of like a daily aggregator, gathering public submissions from across the Republic. A typical story leads off with a photo, perhaps a video, followed by a short 100-word caption draped with colourful quotes from the contributor him or herself. Like this one, posted on Saturday (27 March):
Teens kiss and behave intimately in centre of public walkway in broad daylight
STOMPer Lee-lee was shocked when she spotted this young couple behaving very intimately in public. There were people walking around, but they didn’t seem to care, added the STOMPer.
In an email to STOMP today (Mar 27), the STOMPer says:
“I was visiting my friend and happened to see this out of the window and so I took some pictures.
“At one point, I think the guy had his hands in her pants. Teens nowadays are so ‘open’. They just make out in the day with people walking about.
“I wonder if it’s due to their upbringing.”
After taking in Lee-lee’s report, readers are invited to pick a phrase that best represents their gut reaction, from an emotion spectrum known as “The Mood Meter” – Enraged / Shiok! / LOL! / So sad / Sure or not? / Bochup. And while you came for the sleazy images, please stay for the rancorous comments; there’s where it’s really at.
If we take the Straits Times’ word for it, their pride and joy is the best thing since sliced bread:
“[Stomp's] success can be attributed to its becoming a household name for citizen journalism. Singaporeans young and old are saying ‘Let’s Stomp this’ whenever they come across newsworthy incidents and events in their neighbourhoods.
“These citizen journalists take pride in seeing their stories, photographs and videos uploaded in Stomp’s most popular feature, Singapore Seen.”
Call me a bluff old traditionalist, but sources don’t become journalists simply because they skip the middle man and broadcast their information directly to the world. To claim otherwise is to say that journalism is nothing more than the capacity to disseminate information on a massive scale, rather than the gathering and production of that information in accordance with a set of principles enshrining an obligation to the truth. We wouldn’t consider propagandists to be journalists, would we?
A historian, for example, isn’t just someone who writes about the past. Rather, history is the product of a process – of discovering and verifying discrete historical facts, interpretation of these facts to produce historical evidence, collating evidence to formulate a historical thesis. In the same vein, a journalist – professional or amateur – isn’t just someone who writes about or presents information on the immediate past, the ongoing present or the future. Journalism is the product of a process – of discovering and verifying discrete facts, interpretation of these facts to produce evidence, piecing the evidence to produce a coherent story or commentary.
The process is also continuous, as American political journalist David Broder explained in his 1981 book Behind the Front Page:
“…the newspaper that drops on your doorstep is a partial, hasty, incomplete, inevitably somewhat flawed and inaccurate rendering of some of the things we have heard about in the past twenty-four hours – distorted, despite our best efforts to eliminate gross bias – by the very process of compression that makes it possible for you to lift it from the doorstep and read it in about an hour.”
“If we labelled the product accurately, then we could immediately add: “But it’s the best we could do under the circumstances, and we will be back tomorrow, with a corrected and updated version.”[1]
The unfortunate reality about Stomp is most of its content are unprocessed snippets of information, captured on the fly, posted off the cuff and published with few questions. If there is any follow-up “with a corrected and updated version” at all, it occasionally comes from readers crowd-sourcing or official clarifications from an involved party. Truth in the Stomp brand of journalism is apparently incidental, rather than the result of principled dedication to verification.
If Stompers aren’t quite doing journalism, they aren’t doing ‘citizen journalism’ either. Lacking full autonomy over their work, they instead feed a media operation owned and controlled by industry professionals. Stompers aren’t their own publishers, editors and journalists. They have no say in what makes the final cut. The Stomp editorial team does.
Less than a month after Stomp’s official launch, academic and former Straits Times journalist Cherian George revealed on his blog what he had told the a Straits Times reporter (who conveniently ignored it and cherry-picked a better quote) about Stomp:
“I don’t consider STOMP to be citizen journalism, because it puts the public on tap, not on top. It merely introduces greater interactivity to traditional journalism. Citizen journalism in the proper sense does its own agenda-setting. Citizen journalists decide what questions need to be asked and what topics to pursue. They don’t just answer questions decided by mainstream editors.”
