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The Media by Robert Wynne Music: "Opening Ceremonies (The Arbiter)" from the musical Chess © 1998 We've a duty as the media On the six-o-clock news To bring you stories full of horror tragedy despair Do you care? 'Course you do We don't care if you are sensitive to the horrors of man We have pictures of the victims and you know we'll ask how they feel Because we can We're on the scene, the feed is liveIf you wanted a slight change of pace from all this gloom and doom We have lying politicians, busisness fraud, lies, a mother cries, And weather too! We proclaim the public's right to know But that's just an excuse To be quite honest, we're all in a race To win first place, sell ad space, Now the news... (chorus)
The immediate inspiration for this song was a thread on rec.music.filk about how the media propagates urban legends around Halloween time. I wrote at the time: "We have lost our innocence. Easy distribution of information (and misinformation) has made it not only easy to know what is going on all over the world, but damn near impossible to avoid knowing. And as we all know, 'there's no news like bad news'". On a related note, if you aren't familiar with Tim Rice's musical CHESS, check it out. It's good, good stuff.
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