Today I was reading some articles online and I came up with two interesting texts: Where to Shop in Neighborhoods That Could Use Your Business the Most and What You Don’t Know About Your Favorite Liquor Brands—and Which Local Liquors to Buy Instead.

Basically, they tell you why you should buy at places you usually don’t, and why you shouldn’t buy stuff you usually do. However, the amazing thing is that you’ll never read something like that in mass media

Newspapers, radios, and tv channels have interests, and the bigger they are the more interests they have. This also means that the bigger they are the less they’ll criticize their advertisers or, in other words, the bigger they are the more they’ll lie to you and the more they’ll conceal information from you.

Admittedly, I don’t buy newspapers in the us (something I’ll keep doing anywhere I go), but thinking about the spanish newspapers I couldn’t help remembering El Roto‘s drawings. They certainly reflect the harsh reality in a rather raw way, but they never, ever, include a brand you can recognize, which can be applied to virtually any designer who publishes in mass media.

Censorship, as you can see, did not died with the dictatorship, it only changed hands. Companies became the equivalent to the despotic authorities you couldn’t criticize. The editorial process and the very drawer became the dark censors.

Of course nowadays mass media offer their content for free, and you can even pirate it easily, but it’s far from being worth it.

All around me I see people who read traditional newspapers, watch typical tv channels and listen to orthodox radio stations. They say they do it to be informed or entertained. But the truth is that you can read el pais, el mundo, the guardian or the wall streeet journal for a decade, and be as ignorant as 10 years ago.

It’s not only that they don’t criticize their advertisers, they also don’t offer in deep information, they don’t investigate the news: they either replicate them or fabricate them. Don’t believe me? You do well, but tell me if you are able to answer these five transcendental questions:

• In which countries there is a violent conflict nowadays?.
• What is the origin of those conflicts?.
• Where can you get first hand information about them?.
• Who are the best journalists in your country?.
• Who is advising the prime minister?.