He went on to explain:
“To me, it is not the source of facts or opinions that distinguishes citizen journalism from the mainstream – just because a story or picture comes from a reader does not make it a piece of citizen journalism. Instead, it boils down to who selects and decides what stories to pursue and publish. Editorial decision making is what separate journalism from gossip. STOMP, like the rest of ST, is edited by professional ST journalists, not ordinary citizens.”
By feigning the empowering of citizens under a facade of user-driven content generation, Stomp creates a win-win situation, so to speak. Stomp monetises the unique web hits and tabloid fare served up by eager volunteers, Stompers indulge in cathartic acts of self-importance, and readers get their daily gossip for free.
Comment is free, but factoids are golden
The façade of devolved journalistic responsibility also provides a useful ethical grey area. It ostensibly absolves the Stomp team of the obligation to ensure the veracity of their content, shielding their own ‘journalistic bona fides’ – not that they had any to begin with – from scrutiny.
On 26 March, Stomp published a photo from Stomper Boon purportedly showing an SMRT bus running its route with a dangerously worn-out tyre, its driver therefore putting lives at risk. The veracity of this report appeared dubious to some Stompers, who insinuate that the photo was taken at a workshop rather than on a public road. Ultimately, however, an SMRT response acknowledging the incident would vindicate Boon’s claims.
A week later (on April Fool’s no less), Stomp outdid itself with a superlatively inane effort – ‘Ghost’ of Caucasian woman captured on photo at Sembawang Rd canal.
Such affairs are instructive about the Stomp team’s approach to ‘citizen journalism’. They do not deign it necessary to independently verify the information they receive – instead they would publish dubious material anyway, and allow Stompers to self-police. A rather perplexing attitude, since most would consider a conscientious, honest effort at truth-telling to be a rather salient characteristic of any type of journalism.
“Comment is free, but facts are sacred,” wrote Guardian editor CP Scott in a 1921 essay celebrating the centenary of his beloved newspaper. But while Stomp readily invites comment, it appears to have much less time for facts. Such disregard was famously defined and described by philosopher Harry Frankfurt in a celebrated 1986 essay titled “On Bullshit”. He wrote:
“The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.”
Stomp doesn’t propagate lies with deceptive intent, but it cares not for the truth value of the information it receives and distributes. What matters is how the content might enhance its commercial position. It (mis)represents itself as a news website with pretensions to citizen journalism, when its fundamental concern is monetising the new media market.
Its About Us page is highly instructive in this regard. Spending little time on ‘citizen journalism’ and waxing lyrical about its achievements, the blurb addresses neither readers nor users, but prospective investors. It concludes:
“Stomp’s hyperlocal success is your solution. We have unparalleled reach into the hearts of Singapores [sic] and the resources to tailor-make approaches to maximise your brand.”
When we see Stomp as a child of the capitalist logic and sycophantic slave to commercial pressures, it becomes easier to understand as a media operation. It deals in easy-to-digest and cheap-to-produce ‘junk food news’ – or in Carl Jensen’s words: “sensationalized, personalized, and homogenised inconsequential trivia which is served up to the public on a daily basis”. It plays to the lowest common denominators of base human interests and moral outrage, focusing on the banal to satisfy the base, cleansed of context and often coated with reactionary vitriol.
Stomp is the tabloid gone viral, the daily gossip aggregator, the paparazzi out-sourced. It is what The New Paper’s website should have been, if they could afford it.
Cogito, ergo sum?
To be sure, entertainment news and gossip isn’t necessarily bad journalism – but Stomp, rather calculatedly, facilitates only this sort of news reporting, and even then with scant regard for basic journalistic principles, or even for the truth. It should hardly be surprising that this disingenuity is just as evident in Stomp’s parent publication.
