Quote of the Week...from Jim Morrison

"Whoever controls the media, controls the mind."      ...Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison was the lead singer and chief lyricist for the American rock band The Doors.  He lived from 1944 to 1971 and, had he not died in mysterious circumstances and somehow managed to live all these years, he would be 79 today...it's his birthday.  Morrison was an iconoclast who railed against authority...and received his own fair share of criticism from the more traditional elements of society at that time. His above quote struck me as both prescient and outdated...let me explain.  There has always been a kind of circular relationship between the media and the general public consuming it. Since media outlets are by-and-large commercial enterprises in competition with one another, they may seem committed on the surface to journalistic integrity, but they also know that their viewing, reading and/or listening audiences carry within themselves their own values and prejudices that these companies often feel the need to respect when making decisions on what to broadcast or publish...and how to express it. This didn't all just start with FoxNews, either. Yet nowadays, folks will regularly tune in to their own favorite news channels or talk stations just to hear talking points that affirm their own worldviews, including targeting people and groups they supposedly should fear or even hate.  So while Jim Morrison might have seemed to paint "the people"...and ultimately society as a whole...as victims of nefarious media manipulation, it is also true that the media are, in turn, allowing themselves to be manipulated by the people. In my view, none of us are innocents, including Jim's still-influential ghost...