.

Quilting the News

Lots of people still don’t know
__that what’s portrayed as “news”
is often pieced together to
__promote the crafters’ views.

Like sculptors with a block of clay,
__the crafters often mold
the storyline in subtle ways
__to tilt the tale that’s told.

The crafters of the news decide
__the facts that will be learned,
which story leads will be pursued,
__which stones to leave unturned.

They choose the stories to leave out—
__decisions that are key—
since no one hears the crashing of
__an isolated tree.

The crafters pick the questions posed.
__All fastballs up and in?
Or softballs lobbed quite leisurely,
__with neither speed nor spin.

The crafters do the editing
__behind a padlocked door.
They splice and dice the guest’s remarks
__and some drift to the floor.

They take the facts that aren’t benign—
__the ones they don’t want seen—
and bury them on page B9,
__in paragraph 15.

Control of language too makes theirs
__an influential job.
Is that “a group of activists”
__or just an “angry mob”?

The crafters also pick the day
__the story will be aired.
The timing may be set so no
__response can be prepared.

Discerning people won’t be swayed.
__With them, the secret’s out.
But with naïve and trusting folks,
__the crafters still have clout.

The crafters often quilt the news
__to seek their savored ends.
They sometimes even tilt the news
__to back their favored friends.

You too have the potential to
__affect the public’s views.
You will be influential if
__you learn to quilt the news.

.

.

Peace Through Strength

Peace exists
when those who want
what’s yours
and plan to take it,

so fear the force
of your response,
they change course
and forsake it.

.

.

Mark F. Stone worked as an attorney (active duty and civil service) for the United States Air Force for 33 years and is retired. He began writing poems in 2005, as a way to woo his bride-to-be into wedlock. His poems have been published by Light, The Ohio Poetry Association, The Road Not Taken: The Journal of Formal Poetry, the Society of Classical Poets, Whatfinger News, Ric Edelman’s The Truth About Your Future podcast, and the Seeking Alpha Alpha Picks podcast.

NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets.

The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.


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47 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    “Quilting the News” is a perfect description of the behind the scenes chicanery that haunts us. One word can change the entire message received by the public as can an alteration of the headlines affecting the entire perception. Very well written with a discerning eye for what happens.
    “Peace Through Strength” is the only was to go. Nuclear deterrence certainly has been a great assist to relative peace and to carefully crafted responses to threats along with conventional forces in being prepared to strike or defend as needed. Sometimes a short, encapsulated poem has the most powerful punch, as does yours.

    Reply
  2. Margaret Coats

    Dare I say “Peace through Strength” tells the truth in “well-quilted” words? Really, Mark, what a reversible crazy quilt you display in the poem on news! Anyone with any sense quilts his or her views for the audience, just as all of us here take greater pains to do so in poetry. You even point that out in the final stanza of “Quilting,” so I think you know what you’re doing. Thank you very sincerely for the new synonym to our well-worn “well-crafted.”

    Reply
  3. David Paul Behrens

    Both of these are clever poems. The second reminds me of a short one I wrote way back in 1970, in a form of my own invention.

    Peace

    Peace you see,
    Will be born
    When everything is petrified.

    Least you see,
    None will mourn
    When everything has died.

    Reply
  4. Cynthia Erlandson

    I enjoyed both of these poems. These supposed journalists certainly do “tilt the tale that’s told,” and you’ve expressed that truth in some excellent phrases. You’ve set a challenging goal for yourself in “Quilting the News”. In my opinion, it could be better if you found a way to carry the “quilting” metaphor throughout the poem, as you did in verse six, where some things are drifing to the floor, like quilting fabric or thread might do, rather than changing the metaphor to a sculpting one (as in verse two), and a baseball one (as in verse five). Or perhaps, since you’ve named these con-artists “crafters” in several places, it might just be better titled, “Crafting the news”. “Peace through Strength” is excellent in its concise and energetically-stated truth!

