.

Mainstream News

“Just 7% of Americans have ‘a great deal’ of trust and
confidence in the media, and 27% have ‘a fair amount.’
Meanwhile, 28% of U.S. adults say they do not have
very much confidence and 38% have none at all in
newspapers, TV and radio.” —Gallup Survey

The Mainstream News once kept their views
__away from their reporting.
But now the Press is just a mess,
__since they can’t stop distorting.

Each “journalist” learns just the gist
__about each brand-new topic.
And then they spew, though what they knew,
__was barely microscopic.

They’ve just heard praise since their first days,
__so they’re unduly pious.
When they distort a news report,
__they don’t see it as bias.

They’re underlings, pulled by their strings,
__controlled by unseen forces.
For every lie, they just rely
__upon their “unnamed sources”.

They’re Ivy-trained, thus empty-brained,
__so all they do is parrot.
Each pre-appointed talking point
__earns them a dangled carrot.

They congregate to celebrate,
__and give each other prizes.
They drink and eat and just repeat
__what culture authorizes.

Each of them hates those from Red States
__with righteous indignation.
Each uttered phrase and look conveys
__their utter detestation.

They hate when We The People see
__the truth without them spinning.
But cracks somehow broke through so now
__we’ve finally started winning.

We don’t tune in to hear them spin,
__when all the truth’s omitted.
They went too far, because they are
__convinced that we’re dimwitted.

Now freed from their deceptive snare,
__we are no longer minions.
Now that we see their calumny,
__we form our own opinions.

.

.

Warren Bonham is a private equity investor who lives in Southlake, Texas.

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25 Responses

  1. Russel Winick

    Excellent work Warren, and so true. They see it as their role, not bias, to distort every word of their “reporting.” Truly disgraceful, but sadly so many still believe what they read.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      I’d like to think that their stranglehold is loosening. That was supposed to happen with the rise of social media sites and the democratization of information, but we all know what happened there. The bad guys won’t give up easily.

      Reply
  2. Roy E. Peterson

    Warren, what a great assessment of the state of unmitigated perversion of the press! There are so many great lines in your poem that depict what they have become. This is a welcome blasting of the press and their toadying to slanted viewpoints. Facts are distorted on nonexistent, the truth is subjected to twisting, and that which once was free is a slave to leftist opinionated perfidy! How well you expose their profane take on the news!

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      Thanks! They deserve to be blasted (metaphorically) and they make themselves easy targets.

      Reply
  3. Phil S. Rogers

    Such a great poem to start my day, thank you, Warren. People are beginning to wake up to the bias in the news, let us hope it is not too late. My favorite line which really hits the nail on the head; “They’re Ivy-trained, thus empty brained.” Empty brained because they have accepted Marxism, socialism, in school, but they have an agenda, to ‘educate’ all the millions of ignorant Americans they consider beneath them.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      I was happy to see that Harvard fell from #1 to #15 between 2019 and 2022 in Forbes ranking of colleges. I don’t think they’ll stop there with some of the recent craziness. Having said that, the colleges that rank ahead of them aren’t any better – they just haven’t been exposed yet. It’s not a very hopeful situation.

      Reply
  4. Gigi Ryan

    Dear Warren,
    You have penned so many great lines. Not only have you conveyed the truth, you have conveyed it winsomely with excellent and enjoyable rhymes. Thank you.
    Gigi

    Reply
  5. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Warren, this mellifluous marvel of a poem sings to me in language I love with a message I relate to, just as most of the people in the Western world will. The trouble is, I believe we’ve reached a stage whereby our overlords and their minions (the press) don’t care if their blatant lying and manipulation is uncovered. They are above and beyond the law. Please tell me I’m wrong.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      I wish I could strongly assert that you are wrong. It will take a few more people like Elon Musk who are open to having more than the elite-approved viewpoint expressed before things can really improve. Until that happens, maybe our collective efforts can make at least a small dent.

      Reply
      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Elon Musk is travelling on the technocratic/transhumanist bus and Globalism is his destination. He has signed a huge Space-X contract with the US Department of Defense to “provide point-to-point transit for cargo via space”. He is a man who is deeply indebted to the USA and to China. He has cancelled many on X – people like the “anti-vaxxer” Naomi Wolf for being a “conspiracy theorist”. It’s hard not to pin our hopes on this convincing and charming voice for free speech… but is he giving false hope before slamming down his iron fist on all our dreams? Follow the money… I believe it has the answer.

