Alternate link Another way to write this sentence is "I didn't actually read the research, but it must be bullshit anyway." Read the report, then judge. Also, did I state definitively that it was a good idea to rely only on the Daily Show for news updates? No, I never did state that. Let's everyone relax.
Alt Focus: I read the Wall St. Journal Mon-Sat for national, international and business news, the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram Mon-Sun. for local news (it's a pretty crappy paper, but they do a better job of covering my area than the Dallas Morning News, carries the NY Times crossword puzzle, and its cheaper), and the New York Times on Sunday. My browser homepage has feeds from Reuters, AP, Marketwatch and cnn.com. If I'm still awake, I'll watch the local news at 10 pm, mostly for the weather. Occasionally, I'll tune into NPR when I'm driving, but not very often. The least biased I've been able to find are the wire services. Broadcast journalism, for the most part, is a joke these days. I only tune into a cable news outlet when there's a major story breaking. And don't even get me started on Geraldo. I wish Capone had booby-trapped his vault.
I'm in the same boat, now that all the other major network "real" news stations are, well...you know. A few years ago Stewart was interviewed at a 'meet the press' type thing, and it was really good. Can't find the link now, but he had some good points about (paraphrased VERY loosely, by memory) how he actually admired Fox's broadcast model of being explicity biased to one point of view, and that the other outlets' bias wasn't so much Left Wing as it was lazy. He posed the question of: why couldn't a network/crazy rich person come out and start a news channel who's motto is "We report the news, and nothing more"? He talked about how it's all gone so far in the direction of ridiculous news SHOWS, that a channel that actually did news REPORTING would seem fresh and interesting. Sadly, while it seems like such a simple idea (on account of it being the way news was done before the last decade or two), it's most likely a pipe dream.
The worst thing to ever happen to journalism was the implicative question. Satirized perfectly by the "Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990?" internet campaign, it's a totally irresponsible form of journalism that creates sensation and intrigue while barely avoiding being legally actionable slander. I don't know when it started, but its ubiquity in recent years have flooded the media landscape with facts and narratives that aren't true, and the journalists know they aren't true.
It's not a modern invention. <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism</a> The problem with the modern press isn't that it fails to meet the expectations of its audience, it's that it does meet those expectations. People want to hear what they want to hear, and nothing else.. The media is liberally biased? Yep. The media is controlled by the right wing? Why not? This domestic policy is socialist? Ok. That foreign policy is imperialist? Sure. Whatever you say. These exceedingly complex situations being reported on are such that spinning them to meet public demand is simple. Information is now a boutique industry. Choose the outlet that best suits your needs, and you will be provided with all manner of facts, figures, polls and charts that make it sound very official. People don't want to be challenged or informed, they want to validate what they think they already know. Until that changes, nothing else will.
Is this not at least slightly incompatible with saying that journalists ought to tell BP to go fuck themselves and make their own way to the shores affected by the oil spill on a paper mache canoe? Not that I think all journalists are selfless and scrupulous agents of broadcasting the truth of every outrage to law and human rights, but it's rather hard to say in the same breath that journalists shouldn't expect sympathy when they get into trouble where someone has advised them not to go and at once go where someone has told them not to go. In other news, because I have little else to do, and few TV stations, the following are things I have seen on local TV newscasts in the last two weeks: - a montage of video clips of a bicyclist almost getting run into by cars after riding his bike like a retard - oh my god there were two gas station robberies in one day in Newfoundland! - K'Naan's "Waving Flag" is very popular amongst the poor, uneducated and crime-ridden population of South Africa - some South African shaman tossing random pieces of crap on the floor in order to predict the outcome of the world cup Guess I ought to stop watching the 6:00 news and start watching the 10:00 news. That's when actual grown-ups watch the news, don't you know.
Jon Stewart did a piece about this. http://www.yikers.com/video_jon_stewart_probes_the_media_question_mark.html And you see a lot of this really surface in groups that don't really keep up with the news, or just have a snippet or two of information about a topic of interest, etc. In these situations, amongst these kinds of people, it's more important to sound like you know what's going on, than it is to actually know.
Less New York Times is good for the public. The less left-winged political correctness coming at the expense of cold science, the better.
You have examples of this? Independent reports or studies? Anything. Literally, anything that might transform this from a meaningless partisan quip into something resembling an actual contribution to the debate.