    Reply
    • Mark F. Stone

      Cynthia, Thank you for your kind words. Your suggestions are good ones. Mark

      Reply
  5. Russel Winick

    Both fine poems Mark, thanks for sharing them. Quilting the News really pinpoints the mainstream media today, with its hiding, burying, or distortion of critical news. You can also tell they’re doing it from the fact that our Cadaver-In-Chief says it’s conservatives who are “semi-fascist.”

    Reply
  6. Paul A. Freeman

    This quilting goes far beyond the mainstream media.

    You have the made up media of far right conspiracy theorists, and talk show hosts passing themselves off as journalists. For instance, Tucker Carlson sycophantically allowed Putin to warble on for hours without challenge. Even Putin was bemused by the toothless, non-incisive ‘journalist’. It was embarrassing – I watched it on RT, by the way.

    A good poem, Mark, especially if a reader understands that everyone, to some extent, pushes their views and agendas, and if you’re not a slave to either the mainstream media or made up media.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Paul, stop it. We’re all sick to death of your left-liberal preaching that parrots the mainstream media (which is the real made-up media). You’ll never convince us that any of it is true. We prefer the side that knows what a woman is, knows what a person is, and doesn’t defend terrorists who want to pick up where the Nazis left off (some Hamas victims were Holocaust survivors), and that’s the way it’s always going to be. So stop it.

      The people you call conspiracy theorists have been right every time, so it’s hardly a theory anymore. You leftists are the real conspiracy theorists, seeing racism, sexism, etc. everywhere, even the most ridiculous places imaginable. You actually believe that there’s a worldwide conspiracy among all white people to oppress other races and among all men to oppress women, just like anti-Semites who believe there’s a similar conspiracy among all Jews.

      I really shouldn’t be dignifying your comments with a response (usually I don’t anymore), but you’ve been doing this a lot lately, and I believe I speak for many when I say I’m tired of it.

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Notice that Paul ends his post by making a sly distinction between “mainstream media” and “made up media,” as if MSM obviously has more credibility than the other one. This is called stacking the deck in poker, and is the kind of cheap fallacy that liberals are so very fond of. Never argue a point, says liberalism — just keep saying that you’re the only honest one talking.

        It doesn’t really make any sense to talk to Paul; his opinions are set in concrete and he has no intention of altering them in the light of facts. He is exactly the kind of robotic android that the globalist New Order wants.

      • Paul A. Freeman

        What’s hilarious is that you have no idea what I believe. You just assume, berate and label because I’m not in lockstep with your opinions.

        When you say ‘we’ all the time, Joshua, does that mean you speak for everyone, including all the professional working women who are not at home as ‘helpers’ of husbands?

      • Paul A. Freeman

        Joseph, surely you can tell that both the mainstream media and the made up media both have their own agendas and decide where you stand, issue on issue. That’s what I try to do rather than being a sheeple.

      • Joshua C. Frank

        Paul, few are in “lockstep” with my opinions, but you’ve gone on record revealing your position on quite a few things. If I’m wrong about anything you think, this is the perfect opportunity to set the record straight.

        To answer your question, since you’re one of the few left-liberals here, it seems clear who “we” is. By the way, I’m happy to see that you still remember that poem of mine in which I describe women as helpers (in keeping with Scripture).

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Paul, you STILL don’t see the point. You continue to use the paired terms “mainstream media” and “made up media” while remaining utterly unconscious of the fact that this is a skewed and rhetorically biased juxtaposition. Since when, and by whose definition, is conservative reporting and journalism “made up”? Yours? The Columbia School of Journalism’s? The cocktail-party chatter of your left-liberal friends?

        Like all left-liberals, you try to win the argument by redefining the terms in your own favor. However, you have made a fatal forensic error above. You have admitted that mainstream media has an agenda. You try to weasel out of the dilemma by saying that you listen to both sides before making your personal decision as to what to believe.

        Yeah, sure. And Joe Biden is cognitively sharp.

