NDM Story #17

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/11-times-the-simpsons-accurately-predicted-the-future-a7412221.html

Summary:
This article suggests that the Simpsons have, on multiple occasions, "predicted" what was going to happen in the future, mostly with regards to social, economic and political circumstances such as the rise of ebola as a common disease and the horse meat incident that occurred in Tescos where traditional meat such as chicken or beef was actually replaced with the meat of horses instead, in some kind of scandal.

My opinion:
This article caught my eye, particularly because it is something I have seen being posted all around social media. I was therefore surprised to see that a larger institution was writing about something that was first circulating amongst social media users as opposed to the common occurrence of it being the other way around. This therefore displays a huge impact that social media, as a form of new and digital media, has had on the production of real, institutional news which proves that there really has been a digital revolution where even this seemingly trivial piece of "news" could be relevant.

Another point to be made, is that I've read that apparently the actual episode was only from last year (I haven't been able to verify this for myself as I do not personally watch the Simpsons). However, if the dates are genuinely incorrect, then it just goes to show that even the larger institutions are falling into the trap of promoting false information without fact checking and verifying the statements they are making, to a satisfactory level of accuracy.
On the other hand, if what has been said in this post is true, this shows the deception portrayed within the Media as well as the clear assumption that the elections and many other political and economic decisions have been and are, to this day, rigged. This would interlink well with Marx's theory of Marxism since this suggests that powerful corporations are controlling the masses and, unlike the pluralist view, it could be inferred that we do not, after all have freedom of speech but are rather slaves to the system who are oblivious to the real agendas of political, social and economic movements.