The Straits Times – no stranger to monopolistic hubris – accords to Stomp exclusivity to this title of ‘citizen journalism website’. Facilitated by the paper’s commercial dominance of the local media landscape, it is a self-indulgent legitimacy conferred by fiat through shameless print and online plugging.
Nothing else, it seems, deserves the honorable epithet of “citizen journalism website”. Pretenders to the throne like The Online Citizen or Temasek Review (described in this Straits Times report by its previous name The Wayang Party) are merely “socio-political blogs”, whilst eminently qualified commentators who pen opinions – much like the Straits Times’ own ‘senior writers’ do – are typecast as ‘bloggers’.
Perhaps they imagined bloggers/citizen journalists to be poorer cousins to the professionals that they themselves are, capable of only superficial tosh. David Simon, former Baltimore Sun reporter and producer/writer of the highly-acclaimed HBO series “The Wire” certainly thought so. At a United States Senate hearing on the “Future of Journalism”, he disparaged the ability of citizen journalists to produce “high-end journalism”:
“…high-end journalism – that which acquires essential information about our government and society in the first place – is a profession; it requires daily, full-time commitment by trained men and women who return to the same beats day in and day out until the best of them know everything with which a given institution is contending.”
“I am offended to think that anyone, anywhere believes American institutions as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives can be held to gathered facts by amateurs pursuing the task without compensation, training, or for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care to whom it is they are lying or from whom they are withholding information.”
But Simon was wrong; citizen journalists can supplement and match the work of professionals. And they already have, as Gawker’s Ryan Tate showed when he refuted Simon’s claims:
“…as a newspaper reporter who spent a few years covering a town much like Baltimore – Oakland, California – I often found that bloggers were the only other writers in the room at certain city council committee meetings and at certain community events. They tended to be the sort of persistently-involved residents newspapermen often refer to as “gadflies” – deeply, obsessively concerned about issues large and infinitesimal in the communities where they lived.
“Collectively, these bloggers are doing just what Simon suggests: attending meetings, developing sources and holding government accountable every day. And the best of the crop are doing so individually, on their own and, somehow, basically for free.”
Stomp isn’t, as they love to claim, the best citizen journalism has to offer in Singapore – if it is that at all. Citizen journalists and bloggers here can and have indeed produced what Simon considers “high-end journalism”, covering beats less trodden or utilising their professional expertise to analyse current issues. Notwithstanding Stomp’s pretensions, the first steps have already been taken toward a genuinely pluralistic news media landscape, perhaps something like that envisioned by Arianna Huffington:
“For too long, traditional media have been afflicted with Attention Deficit Disorder – they are far too quick to drop a story – even a good one, in their eagerness to move on to the Next Big Thing. Online journalists, meanwhile, tend to have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder… they chomp down on a story and stay with it, refusing to move off it until they’ve gotten down to the marrow.”
“In the future, these two traits will come together and create a much healthier kind of journalism.”
[1] Broder, David, Behind the Front Page: A Candid Look at How the News is Made (Simon & Schuster, 1981).
Editor’s note: David Broder’s quote was reattributed to his 1981 book at 1340hrs on 6 April 2010. It was originally attributed to a speech he made in 1979, as it was cited by Nick Davies in his book Flat Earth News. (Davies, Nick, Flat Earth News: An award-winning reporter exposes falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media (London: Chatto & Windus, 2008), pp. 44-5.)
____________________________
Stomp is a piece of shit journalism and the people who post there are the worst self-righteous Singaporean trash.
Enuf is enuf.
Time to end this nonsense.
stomp? it is indeed a crap site…all my 1st postins/contributions were deleted on the 1st day within the 1st 10 mins…
after that no longer would i contrbute nor surf their forum…
An interesting though lengthy article that leave no stone unturn! And as what the writer had implied, everyone of us here should give ourself a tap on the back. We are all “high class journalists”!
Kudos to all! :D
Can I propose a contest/challenge to
citizen/mainstream journalists?
Topic: How “white” are our Schools in Singapore?