    • Mark F. Stone

      Paul, I suspect we disagree politically on many issues. However, I do respect your courage for posting in a hostile environment, and I’m glad you like the poem. Mark

      Reply
  8. Joseph S. Salemi

    “Quilting the News” is carefully composed and lilting. In fact, each quatrain could be set up as heptameter rhyming couplets. Diction is choice, rhymes are absolutely perfect, and the argument is fully sustained and developed. There is a full clarity of expression in the poem that no navel-gazing modernist poem could ever aspire to.

    “Peace Through Strength,” on the other hand, is concise and clipped — but it contains the precious nugget of wisdom that the West needs to rediscover.

    Reply
  9. Mike Bryant

    Mark I love your takedown of mainstream media. Anyone that doesn’t know what is happening is living in a vacuum.
    The CIA has been running population influence operations forever. Does anyone remember Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty? The problem began when our betters realized they could run the same sort of careful government shepherding right here at home. There have been a few toothless attempts to shut it down:

    https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hearings/ciasuseofjournal00unit.pdf

    But the upside is just too lucrative for our one party state. It seems that the NeoCons won the day long ago.

    Most people only watch one news broadcast at a time. If you could tune into dozens of broadcasts worldwide it would be obvious that the newsreaders are all reading from the same script. But… you don’t have to remain ignorant because many citizen journalists have put out videos that allow you to see the coordination.
    Here is a three minute clip from YouTube:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3zG9BJkNJY
    Here is an eight minute clip:
    https://rumble.com/v1g6xk9-operation-mockingbird-msm-caught-reading-exact-same-script-about-fbis-trump.html
    The funny thing is… they don’t even care that we know about it anymore, because they have so many sheep spouting their talking points they don’t have to say a thing…

    Listen… I think I hear some bleating coming from the peanut gallery.

    Reply
  10. Mike Bryant

    This is what Walter Cronkite wrote in the introduction to the 1996 book Censored – The News That Didn’t Make the News- And Why, by Carl Jensen.
    Walter Cronkite wrote:

    A handful of us determine what will be on the evening news broadcasts, or, for that matter, in the New York Times or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal…. Indeed it is a handful of us with this awesome power… a strongly editorial power.
    …we must decide which news items out of hundreds available we are going to expose that day. And those [news stories] available to us already have been culled and re-culled by persons far outside our control.

    So… this is nothing new. It is not about Left and Right. It is not about Hawks and Doves… it is not even about the righteous and the unrighteous. Every division is a created division that serves to cement the power and wealth of the elite.
    If you still think that Elon Musk or Tucker Carlson care about the American people… you are living in a dream world.

    Reply
    • Mark F. Stone

      Mike, Just as James Brown was the hardest working man in show business, you are, without doubt, the hardest working commenter on SCP. Thank you for your devotion to digging up and presenting the facts. I always enjoy reading your comments, and I’m glad you like the quilting poem. Mark

      Reply
      • Mike Bryant

        Thanks Mark, I always thought that the internet would be a force for unity and peace throughout our world. Unfortunately the internet has been subverted by the same forces that subverted the so-called news organizations. We have been divided along millions of manufactured fault lines and then stirred into frenzies by the mainstream media news, all at the behest of the powerful.
        It always amazes me that so many of the naive believers are clamoring for a place at the tables that are about to be flipped over.

  11. Yael

    Good ones! I like both of these poems for their poetic craft as well as their message. I agree with Cynthia that the quilting theme should be more consistently developed throughout the entire poem to give it tighter internal cohesion; or alternatively, the title could simply be changed to something else.

    Reply
    • Mark F. Stone

      Yael, I am pleased you like the poems, and I appreciate your suggestions. Mark

      Reply
  12. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Mark, I love a well-crafted poem and both of these are beautifully wrought – you don’t miss a beat in either. But, more than that, for all those who aren’t aware that they’re being propagandized by MSM, after reading “Quilting the News” they can’t claim they’ve not been warned. Anyone not heeding your poetic words of wisdom is in for a rude awakening in the not-too-distant future. Mark, thank you for bringing vital news to the pages of SCP via fine poetry!

