Switchfoot: Selling the News Meaning

Song Released: 2011

Selling the News Lyrics

"Selling The News"

Welcome to the Holy City; the silver screen
Built with a lens and a low self esteem
A teenager's plea for meaning and memes
We're selling the news

See, opinions are easier to swallow than facts
The greys instead of...

1. anonymous

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   May 20th 2017 !⃝

   Yes, interesting how well this song fits 5 years later in 2017 before people were saying "fake news." Reporting the truth or plain facts would be the ultimate goal of a righteous news station, but "when nothing is sacred, there's nothing to loose," means the growing trend of news to dump the sacredness of simple truth telling and fact reporting and replacing it with a spun version, usually for political reasons or to turn a profit (both usually). Americans see the discrepancy of conflicting stories and see the networks making huge profits from high ratings and the ads during commercial breaks ("the lines start to blur I get so confused, I get shiny new models mixed up with the blues) and our suspicions grow when it comes to the accuracy of the news and the spin it seems to have. We don't know what to believe so this constant suspicion is a way of life or a "new religion".
2. anonymous

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   Dec 11th 2013 !⃝

   Most defiantly agree with the first comment. However, we can use this as a tool if you know what I mean. ;)
   If you can say something to raise their "suspicions",
   at least they have opened a new door and got their gears turning... Remember, "if you shoot it to straight, they won't come back"
3. anonymous

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   May 27th 2013 !⃝

   I think that they are referring to the news as the gospel. We now adays will sell the gospel or just give the people what they want to hear about God. "suspicion is a new religion" we are constantly wandering and trying to figure out who made us and what our purpose is we are so suspicious about it and will usually question every aspect of Christianity. Even though what we need to do is remind ourselves that God is not suspicious he is one that is always there and loves us. "opinions are easier to swallow than facts" we give our opinion about everything instead of giving people the facts. It's easier for people to hear an opinion that it is for a fact to be recognized.
4. anonymous

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   May 17th 2012 !⃝

   i agree with the last comment about "a media-rad nation." But i also think that this song has a connection to how the media interferes with cases such as the trayvon martin case because the songs talks about how "money speaks louder than words." This in my point of veiw refers to how the media changes or twists a story so that they can turn a small news story into a big one and in turn rake in the cash because they wrote about a big story. I also think that in the song when they say "opnions are easier to swallow than facts" they are again saying how our nation will believe an opinion of a writer better than just straight facts which is in a pertial way true. but again its easier to write a story using your own opinion than just writing facts. when the song also says how "suspicion has become the new religion", i think that our nation has become suspicious on what to believe now because the media and everyone else out there is jusy throwing a bunch of false ideas out there hoping someone might believe them. Again in the song: "Substance, oh substance, where have you been? youve been replaced by the masters of spin" to me this tells that there is no longer any sunstance in news articles or the media for that matter because journalists want to get a big story and the only way they know how is by lying and being deceitful. This alone shows how far our nation has fallen in the moral code. Where is the media's dignity in writing these false ideas? They have lost it just as they have lost their pride in creating these lies. Because of these lies innocent people have been hurt and scorned upon due to these ideas that have been put out there into the world. What future do these people have in getting a fair jury? The justice in world has been falling, and it can be seen clearly in events such as this. Hopefully all the people that have been innocently condemned with be able to grasp some amount of justice and hold onto it so that their lives may be started anew without a problem holding on to their shoulder.....i dont know if anyone else sees this the way i do, but i just thought i would like to put this out there.
5. anonymous

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   Sep 17th 2011 !⃝

   This song is amazing. Completely about our media-rad nation. How people buy in to the fiction spread around in the news, and how "suspicion is the new religion." We're all suspicious because we can't seem to tell what's true or false. "We're still on the air, it must be the truth." Killer song.

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