The Straits Times recently featured the SJI/Singapore Meritocracy issues, can our Schools really stand up to an investigation in the terms of transparency and incorruptibility?
Are there monetary and non-monetary factors that do not provide for a level playing field for admission to primary, secondary schools etc?
Anyone else interested in the results of such an investigation into our Schools?
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2010/04/singaporean-strawberries/
I am against those who took photoes of others and say whatever they want to shame them in public about the subject.I use to urge readers to be fair and to give the subject benefit of doubt and listen to their side of their story.Some how I was given a red card before a yellow card and banned from there….but funny ….lately I use to receive spam mail to visit that site…
i don’t understand why would TOC write such a lengthy piece just to explain why STOMP isn’t journalism. It just isnt worth the time and effort at all. there’s zero basis for comparison.
I agree with spy. Don’t waste your time on the obvious.
Spy,
The alternative is to keep quiet and let the Straits Times swamp the public with information about how STOMP is the best citizen journalism phenomenon in Singapore.
I don’t think that is a very fruitful position to take on public issues. Just because we think something is self-evidently bad, doesn’t mean everyone else does.
There are two sites are go too, just like a past a rubbish dump everyday to work. First is Janus face tr as I haven’t figured out why they keep going off line.last time it was due to cyber attacks.now they can’t use that excuse any more.It is just upgrading. As for stomp they exist for the sole function of dumbing down the Internet so that poloticians can say netizens can never bear the beauty of two A4 articles. Our brains will explode like the grenade. Both fulfill a function like the magic mirror who always knows who is the fairest of them all
I am very busy working to pay the bills. So I try to make the best of my tea breaks. Stomp lacks soul. They seem to have it all. But it does come from the well of first hand experiences. The should learn to write in the first person.This chap is diabolically insightful and can even move you. Just wished he payed off on the vulgarities. To me the take more then give.if stomp can write like that all of us will be dog food
http://dotseng.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/munich-a-diary-of-strange-events/
only when the hum is flushed down the toilet will there be more answers coming out.
When talking about government controlled media, how come there’s no mention of the Business Times? At the very least, if it’s all toilet paper, it’s got to be premium.
Very well-written article. Why not they put this up on STOMP?
Propaganda taking all shapes and forms in Singapore’s media landscape.
Once the truth comes out. It is very hard to put it back on the bottle again. For e.g this whole doss attack nonsense is not finished yet.it is only just starting. Ppl r wrong when they say the Internet has a short memory. Very wrong.
That is why sites like stomp and tr will find themselves appealing to only a certain level of crowd.
wat a pretentious boring crapshit article
Great article, Spiegel.
STOMP serves its purpose as gossip mill.
In running my blog, I’m often “advised” to keep it short. Yeh, I could … but the point is to delve, to explore, to learn, to probe, to share.
And if it’s not worth 20 mins of XYZ’s time, then it’s not worth 20 mins to XYZ but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth 30 mins to ABC who may even dwell upon and reflect on certain points made, eh?
The Pariah, http://www.singaporeenbloc.blogspot.com
Great article. Never thought the purpose of STOMP was as discussed. On closer examination, it probably was.
Kudos to the writer of this page! Two thumbs up :D
Stomp is so full of crap. Most of it is about lame stuff like “Kiasu driver uses dustbin to chope parking lots” or “selfish lady occupies to seats while the rest of us stand”. 1st part is a simple thing just move the damn dustbin. Quit whining you fag. 2nd 1 is easier just say “excuse me” to the lady loud enough for her to realise she is being a jackass instead of being a ball-less sack of shit and taking pictures and posting on stomp. Seriously lah are S’poreans dat gutless. Even when u are in d rite you still not gonna do anything bout it but instead take pics? Wat a bunch of faggots!
Add me up on FB ppl if u agree wif me ok.
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/mdmuneerkhan
Stomp is not “Citizen Journalism” it is “Citizen Voyeurism”.