    Reply
  13. James Sale

    More excellent poetry from you Mark: love ‘since no one hears the crashing of / __an isolated tree.’ Very nicely put! Well done.

    Reply
    • Mark F. Stone

      James, I greatly appreciate your comment. And hearing from you always brings back fond memories of our reading poems together at an SCP event in the park in New York City a few years ago. Mark

      Reply
  14. Shamik Banerjee

    I love both pieces. Your first poem is a direct hit on news and news agencies, Mark. I am not sure about the previous generations, but the current ones grow up learning “media people” to be tamperers and forgers who “make news” and cannot be trusted fully. Thank you for sharing the truth with your beautiful craft that follows a direct approach.

    Reply
  15. Lannie David Brockstein

    Since the covid-pandemic, Big Pharma has been, by far, the largest buyer of advertising space from both the mainstream media and the Big Tech social media platforms. It is therefore Big Pharma with its “vaccine” needles that is the most influential “quilter of the news”.

    Reply
  16. Norma Pain

    I really enjoyed both of these poems Mark. I guess time will tell how many people have been ‘listening’ to the warnings of what is in the works by the rich and powerful. I am personally counting on the ‘silent majority’ to come through when it is needed and just say NO.

    Reply
  17. Mike Bryant

    Top 10 stories the mainstream media has decided that you should not hear about:

    #10 – Massive study reveals more bad news for the COVID vaccinated.
    #9 – Leaked recording exposes extensive global influence and election interference operation.
    #8 – Jeffrey Epstein had secret surveillance room to monitor and record his “guests.”
    #7 – Dr. David Martin reveals who is pulling the strings behind the World Health Organization.
    #6 – Dr. Phil drops bombshell discoveries from the Southern border.
    #5 – El Salvador President blasts George Soros in fiery speech.
    #4 – Elderly UK couple ordered to sell home to house migrants.
    #3 – WARNING: self-spreading vaccines are closer than you think.
    #2 – Mike Benz presents damning evidence that the 2020 election was RIGGED seven months in advance.
    #1 – Data the CDC tried to keep hidden is now available — and it shows disturbing rates of adverse events.

    Reply
  18. Mike Bryant

    Epoch Times March 02, 2024

    “Officials from the National Science Foundation tried to conceal the spending of millions of taxpayer dollars on research and development for artificial intelligence tools used to censor political speech and influence the outcome of elections, according to a new congressional report.
    The report looking into the National Science Foundation (NSF) is the latest addition to a growing body of evidence that critics claim shows federal officials—especially at the FBI and the CIA—are creating a “censorship-industrial complex” to monitor American public expression and suppress speech disfavored by the government.”

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Let’s sit back here and wait for Paul A. Freeman to show up and pompously intone that all of the above is “fake news.”

      Note: “Fake news ” means news that does not comport with the left-liberal globalist narrative about how the world is run — a system of elitist control for which we should all be piously and silently grateful.

      Reply
      • Mike Bryant

        That’s funny, Joe, because many here have written articles for Epoch Times. Like the Society of Classical Poets, Epoch Times stands against all the communist-inspired modernism and America-bashing. Epoch Times is a newspaper that has gone world-wide since its terrible experiences with Chinese persecution. I have noticed that Paul stays away from any mention of Epoch Times. I suppose his mission here requires a bit of subterfuge.

  20. Mike Bryant

    Epoch Times yesterday,

    Attorney General Merrick Garland on March 3 declared that efforts by states to implement voter ID laws are “unnecessary” and “burdensome,” drawing the ire of Republicans.

    While speaking at a church in Selma, Alabama, the attorney general was commemorating the 59th anniversary of the targeting of demonstrators by Selma police during an early civil rights protest.

    He said that the right to vote “is still under attack,” though he provided little evidence in his speech for how requiring identification would be an assault on voting rights.

    Really, why do you think we opened the borders? We need those votes! Aliens are much better informed than U.S. citizens… ask anyone!

    Reply

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