Like most adolescent boys I had a strong interest in tropical Geography, but National Geographic has always been one of those magazines too beautiful and informative to throw out. Basements and attics around the world are still packed with moldering stacks of these magazines. It's hard even to give them away, but that may change. Rupert Murdoch has bought the place, it's no longer a not-for-profit corporation and thus the information it contains will no longer be above suspicion. Of course it hasn't been the best place to see bare breasted women for a long time, but it's wonderful ability to present science to the masses without the taint of sales hype and politics is now gone as well. Murdoch has apparently already done a Trump and fired the award winning staff.
Will the famous yellow cover take on a new meaning? Can we expect more stories about Atlantis, UFOs and alien abductions? Will the next article about ancient Egypt be authored by Ben Carson of the hollow pyramids theory or Mike Huckabee of the 6000 year old Earth? I'm sue we'll hear no more about climate change or the decline of bio-diversity and pollution. I'm sure we will be treated to spectacular photography of the village in Kenya where Barack Obama was born and the women will be wearing shirts.
Again one of the icons of journalism has fallen to the scoundrels who own Fox News and soon will be sharing the same corporate motto Pontius Pilate made famous: What is Truth? It's one small step for the end times and one giant leap for ignorance.
Yup, mega money, overly inflated egos, and profit motive. Sums up modern American conservatives obsession with bullsh*t methinks.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it bodes well for any sort of Democracy to have a public so deliberately misinformed. I guess Rupert needed to buy a credible source to give a scientific gloss to his war on science.
ReplyDeleteAnother nail in the coffin of science?
Our Founding Fathers understood that a well informed populace and independence and honesty in journalism (the newspapers and pamphlets) is a necessary ingredient for a democratic republic to remain free. For Murdock and conpany, the oligarchs and plutocrats, it is about dumbing down the American populace.
ReplyDeleteIt does not bode well for science or America.
That's a shame really, NG is the only magazine I could never throw out. The beautiful photos and fascinating information was too precious not to share. I would give them away to young people and schools - anywhere where I thought they might provide food for thought and visuals for imagination.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course he bought it for the ability to distort, distract and delude. It's part of the battle between science and religion. A history of mankind is dangerous, an awareness of nature is dangerous: of history, paleontology, cosmology and the Earth sciences. All these are anathema to the Monster Murdoch.
ReplyDeleteWill it be Scientific American next? What a future, see nature as simulated by Disney and the world through the dark glass of Murdoch. Whether or not God created the heaven and earth, these monsters are remaking it and remaking us in their own image.