        I believe you’re right, Warren, when you say our collective efforts can make at least one small dent. I believe all those who listen with skepticism and point out hypocrisy make plenty of small dents, and I thank you wholeheartedly for making a fair few of your own.

      • Warren Bonham

        You are much better educated about Elon that I am. I hadn’t heard about the Naomi Wolf situation. Apparently, things at X aren’t as good as I thought they were (although better than in the Twitter days).

    • Warren Bonham

      I’m glad you enjoyed it. It’s a horrifying situation that is easier to stomach when satirized.

      Reply
  7. Joseph S. Salemi

    If you think American mainstream media is corrupt, just listen to the pro-leftist bias at the BBC, as their recent coverage of the disturbances in Britain showed. Journalists today all come from cookie-cutter production lines in academia, and no one with a non-leftist viewpoint will even be considered for a position.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      I don’t know anything about the press in the UK but, as a former Canadian, I’ve seen a situation that is far worse than what happens in America. In Canada, there is really only one source of information, and that source is effectively funded and controlled by the government. Dissenting opinions are not tolerated and most of the citizenry seems strangely comforted by being told what their opinions should be. Things could be worse (and maybe they will be).

      Reply
  8. Margaret Coats

    Glad to see some positive news, Warren. That is, “we form our own opinions.” This, of course, is what we always should have been doing with reliable and undistorted information. While mainstream is a mess (and as Gallup says, two-thirds of we the people acknowledge it), there are many more sources. The trouble in this is the labor and time necessary to gather and sort for ourselves the amount we want and need. And beyond that, the lack of a common culture in which most hearers of news experience events together. We exist in echo chambers of “my news” and “your news” and “his news” with no “our news.” By the way, I think you made a little error in attributing “culture” (stanza 6) to empty-brained journalists with barely microscopic knowledge. You do rightly describe many of the mainstream as immature. It takes culture earned by learning not only to evaluate information but to select what’s important and what’s not. But you’re gearing us up for more work with a piece like this.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      Great points as always. Now that more people seem to feel free to form their own opinions, they still need to rely on information produced by other people. I think your “echo chamber” point is spot on. It takes time but hopefully thoughtful people are sampling information from multiple points of view before reaching important conclusions. Easier said than done. I also agree with your point about “culture”. I was thinking about “popular” culture on that particular line but I need to rethink how to phrase that.

      Reply
  9. T. M. Moore

    Well said, well done. I love the internal rhymes and the ballad stanza. The feminine endings on the second and fourth lines keep the energy of the poem moving forward. And your assessment of the media is sadly true. If only we could convince Americans to stop listening to the news and start reading more poems like this. That would be something. T. M. Moore

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      Thanks! I nominate you to run our Department of Education. I don’t get the sense that kids are reading much poetry these days (at least not the kind that rhyme and have a coherent meter). It’s hard to un-brainwash them once they’re hooked on the Kool-Aid.

      Reply
  10. Brian A. Yapko

    Great poem, Warren. CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and others are so compromised we have to simply assume they are trying to manipulate facts and manufacture opinions. “What do the propaganda machines have to say today?” Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl would be proud.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      I’m ashamed to admit that I had to look up Leni Riefenstahl. I think she and Goebbels may even be a little envious of how well our current “journalists” have managed to propagandize.

      Reply
  11. Mike Bryant

    Warren, as always, I just love your stuff.

    The mainstream media has long been owned by the CIA. The CIA learned the power of the media through Radio Free Europe. It worked so well they set up Mockingbird Media here in the good old USA! Every single mainstream news source, in America and most of the world, takes orders from the CIA.

    https://rumble.com/v5byggr-mockingbird-media.html

    It has become obvious, that we, the people, must now know the truth of their domination over us. They are confident in their power… the constant barrage of obvious lies is humiliating… by design.

    We are now, and have been, divided in a million large and small ways.

    In June of ‘23 polls revealed that almost 90% of Americans believe in God. Yet any mention of him on most blogs is roundly denounced. Now here’s the rub… can we even believe that poll?

    Anyone today who understands the enormity of the struggle must understand that it is a spiritual one.
    Daniel in Babylon must have felt like we do. He was ready.

    Reply
    • Warren Bonham

      More new (and distressing) information for me. I like the Daniel analogy although I’d like to avoid the lion’s den and the fiery furnace, if possible.

      Reply

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