What is news and media?

Stock photo: A stack of old newspapers

What is news and media?
Saturday – September 20, 2025

First and foremost allow me to define the words news and media. I also want to add that both the words news and media tend to coexist, or they tend to be used interchangeably by many people, but news and media are two distinct words that may or may not refer to the same thing: news is media, but media isn't necessarily always news, and while this distinction may seem obvious to you, it doesn't seem to be that obvious to many people these days, especially those that use terms like MSM (mainstream media, mass media, etc, etc. News refers to news, it just means things that are new about the world, the contemporary world, and there are organizations whose job it is to report on such news, or changes to the contemporary order, and they often claim to be impartial and all that, but I will cover that later. Media can really refer to any organization that puts out information through some sort of medium, such as radio, television, the internet, or newspapers, but those organizations aren't always "reporting" or providing information about news, they may provide information about a television program or a radio commercial about skin care etc, etc. Generally speaking news refers to things that tend to go beyond the mere transactional: often news involves politics and major events and stuff of that nature. For instance, if a large scale event that affects many people just happened, then many news organizations are likely to break that "story" and if it's a really big story it might even get the label "breaking news" to indicate that it's a very important story: usually these major news stories involve bad things such as terrorist attacks, rapid and/or major political changes such as elections, wars, etc, but again they don't tend to be positive, although on occasion breaking news can cover more positive events such as someone being born or someone winning in a sports etc. I really want to cover news in this post so I don't want to go on to much about media, but again understand that all news are media, but not all media are news: television commercials about soaps that are supposed to help you clean out your "sensitive areas" usually don't fall under the definition of news, even if that soap is a new kind of soap.

    So what is the purpose of news or rather reporting news? Well, the purpose is of course to earn money, because that's the purpose of all enterprises under the material order, but the purpose is of course also to provide the public with information about certain important topics of the day such as politics, and other developments, sometimes even market changes. Notice that in certain contexts news organizations, particularly newspapers, will have a political slant: they may refer to themselves as "liberal", "conservative", "progressive", "social democratic", etc, etc, etc. But what this means is generally that the editors of that particular newspaper tend to write editorials about political and social issues from the point of view of whatever political persuasion they happen to come from or be of: so if the newspaper claims to be "social democratic", then you should expect the editors to slant their editorials heavily in favor of a social democratic ideological lens, and the same is true for other newspapers with a different ideological slant, and they would of course slant their editorials in favor of their particular ideology.

    I don't have a problem with this, and I understand that just admitting that you have a political slant is better than pretending otherwise, and I don't mind that the editorial staff, that is to say the non-journalists working for the newspaper, have certain political views. The issue I often run into with newspapers and other news organizations is that they can't separate their editorial section from their journalist section, and more and more it seems that they spend more time and focus on editorials instead of the news and that the news much too often becomes indistinguishable from the opinions and politics of the editorial board, this is something that I regard as quite undesirable. I want to know that what I am reading is actual and proper news and not ideological drivel. I do realize that it is also quite impossible for most men, most people, to separate their opinions and their biases from their vocation, especially if that is a vocation grounded in a sound and proper relation between the man and the material order, not that I would approve of this from a metaphysical point of view; it is nonetheless important. So while the news have always been slanted due to the influence of the editorial board, this issue seems to be more subtle these days, due to the influence of the technological mode of being. When in the past, men could rely on the news to orient themselves in the material domain, they are now increasingly being influenced by their respective news outlets: such in the case of internet carried news and talk radio. I also believe that there is no need for men to seek out news as if information about the material order cannot remain unseen and unheard until the next day. Is this some kind of sport? Verily, news has become more and more like a sport. I guess I read newspapers because I feel a need to continue to keep reading them, but this is a mistake on my part, and it stands clear to me that the whole model relies on people reading and keeping up with the reading in a very addictive way. I do also believe that news online is bad and this is why I refuse to rely on any news from the internet, but I do not intend to cover that part today, I may do that at another time.

    When it comes to being "neutral" and non-partisan I do accept that this is also quite undesirable and impossible, but what news outlets regardless of ideological slant always seem to miss is that while they attempt to be "neutral" about issues and events going on, they are very much partisans, partisans of the material order, and this is something that I do not approve of and neither should any man with far-seeing eyes. This brings me to the final and most important function of news outlets: they act in order to protect the material order and in order to promote the view, the treacherous view, that men are incapable without the obsessions and the large quantities, the commotion, of the material order. Indeed, most news outlets promote a distinctly ideological view of the world, but they all promote, regardless of their ideological slant, a material view of the world: a view that ideology and the idolatry of self-love will bring such things as "progress" and betterment of everyone's material circumstances, and to this end they work to promote news for and by the material order. Ask yourself this: would it be considered sane by any modern standard to promote traditional and primordial values; and more to the point, would it be considered in keeping with the humanist axiom to report "news" if that information at any point happened to conflict with the mainstream? In this context I simply rely on the word "mainstream" to convey the colloquial usage of "normal", and in this context "normal" news outlets.

    In the end, I don't rely on internet based news outlets, and I don't rely on old fashioned newspapers either, because news to me is something that I have to gather on my own; I refuse to let other people define news for me. The material order makes news, and that was always the essence of this enterprise, to promote the material order, and this is why I call on every far-seeing man to reject the malicious and malign influences of news outlets and most media outlets in general; do not allow them to manipulate your sensuality with the propaganda of the serpent. Indeed, there is and there can be no such thing as debate about the material order in this our era of the Kali Yuga. If you seek information about the material domain, do your own research; do not rely on the serpent, for he will lead you into submission in the form of the beast.

Reginald Drax – September 20, 2025.