(05-25-2024, 03:33 AM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote:
As a mild and harmless example of how the media create their own material and offer it as some type of news,
a story came to light in 2019 about our old favourite, the Loch Ness Monster. I still find it fascinating that even in
his day-and-age of cynicism towards established outlets of broadcasting, the public will still rush to embrace the
'Lucy/Charlie-Brown' syndrome without thinking twice.
We're constantly reminded that Journalists will show rigorous diligence for facts before even daring to drop an
article on their Editor's desk and when to comes to questionable subjects like the tourist-drawing-beastie on the
peaty waters of the Great Glen, it would be a very distrustful individual who didn't naturally accept the basics of
a story.
Back in 2019, a Southampton chap and his brother were supposedly up at the loch taking photographs of the far
side from Urquhart Castle for some unsaid reason. Being that Southampton is 530-odd miles away from the 23
-mile long stretch of water in Scotland and at the time this image was supposedly captured during lockdown, the
many news-outlets that wrote about it never mentioned the UK Government's warning to not travel during the
scary Passover of Covid. Odd that.
Nessie...?
One would presume that the photographer proclaimed by the many outlets as Steve Challice, had watched the
television or read a newspaper and learned that a deadly disease was stalking the little rainy island of Britain
and the only way to avoid breathing via a ventilator would be take the Government's advice and stay at home.
(Grabbed from an episode of 'The Proof Is Out There')
But he and his unnamed brother didn't and our token cynical person might wonder if maybe Steve had inside
knowledge about the Coof and the strict guidance constantly bleated out by the mainstream media. And to
suggest such a derisive idea would mean the guy who witnessed a large animal emerging from the cold
northern lake and managed to snap a picture of it, would swim in the same waters of Journalism and was
aware that the Covid-scare was nothing more than a manipulation of mild mass-hysteria.
Maybe there's more to all of this... maybe a monster-sighting during a time of national sullenness is just a
taste, an obscure tang that hints towards the idea that what we've consuming is not the dish we were led
to believe.
Grinding one's heels into the ground of pragmatism in order to counter the conclusion that Loch Ness does hold
a mottled-skin behemoth, maybe Mr Challice had fabricated the image for personal reasons? Accepting that not
all Journalists are expert in image-manipulation, surely any researched background on Mr Challice would cause
a paid scribbler to pause in typing a few paragraphs about a chance encounter with the legendary creature?
Stephen Challice is a Graphics Designer and boast an impressive resume on his website. Adobe Dreamweaver,
Adobe Fireworks, After Effects, CSS, Photoshop and many more types of software, where any style of photograph
can be generated to offer a viewer something that -in these days of 'pics-or-it-didn't-happen', looks believable.
Something our very own Rogue Nation Banner thread strives for daily!
And so the reader of the many news-outlets that ran the story is left to believe that Mr Challice's monster is
either a tongue-in-cheek column-filler constructed in conjunction with all of the Journalists and Editors who
ran the piece or maybe it's a slip-up in their well-constructed matrix.
Let's take a look.
Where the fakery came from.
The Daily Record of Scotland published the story on the 22nd June 2019 and reported that Stephen Challice
was the photographer. But only three days later (25th), The Daily Express had dropped his name and now only
mentions a 'Stephen Carrington' of a Facebook account known as 'Anomalous Universe'. The Express leans
heavily into hinting the image was fake with the same examples provided here in the thread and yet all major
global news-outlets reported on the situation without such investigation.
Along with the Daily Express, Science Alert and Loch Ness mystery Blogspot had it proven as a fake by 25th June,
but the rest of the media just let it wash away without any recant. And that this was just a 'Silly-Season' story!
It makes you wonder if -what we assumed was a virtuous trade of genuine information-purveyance, has become
nothing more than an advertising activity via promoting certain organisations on various levels of interest.
The MSM are just phoning it in these days and the state of their ratings are probably a clue.
Read The TV Guide, yer' don't need a TV.