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"Last summer, Poynter quoted a report that the United States ranks last in media trust at just 29%. That’s worse than Brazil, Canada, Poland, the Philippines and Peru!"

This paragraph is so loaded. Except for the grace of God, civilisation as we once knew it has crumbled, THE EMPIRE HAS FALLEN.

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Jan 12, 2022·edited Jan 12, 2022

Thank you Mark. I was particularly interested in subscribing to your newsletter because I have been a passionate consumer of news media since a young girl growing up in the UK. My ambition since a child was to be a journalist at the BBC so I studied Media Studies, Politics and English to pave my path in that direction. However as I often like to say, 'God had other plans'! I ended up pursuing a technology career BUT (God does have a sense of humour) ended working for the BBC for 14 years, followed by the Murdoch Group of papers (where I currently work). I therefore speak as an insider, and I too have noticed the decline from within. But I tell you what: my eyes were already open, because since my secondary (High School) school age, I have been obsessed with the subject of media corruption. It was sparked by Princess Diana's death which was the first time I encountered the term 'papparazzi' and I was intrigued by their practices . Around that time I really began to see a bigger picture of the media along with its tendency to massage the truth in order to 'break' a story. Since then the media has increasingly positioned itself as the gateways to global information dissemination, and essentially the 'arbiters of truth', but as we know, with such great power comes great corruption.

Harking back to my student days, I made a name for myself as a great essayist, but its funny, I do not remember many of them....but one I DO remember vividly is that prescient piece I wrote about foreseeing a day when the media will be a god-like monolith on the universe, to the extent that governments and large corporations will flock to them to achieve their twisted ends but, alas, I did not want to live to see that day.

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