The Great Media Agenda

Very few people know this so I’d appreciate if you kept it to yourself, but the media does indeed have an agenda.
You’ll have heard politicians say so. The general public says so. Overpaid company executives say so. Hell, these days even our dear finance minister Trevor Manuel says so. So it must be true. The media has just never admitted to it before.
But here’s how it works.
Every morning, just after the sun rises, editors around the country have their first cigarette, get up, make coffee, scan the papers and then dial into the daily conference call. Didn’t know about that conference call, did you?
Well, everyone’s on it. The editor of “You”, the guy from “Playboy”, the head of “Jacaranda Radio”, some oke from the SABC (it’s hard to keep up with who it is because it changes every week) all the financial publications, all the radio dudes, all the television types, “Die Son”, “Die Kat”, “KTV”, “Farmers Weekly” – you name it there’s no part of the media too odd, too little or too irrelevant for that call because, you see, that’s when the great media agenda of the day is set.
And behind that agenda is a broader agenda. Briefly put, the broader agenda is to sow the seeds of negativity, depress the nation, cast doubt on all those who have authority, give credence to spurious rumours and gnaw away at the very fabric of society.
The daily agenda fits in with these goals and might include endless talk about gruesome crimes, politician-bashing, shit-stirring and bold-faced lying about everything.
Once the general tone for the day is in place, the editors wander in to their respective offices and attend the morning news meetings. At these meetings the agenda is never spoken about, but the editor will push people in the right direction even though they propose innocuous stories about nothing in particular. Said editor will put a spin and an angle on all story suggestions.
Then that editor has to control the news editors during the day. Because they can’t be openly spoken to about the great media agenda, it takes persuasion and threats to get them to fall into line.
Then there’s another secret, early afternoon conference call to check that all media are on track to cause the mayhem expected of them. Often the editors are a bit drunk after lunch – this only serves to make them more rabid about the task at hand.
Then later in the afternoon they have to keep checking that the reporters and the news editors are in sync and haven’t noticed that all their buddies in other parts of the media have been persuaded to cover exactly the same stories in exactly the same way.
Then it’s the afternoon news meeting, the selection of stories and the start of the night shift. Editors have to work incredibly hard to make sure all of the people involved keep their own ideas about what constitutes news far away from the office. You know those pesky night editors – when they think no one is looking they’d sell their grandmothers for drugs, which means they have no qualms about changing the entire production process and all of the stories and then blaming it on someone else.
What you probably didn’t know was that most editors have little spy cameras installed above the night editors in order to catch just such an event. They keep their beady eyes trained on the night editors until it’s safe to finally go to sleep.
But that, in a nutshell, is how the great media agenda is adhered to every day. It’s tough work, especially given that getting journalists to follow instruction is like trying to herd cats. And given that the bulk of the press are least organised people you could hope to meet, organising the agenda is no mean feat. But at least we have one and we’re very, very good at sticking to it. And that is why the world is a mess; why George W Bush is an idiot; why poor people are starving; why politicians are corrupt; why Bob Mugabe is mad; why you don’t earn enough money; why service is slow in restaurants; why petrol costs too much; why Jacob Zuma likes taking showers; why Mumbai went up in smoke; why the globe is in a recession; why Julius Malema is certifiably stupid; why banks are evil; why you always get pushed out of queues; why mobile phone companies charge too much; why a good cocktail has become unaffordable; why you never get the good parking space; why crime is rampant; why Kentucky Fried Chicken never tastes good any more.
It’s true! It’s all the media’s fault! And it’s thanks to the Great Media Agenda!