The False News Cycle

When we read trivia
dressed up as vital information
we won't know
that we have been fed
false news until it takes effect
by leaving us dispirited,
by which time
the next lot of false news
is primed and ready
to depress us beyond belief.

Future News Blues

The news cycle is like the economic cycles,
news of which we muddle through and endure,
they both will boom, go bust, and have longueurs.

In the periods of inactivity
nothing is the everything
that is always about to happen.

The faster the news changes
then the more people think
that they are being thrust into a future
where the present they know feels like the past
and both offered a stability that was, at best, fleeting.
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Manufacturing And Non-News

Like many folk, one thing
that gets under my skin
that I wish would not
is modern advertising.

When I read my news online
I have to dodge my way past repeats
of multiples of flashing images
for the latest this and that,
which block the screen and disappear
such that the easily confused
can't go online to find their news;
the adverts destroy their concentration.

What none of those dodging their way
past being zapped would realize
is that there is a continuity of intent
in what they are dodging/reading.

Newspapers of old, up to the 1950's,
particularly 'quality' broadsheets,
did not put to news up front and first
but filled their front pages with promotions
for the products of the day by manufacturers.



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