Punching Bag Media - Conservative News

With the rise of the internet, today’s news is dominated by “infotainment” sites, focused on “link bait” and “viral” stories that draw the (at least temporarily) small minded reader. This is inevitable and we all (even the Punchingbag staff!) are attracted to it, its fun, it’s interesting, it’s design to outrage, to pull on heartstrings, to relate to some inner emotion.

But infotainment makes no attempt to be impartial, because impartiality simply doesn’t add to the bottom line. Some news sites focus on only this kind of story, but even the major news networks succumb to the more profitable infotainment segments on a daily basis.

The term “low information voter” was recently coined to represent citizens who have not taken the time to learn the issues in depth and who are vulnerable to infotainment perspectives. Unfortunately most issues are clouded by such irrelevant arguments most people form and opinion without knowing truth from fiction.

This is especially true in the political world, pundits and politicians craft their perspectives in an infotainment wrapper and symbology overrides facts. This group often misleads or takes advantage of misunderstanding to get the crowd behind them. The following is a quote from Jacque Ellul, from his 1961 book Propaganda:

“The third characteristic of public opinion is that this opinion is formed by a very large number of people who cannot possibly experience the same fact in the same fashion, who judge it by different standards, speak different language, and share neither the same culture nor the same social position. Normally, everything separates them. They really should not be able to form a public opinion, and yet they do. This is possible only when all these people are not really apprised of the facts, but only of the abstract symbols that give the facts shape in which they can serve as a base for public opinion.”

The only way to get close to a balanced perspective is not to attempt to be impartial, but to take both sides to their extremes and get the widest possible view. Let’s let experts present their arugumentss and allow the readers to deliberate and judge for themselves. In the meantime, let’s identify and throw out the arguments known to be false, misleading or irrelevant so issues can be judged based on the remaining true, straightforward and relevant information.

The purpose of PunchingBag’s opposing site strategy is to provide the reader with both sides of an issue, spark debates on today’s news, throw away the crap and get to the real issues at hand. We believe this is the only way to get to all perspectives, to have real advocates for each side bringing information to the reader.

We are not quite there yet, but stay tuned!