Smart Shit 1

It is perhaps appropriate that the first ever curated piece of “Smart Shit” I share be John Oliver’s 2014 (?) commentary on the (perverse) relationship between news and advertising.  Not that I’m a news outlet, but one of the reasons I decided to start writing publicly was because of the widespread abuse of “news” as camouflage for “propaganda.”  “News” has never been just “news”–which might be a good topic for a future essay.  In the link below, John Oliver provides a humorous and insightful (in-cite-ful?) introduction to the problem.  If you’d like to dig deeper, read a few chapters of Manufacturing Consent, co-authored by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.  Disclaimer: Manufacturing Consent is not an easy read.  Herman and Chomsky go into great detail to substantiate how “propaganda” is factored into “news,” thereby transforming the latter into a vehicle for manufacturing public opinion, ergo, “manufacturing consent.”  John Oliver’s treatment is immediately accessible to anyone (with half a brain, that is).  Obviously, the CEO of Time Inc. does not qualify.  Go figure.

If the link to play the video is not functioning, you can Google “John Oliver, native advertising” and you’ll find it easily enough.