It seems to be site designed to show, for the large part of it presently, the shameful side of Singapore.
In a way, one may say that the current culture of established media, when it comes to “Citizen Journalism”, is to use the populace itself to shame the shameless into submission, obedience and maybe even use them as entertainment,like some high-tech jesters in a med evil court.
It is sad, it seems to serve more to denigrate the population and how far we have come as people too.
My apologies, some corrections on the last comment
I typed :
“It is sad, it seems to serve more to denigrate the population and how far we have come as people too.”
It should be:
“It is sad, it seems to serve more to denigrate the population rather than show how far we have come as people and what we should be proud of as a society.”
STOMP is both hilarious and deeply fascinating. I believe they have some banners up for a ‘Grammar Ninja’ campaign. I suppose that’s a more palatable formulation for public display than ‘Grammar Nazi’.
More Press Muse! It is the best column.
Sigh….why is this still on discussion?
While the article does bring up good points, it took too long to reach there.
Stomp is crazy self-righteous itchy fingered idiots posting random thoughts. I will never post there, it’s embarrassing just knowing it exists.
Stomp is a ridiculous piece of shit. wanna know why? just look at the type of ‘citizen journalism’ they have. seriously? man eating on the train? woman not giving up seat? people pretending to fall asleep? what is this, some police state?
i have a feeling that ‘citizen journalism’ is a euphemism for keeping-everyone-in-check-and-making-society-ideal-by-having-people-spying-on-each-other. what kind of government encourages spying amongst its citizens? the names hitler, stalin and mao come to mind.
Stomp is full of gossip and irrelevant information not worthy to be classified as “news worthy”.
Clearly, Stomp is not a good example of citizen journalism but whatever it is, it’s really citizens who post the crap and contribute to the pageviews is it not? So should we assign blame to Stomp or those who contribute to it?
As for this post and many others on TOC, I would consider them to be blog entries – some obviously better written than others. There’s no shame in being a blog (look at how much respect Yawning Bread gets). But this piece is clearly pushing an opinion – as do many TOC articles – and not reportage.
I think a more journalistic and objective way to do this article is to ask media experts/acaemics about what they think of Stomp and then quote them objectively.
@ST,
If you read the piece, you will notice that I had quoted the views of Assoc Prof Cherian George, who is Head of Journalism and Publishing at NTU’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication. He had strong views on what Stomp is (and isn’t). Ironically, the Straits Times chose not to publish the quotes he gave them that criticised Stomp.
I also find it ironic that you say that “this piece is clearly pushing an opinion” and then go on to ask for quotes from experts and academics.
Firstly, yes I am expressing an opinion. This is a column, not a news article. The point is exactly to present an argument, an opinion.
Secondly, you suggest that reporters seek expert comments. When reporters quote these experts, what else are they are quoting but those expert’s opinions?
What matters more is whether these opinions (mine, the experts’, anyone’s) hold up – whether they can be substantiated with sound arguments, facts and logic. This I hope I have done above with reference to examples, relevant commentary and media theory.
There isn’t a “more journalistic and objective way”. Journalism is not just straight reporting of hard news. It includes commentary, analysis, interpretation, argumentation, opinion. That’s what many journalists do, especially columnists, and academics who write for newspapers.
For a quick intro on the broad genres that journalism encompasses, you can start with Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism
Spiegel,
I fully support independent journalism and outlets but I’ll be honest with you. I was not sure if this article is meant to be purely a commentary. Your quoting half dozen people seem to be an attempt at trying to be objective as if you were writing a feature story. But of the half dozen people you quoted, only one directly referenced Stomp. I felt confused — were you trying to convince me with an argument or quoting others (possibly out of context) to make your point?
BTW, is it incorrect for TOC to be described as a socio-political blog?
I know you said this is a column but I think the argument would be better made if you had gotten an insight about “citizen journalism” from the perspective of the editors and writers at Stomp or people who know the set-up.
