The polarizing and antithesis to a magnanimous demeanor of Mark Cuban took a brief respite from the rigors and savagery of network television by criticizing the current news reporting tactics of the mainstream media. As viewers face a heightened level of ambiguity separating fact and opinion, and garnished with a sprinkling of fake news, stark criticism is hammering the newsroom leadership from all sides in taking traditional and digital media to task for the reckless handling and framing of content.
Cuban, who is known for his tiresome courtside antics as the owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks, blasted the major news services and called for heavy regulations in ensuring that reporters and editors employ proper fact checking techniques, before broadcasting or releasing information publicly. His campaign to hold broadcasters and posters accountable for truth is a bit of an odd development, as the serial entrepreneur relies on the entire spectrum of information purveyors to remain relevant in generating lucrative sums of capital correlating with his personal global brand. Creating even the slightest risk of potentially alienating network executives and influential prime time talking heads by forwarding an aggressive and targeted news transparency directive has skeptics evaluating the obscure and intertwined set of viable ulterior motives that are sparking the unilateral efforts of the business tycoon to criticize the integrity of modern journalism.
While Cuban and a select group of power brokers have openly scrutinized the unscrupulous and underhanded methods certain cable news networks and social media portals employ, the efforts to instill change have been effectively canceled out by billionaires on the other side of the ideological ledger, representing the despondent masses still in full Stockholm syndrome denial over the results of the 2016 election. The propensity to claw and scratch at the load bearing fibers of society, while unleashing a baleful shriek drowning out any attempt at sensibility and productive debate is simply a microcosm of an out of control and overly funded public relations strategy that has crossed the threshold into big league newsrooms.
Of course, Cuban presented his missive and broad overview of the implementation of a demerit system for shoddy reporting via Twitter, an irony that deserves mention, reports the Washington Examiner. However, the swirling rumor mill is absent from unlikely scenario that the animated member of the Shark Tank cast and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will be sharing a bottle of Wild Turkey while discussing free trade and the contemporary form of Kabuki theater performed at the catacomb levels of the darkweb at a trendy hipster midtown establishment anytime soon. It has been widely documented that while Cuban does not adhere to a specific political party, he is quite wary of the tax laws and subsequently displays convenient allegiances to certain aspects of Libertarianism, a witch’s brew compound of politics that the intolerant Twitter founder would associated with a lifetime shadow ban enforced by a swarm of Mark-IV Samsung hybrid social media nanobots.
While the abbreviated set of solutions offered by Cuban to fix journalism that is light years from the Walter Cronkite school of fair and balanced, and marooned in the vast icy expanses of the known universe, are at best bar top thought experiments, the presence of a high leverage personality addressing the flaws of the modern media, is a much more appealing alternative to inciting change than silence and snarky and toxic passive aggressiveness. The latter mentioned personality disorder unfortunately afflicts the world of extremist ideology, where compromise is impossible.
Cuban compares the differences between fact and agenda to specific types of fiction, and while the metaphor does not entirely make sense or elicit confidence in any legislation being drafted, again the efforts in duly appreciated.
While nothing in the Constitution prevents the affliction of propaganda from rotting away at the truth like a virulent anti-liberty fungus in slowly and painstakingly destroying a bountiful forest, the first step in the destruction of the inherent and damaging threat is identification, and more public figures in the spirit of Cuban are needed to step up and properly validate the current issues that are afflicting society. Even if there is a hidden agenda, somebody has to get wealthy in a capitalistic economy and any alternative is better than an elitist ruling class government hording funds and dictating the ebb and flow what is construed as news.
Read the Washington Examiner story here.
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