This morning while reading the morning paper my mind drifted to North Iowa Today, the newly launched Website by local entrepreneur Matt Marquardt, and how it has changed the landscape in this city.
I think our local paper tries to be innovative but the restraints of traditional journalism are hard to shake. The Globe could be more progressive, they could hit harder if they wished, but they are not only mired in the past, but also must deal with layers of horrendous hierarchy accumulated over decades of existence.
More often than not, as the process moves to fruition the articles are gutted by some spineless editor who has his or her own agenda as to a whole litany on the way life should be lived according only to the view from their own window. Many editors are egomaniacal and feel the need to tweak articles by removing one or two sentences….for no other reason other than they can, and this can totally change the entire direction of the story. Then there is that small town syndrome which is very prevalent in towns this size. If you have lived here a long time you get to know a lot of people, perhaps not socially but rather on a first name basis; the person who works behind the window at the post office, the checkout girl at the supermarket, the owner of the café where you lunch, maybe it is someone who sits next to you in church, these people along with many more become a part of your daily routine and thereby are likely to receive subliminal consideration if you are writing something which may relate to them.
In many ways a newspaper decides who to vilify and who gets a pass, and when that holiest of privileges becomes comprised, as has occurred here with the inception of this news site, NIT, those who here to fore received anonymity from the paper, now find their blemishes reveled in the so called “open court” of public opinion for all to see, and this causes them great consternation and consequently they become very upset. That is to be expected, it is only natural. It also has fed the need to retaliate anonymously, to strike back at the nasty truth in some feeble attempt to salvage the dregs of whatever is left of their reputation. But it is what it is, and no under the table whispers to others to get them to cancel their advertising will work. There are no trucks pulling up here to unload giant rolls of newsprint or barrels of ink, there are not multitudes of desks with people sitting behind them that expect a pay envelope at the end of the week. This is cutting edge regional news at its best, stripped bare, unvarnished, no favoritism exists here as many have found out.
When invading a country, the first thing the invaders grab are the newspaper and whatever other media outlets exist; when you control the news you control the population.
Have a safe and happy new year. In the coming year speak your mind with civility, vote and become an active participant in community affairs and be kind to one another. Above all else, if you are a parent, be kind and considerate to your children, they have no voice in society and depend totally on you.
Peter Children
Is this Northiowatoday.com….
Or PETER’s BLOG.
Have some respect, narrow it down to a couple sentences, stop rambling, and find something to do. Go get a job, or play cards somewhere, or go shoot some pool. When you talk to people, and their eyes glaze over, it’s cause they are bored, but too kind to tell you that to your face.
Peter-I can certainly see why someone might think you have some mental issues that need healing. How you got off on Hitler is beyond me. Stick to the subject and quit rambling.
Stretch your imagination. It’s not too far off really. Essentially the article Mr. Children wrote points towards the small town nepotism that exists within bureaus. My original comment was an expansion on that before of course, my detractors arrived, and forced me to elaborate.
Thank you Peter for your articles. As a life long resident of MC I share the knowledge that it has always been known not to talk to the Globe and their trained monkey silly me. The chances that you will be exactly quoted are slim to none. Keep on writing.
Peter L. that is quite a stretch. Add to it, we can only hear one side of the story.
To suggest to the readers our legal system equates to the workings of Hitler’s Third Reich, is disgusting.
Maybe you need to sit down with Poles, Jews, and Czechs and listen to them explain to you what it was really like.
And thus far, from what we know, you have yet to lift a finger and file a formal complaint with the State or Federal Government. Nor have you, as far as we know, filed a civil suit. Yet you continue to sit behind your keyboard, and malign people.
And as it was said before, in this venue, it would be illegal for the other side to explain what exactly happened because of doctor/patient confidentiality. So it’s your word here, versus existing convention.
I will continue to trust that process as it has checks and balances built in.
Well said. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Observer, you should join the Republican party if you aren’t already a member. Your policy of deny, deny, deny, favoring authority figures over the weak and unrepresented is right in line. People (myself included face psychiatric abuse and misdiagnosis on a daily basis. Our conditions that are physiological (non psychiatric) in nature are lumped into the psychiatric category and we spend a lot of time having to fight off psychiatrists and lazy doctors who don’t seem to understand or want to understand, that many psychiatric conditions are caused by thyroid conditions, cardiac problems, viruses etc. I’m of the belief that there are no true psychiatric conditions, because they are in fact physiological in nature, and if the physiological imbalances are corrected, people will be calm, steady thinking and “normal”. They still have not been able to prove that psychiatric conditions are organic brain disorders, and short of the “enlarged ventricle theory”, they have no topical scan or test data to support their diagnosis.
…and if you don’t think that psychiatry is akin to the 3rd Reich’s medical experimentation. I invite you to make an appointment at the Mental Health Center, and request an injection of Haloperidol (Haldol) 10 mg., or Fluphenazine (Prolixin) 20 mg and sit and wait. In about 45 minutes, you’ll be drooling like a baby, stiff as a board, eyes rolling in the back of your head like a possessed person, possibly convulsing, jaws clenched tight and unable to open, and begging the nurse to give you the Cogentin antidote. Once you come out of the horror show, you’ll begin to ask yourself if the little bit of depression you came in with warranted such monstrous invasive measures. You’ll begin to understand how easily a helpless patient could equate doctors and nurses with the 3rd Reich. You just have to TRY IT SOMETIME Observer…to get some experience before you open your ignorant fingers and type in defense of what you know nothing about.
…and I guarantee that if Peter Children keeps yapping his flap about the Mayor, and he ever ends up in Mercy’s “care” as an older, invalid gentleman, he’ll be promptly silenced with the use of psychiatric medications. You can take that one to the bank. This issue is everyone’s issue, like it or not, and all will face it sooner or later. Invasive Psychiatric practices are used all the time to silence older people in nursing homes…to control them and make the nurses shifts easier. I’m merely trying to raise awareness to correct this issue while we are still relatively young, in order to hopefully one day save the next generation of people from having to have a bunch of former 3M insecticide (until psychiatric restraining properties were realized on test animals) injected into your veins.
This is what happened in the Third Reich. People knew everyone by face and were friendly to one another. No one wanted to examine precisely what it was that friendly gentleman was doing in his official capacity as SS Officer. All they saw throughout the day was neat, well-dressed gentleman going about the day with briefcases. References to the 3rd Reich are of course an exaggeration based on slivers of truth.
What it takes to run a really good community is for the people to be able to discern just what it is those “gentleman” are doing. SS Officers enjoyed the privilege of occupying buildings in bureaucratic capacities, while the citizens worked manual labor jobs. They controlled the press, the police, the city councils…every thing.
The reason I bring up the mental health industry is because no where in modern day times do we find a resemblance to the old 3rd Reich ways than is found in psychiatry and it’s abuses, and potential for abuses. When I was going thru my “ordeal”…Will Keen was the magistrate who would deliver the “Jews” to the doctors via forced psychiatric committal. Once in the confines of the Doctors / “SS Officers”, the medical experimentation would begin. Prisoners were often deported via train car to the Aushchwitz Concentration Camps(Cherokee,Independence,Clarinda) where further concentrated medical experimentation would occur.
It’s something that really did happen in America, as recently as the nineties. In fact it’s still happening, although I’m not sure as to what egregious degree. My point is that the people who have been running the propaganda show Joseph Goebbels and the like here in Mason City, have maintained their power and control via “look-the-other-way” news agencies such as the Globe. So in that regard I agree with Mr. Children’s article.