The local ABC affiliate made a few cute and stolen penguins the obsession du jour yesterday repeating this story, Sherborn family hoping for return of stolen yard penguins, over and over again.
They want them back, and they are kind of cute, I guess, so I hope they get them back.
But I'm not convinced this is the most important story that the media could be reporting on.
Our economic system pays advertisers, propagandists and lobbyist, not to mention media pundits big money to deceive the public, or misrepresent priorities, which they call reporting the news. But the people that provide services that do more to improve the lives of the majority like manufacturing jobs or other services have their wages suppressed.
Many of the advertisers that finance the media are involved in epidemic amounts of human rights abuses, including sweatshop labor and environmental destruction that is impacting those with the least amount of power.
By restoring factory direct and avoiding shipping disposable good half way around the world and declining to provide large incentives for those that deceive the public and enormous amount of these problems can be reduced or eliminated.
That isn't happening, of course.
But the media is getting their cut of the enormous amount of profits that many of these multinational corporations are making through advertising or other means; and, coincidence or not, they don't seem to consider that as newsworthy as cute stolen penguins.
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