Most readers of TPOL do not trust media. Not the mainstream media (MSM), the so-called right-wing (“conservative”) media, the alternative (usually “left-wing”) media. Nor, for that matter, much of the libertarian-leaning media.

For good reasons: not just their clear bias. Not just the evidence that many of these outlets are controlled by government or worship government. Not just that many of the writers, editors, and publishers show significant signs of low IQ, lower common sense, and a degree of sociopathy that they may share with muggers and jack-booted thugs in history around the world. Not just the outright lies they write and publish, but the inability to accurately hear, question, write, and verify basic facts.

Many – most – seem to be unable to recognize normality and causality. In the engineering word, we say that they cannot see “ROMCO” -things readily obvious to the most casual observer.” And it seems to be getting worse.

Want a few examples?

Here is the one that prompts this column. MSM/I-Heart/??? just carried a news story “6.3 Magnitude Earthquake Reported in US.” Feel free to read the story for yourself. Among other things we are in the story that the earthquake occurred “in Adak.” This is on the Alaska island of Adak. (One of the Aleutian Island chain.) But the map shows it is a long way, and the USGS X message clipped in the article clearly states that the earthquake was 106 klicks (kilometers: 66 miles!) from Adak.

It isn’t even in Alaska: Alaska’s territorial waters extend out the traditional (Law of the Sea) three miles (only Texas and Florida claim 9 miles). The FedGov’s “exclusive economic zone” goes out up to 200 klicks. According to the UN. But that only applies to “economic activities and resources” and is not jurisdiction. Under Freedom of the Seas, nobody is supposed to be kept out: that is international waters.

So in a way, this is like claiming that an earthquake in say, Colorado Springs, is reported as being in Denver. Or worse, that an explosion in Gulfport, Mississippi happened in New Orleans. Sixty-plus miles is a long ways. Even for earthquakes!

A nearby major MSM newspaper keeps calling a FedGov agency the Forestry Service or the National Forestry Service. The actual name is the United States Forest Service. (USFS) But the news editor only defended his writer/reporter and his own editing as “this is no big deal: everyone knows what we meant.” The USFS owns most of the Black Hills and is the largest landowner in both Wyoming and South Dakota – served (supposedly) by this newspaper.

Dare we suggest that the media has gotten so deadened and seared by a constant stream of lies that they cannot recognize or care about silly things like facts? Or is it just that the “profession” (which more and more seems to resemble another profession, except that it probably gives less pleasure to those it “serves” than the other profession) has deteriorated so much that the writers and editors are incapable of really reading and writing?

Another example is a nitpicking one. I am an engineer, not a teacher. My education included a whole 12 semester hours of college classes in what we called “humanities” which included technical writing, science fiction, and a couple of literature courses. But I know that the plural of “aircraft” and “spacecraft” and watercraft is not aircrafts, spacecrafts, and watercrafts. And by the way, the spellchecker on most browsers also tells me that. Air crafts, space crafts, and water crafts, like other crafts are skills. Not vehicles (or vessels). But more and more I see so-called journalists using bogus plurals.

And it seems that more and more the liars and con-artists of media cannot tell the difference between there and their, or between it’s and its. So much for precision in communications. And don’t get me started on punctuation.