What’s the news? This question has plagued mankind since he first fixed his eyes on the horizon and wondered what the hell was going on beyond it. The history of civilization is as such inseparable from our evolving methods of reporting.
The first ever stab at journalism was cave painting. Reporting was fairly simple during the Palæolithic period, when seeing a deer was considered a headline-worthy event. Archaeologists had actually mistaken cave paintings for rudimentary attempts at representative art until 2016, when they discovered a crudely fingerpainted Hi and Lois comic strip at the Cave of Altamira in Spain.
This form of reporting continued for eons until the arrival of the stone tablet. With it ancient man could easily record and transmit information, but these were still dark times. A single paperboy throwing stone tablets at doorsteps during his morning route was capable of destroying countless front doors and azalea bushes, and anyone who tried disciplining their dog by swatting him on the snoot with the morning stone tablet quickly found themself in the market for a new dog. (Snoot reconstruction surgery would remain impossible until the discovery of antibiotics.)
Journalism was again revolutionized with the advent of papyrus. At first the Egyptians who invented papyrus only thought to use it for mummification purposes, until one fateful day when Pharaoh Senwosret III decided to start writing stuff down on it. Coincidentally, all the news from back then was universally in favor of Pharaoh Senwosret III’s public works projects. His was a remarkably scandal-free pharaohcy, all in all!
Once mankind had the trick of paper figured out, newspaper offices began popping up like mushrooms on the bathroom floor of an Orlando area Econo Lodge. Great Britain had The Sun. New York City had The Post. Creston, Iowa had the Creston News Advertiser, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for Mary C. Leichenberg’s alarming exposé on corn planting tips. It was a golden age for news.
We’ll skip over radio and television because they are largely irrelevant to the history of news reporting.
Finally came the internet. Originally invented by nerds so they could share their Dr. Who fan fiction, journalists soon realized that the internet held boundless potential for their profession. Here was a medium on which articles could be changed at a moment’s notice depending on what politicians and corporate boards needed the public to know and think. No more inconvenient records of “facts” would persist to embarrass and inconvenience the people running the show. Absolute, total and inescapable propaganda 24/7, 365 days a year. Even longer on leap years! Such a marvelous era we're in, especially considering that Hi and Lois is still in syndication.
And we could have ended our story on this high note … if not for one regrettable little organization which calls itself “BlackListed News.”
“What if we didn’t exclusively publish propaganda online?” This is the question which BlackListed News’ so-called journalists asked themselves, no doubt while clubbing baby fur seals to death for sick thrills. “What if we published facts instead?”
And so the cabal of misanthropic journalists (and we do use that word as loosely as we possibly can) scurried back beneath the rocks they call “offices” and began writing articles. Reprehensibly, they declined to present any of these pieces to political aides or public relations committees before publishing them. They just … published them. Online, no less, where the whole world could read and be informed by them.
You are no doubt experiencing blurred vision and a tightness in your chest upon learning all of this. If you want to take a half a valium and lie down for a bit we wouldn’t blame you. This is dark stuff.
Don’t imagine the powers that be are complicit in BlackListed News’ wanton truth spreading. The day you see an advertisement for Prudential or MetLife or Geico on BlackListed News will be the day Pixar announces their adaptation of Atlas Shrugged for the silver screen, featuring the digitally reconstituted voice of Gilbert Gottfried as John Galt.
But not even that can slow down such determined informers of mankind, sadly, for BlackListed News has partnered with Libertas Bella. The online retailer frequently allies itself with vile “real news” organizations so they can sell their merchandise to their readers. T-shirts. Hoodies. Mugs. Even stickers! Are there no depths Libertas Bella won’t sink to while supporting their partners?
Well, don’t say we didn’t warn you. If you would like to support real journalists and help pay their bills, then you are more than welcome to browse the entire line of official BlackListed News merchandise on Libertas Bella.
