Take a look at the news today and what do you see?

Which celebrity had a newborn child,
Which YouTube video has gone completely viral,
Which three things will clear your skin,
And move time back again.

Which seven things to do to,
Improve your job
Improve your life,
Repair your marriage,
Repair your mind.

What’s the best, the worst, the must-haves,
What will make my life complete?
How do I get liked, or noticed, or famous?
How do I make a shit ton of money faster,
So I can sit on my ass and watch life fly by?

When’s the royal wedding, the next episode of The Voice,
Who’s the supposed top contender, even though it’s the editor’s choice?
Which foods must I try before I die?
Which twelve surprising facts must I know about that actor, that movie, that TV show, that book?

Whatever happened to the news?
When did opinion become fact?
When did gossip become sovereign?
Where did it all go wrong?

Why must I dig to beneath the sugar coating,
To find the news that’s really worth reading?
At what point as people,
Could we not read the hard truth?
When did we stop needing to know about unrest in Africa?
Or immoral laws passed in disguise?

Sensationalism pulls the woolen fluff of puff pieces,
Over our eyes and down to our feet,
comforting us in their warmth,
Coaxing us to never leave.

It makes you wonder on what they could report,
If they’d kept the fluff in check.
But would the mind-numbed public revolt,
If Kim Kardashian had a child and they didn’t know?
It’s a risk we all should take.
For our own sake and the sake of mankind.

For if this continues,
We will find ourselves in a dystopian world,
Where information is controlled and displayed,
Selling a happy world With a partisan slant.

What are they hiding?
What don’t we know?

But what we don’t know won’t hurt us, right?
I will never believe that.
For without public awareness,
We are blind and deaf standing on a railroad track,
We know not when the bullet train comes,
Though we are in its cross-hairs,
And it will not miss.

“Novocaine”
By Jacko Velt