In fact, if you ask Stomp editor Chew V-ming to explain what his or Stomp’s definition of citizen journalism is, he would probably tell you that they are only interested in the What, When and Where. The Who, Why and How is simply not required or wanted. Don’t you agree that with that info, it practically disqualifies them from being a true CJ website — no matter what the marketing copy or Straits Times says?
@ST,
I’m not sure how you define commentary. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to think that commentary must carry signposts like “I think”, “I believe” or something similar. Your categorisation of types of journalistic writing and journalism in general seem quite rote.
Feature style writing can be commentary – in fact it almost always is, by virtue of the fact that feature writing involves much interpretation, analysis, argument and opinion.
When you say this: “Your quoting half dozen people seem to be an attempt at trying to be objective as if you were writing a feature story,” you suggest that a commentary piece must necessarily be a polemic? Why should that be the case? You draw a very distinct line between commentary and feature when there is no such thing.
I’m not sure why the fact that only 1 quote is directly related to Stomp is a problem. The reason why this is the case is the same why I thought this was worth writing about – very few people have discussed Stomp in an in-depth manner.
The quotes I have used are relevant because they explain salient aspects of journalism, and therefore provide background and a basis for comparison with the type of operation that Stomp is.
The quotes I have used are pretty much self-contained, and for the benefit of readers who are interested to verify them, I have included references and links (Cherian George’s quotes are taken from his blog, which still exists, the quote from David Broder is from his book, and it has also been referenced in other material discussing journalism). This way I offer transparency to the way I quote, and hopefully if I misquoted someone, readers can point that out to me.
I have actually seen how Stomp replies to users – email responses to user emails regarding the poor quality of their material have been posted on forums. They tend to defend their work as part of the evolving citizen journalism landscape in Singapore.
I don’t think it was really necessary or even profitable to ask Stomp what they think of their own work – my premise is that I disagree with what they are doing and what they claim to be, and I use their actual output to argue my case against their claims. Which is more instructive than relaying what Stomp says about itself.
TOC is a socio-political blog.
To give an example of the blur, if at all existent, lines between commentary/feature, this is an excellent piece on the impact of Conservative administration on a London council by Johann Hari, a columnist for The Independent.
Hari is a respected left-wing writer, so this piece obviously is steeped in criticism of the Conservative Party. It is a well-written feature/commentary laced with a mix of analysis, opinion, and argument.
http://johannhari.com/2010/05/05/welcome-to-cameron-land
Every time I looked at stomp, I feel so ashamed to be a Singaporean. It perpetuates the stereotype that Singaporeans are indeed a nation of whiners.
Let’s stomp this???????
C’mon, get out of here! Nobody talks like that. We hear people say `google it’ or `post’ or `see’ it on youtube’.
Maybe only the people working in STOMP talk like that. Stop kidding yourself, SPH.
If I were to lump them together- Stomp, theonlinecitizen and temasek review- all fail to meet the criteria of citizen journalism.
However, I question the “authorities” who are trying to perpetuate their standard of citizen journalism. What is citizen journalism- is it not founded on the basis of the common citizen?
Do we not have the right to rant (through various mediums, be it Temasek Review, theonlinecitizen or Stomp)?
Do we not have the right to capture and propogate what we observe?
Do we not have the right to air our views?
Citizen journalism, in this case, are mere semantics. The criteria laid by the “intellectuals/elites/professionals” are arbitrary benchmarks that could potentially disparage our freedom of speech.
When they criticize our articles as “sensationalized, personalized, and homogenised inconsequential trivia”, I wonder where they get their standards from. How is it different from the thought control we firmly oppose?
What is sensationalized, personalized, homogenized and inconsequential to them may turn out to be significant, personal, public consciousness and consequential to us.
When you allow an external agent to dictate your expression, you cease to truly express yourself.
Experts are often the best propagandists because few people defy them.
As a citizen, I will not cede my right to speak up. For I speak, therefore I am.
I will write what I want and allow the reader, not those “experts”, to judge my article.