In replying to your douchey call-out, over the years I have noticed that when news comes out concerning physical anthropology or population genetics, the NYT tends to tip toe around and omit key details of studies that provide support for biological differences between various populations and the sexes; in contrast, the NYT emphasize the implications of particular studies if the studies' findings lean toward the "everyone is the same and all differences are cultural" ideology. While this is outside the realm of anthropology, I noticed today an article concerning obese women and childbirth. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/health/06obese.html?src=me&ref=health" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/healt ... ref=health</a> The article suggests that doctors are callous and uncaring to the needs of their obese pregnant women and need to do a better job of helping obese women give birth safely. However, one could also argue that women need to take some personal accountability and not get so fat as to eventually get pregnant and have a difficult child birth. More even-handed writing would take into account both arguments.
Thank you. Context was all I wanted, and you provided it. I don't even disagree with you, but spouting shit without explaining it is what They do. Don't be Them.
Given the childish, Mickey Mouse fucktard battles going on between media companies nowadays, the whole system ought to have a giant toilet seat installed over top of it. None is worse, of course that Fox News, esquire. An entire 24 hour broadcast controlled on the whim of a group of fat, rich, white life ruiners. A network that will interview sociopathic Ponzi scheming tyrants and ask them such hardball questions like "So, Mr Asskissedbyus, what's it like being a billionaire?" then cut over to criticize a gibbled Parkinson's victim for daring to sit in front of a bunch of heroic Teabagger retards. CNN and NBC News? They suck too. CNN used to be the pinnacle of straightforward, brave journalism. Now, the choose to battle Fox and up the ante each time with their own idiotic gimmicks. They have talking head losers that are batshit insane and ask nonsense questions. Sanchez, Matthews, Olberman, fuck you too. You're doing it wrong. However, Fox News goes above and beyond the call of duty for uselessness. Their Nazi SS pundits literally report things that don't actually happen, then use the ACTUAL limited amount of qualified reporters in their arsenel to spin their web of lies. None are more apt at this than special needs poster boy Glen Beck, a mouth breathing reject from Planet Fucktard who demands that people who go to churches that have minister's discuss social justice drop their religion immedietly and seek new worship. I would not even wince at putting a bullet in the base of this shitheel's skull. And that is why I love Bill Maher. I'm fully aware some of you hate him and you're welcome to it but he actually does fact check, and if you watch him nowadays despite the fact his guest panel is more liberal than conservative, he attacks both sides evenly (yes, he does). He also says shit that needs to be said: He asked that the heads of Citibank and Bank of America be put to death, he wants the Pope thrown in prison, he's proven that pot should be legalized and he's a champion for gay rights. AND, he NEVER sugar-coats his opinions when he says shit like this which I just adore: I'll say it before and I'll say it again: GO BUY A NEWSPAPER, PEOPLE.
Life of an American 24 hour news cycle: 1) How our economy tanked even more today and other fearmongering crap 2) Who just got elected and our interview with the girl he fucked in the ass in college while drunk 3) Let's look at those crazy foreigners 4) Pause and drool for 3-hour police chase 5) Holy shit, that squirrel can water-ski!!! 6) repeat
Perhaps with Helen Thomas being hounded into retirement ( who the fuck works at 89 years of age anyway ) , it kind of shows that there isn't much room for honesty (albeit unpopular honesty ) in journalism anymore. Especially if you say anything remotely anti-Jew.
Just this past week, the two newspapers on Oahu combined. One bought the other and a couple hundred people lost a job. http://www.staradvertiser.com/ I watch the local news at 10PM. I don't watch any national news unless something horrible happens. The news that I get mostly is from the internet. MSN, Yahoo etc. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ I know it leans a little to the left, but it seems a lot more fair than Fox news. What doesn't?
I for one regularly buy a newspaper - The Guardian, although it is a bit too pansy left for my takes. In all honesty, here in the UK, I don't think there is a media problem. The BBC is a wonderful network when it comes to reporting news, generally well balanced and somewhat resisting the sensationalism that's driving the media these days. All other news networks and media outputs are regulated by the Press Complaints Commission which means the press have to follow a very strict set of guidelines. I think this is good becuase people are retarded and dumb, if the press were allowed to lie to them it would give them too much power. America with it's first amendment and all that means the news can say whatever they want, the end result being some unemployed Medicaid receiving women goes on a 'tea party' protest against 'socialized' medicine. What kind of fucking gay name is 'Tea Party' for an organisation and yes I know the history. And socialised? You do know that's just a scaremonger word your press has put to you so you all go 'OMG scary socialism!'. You might as well call it 'Stalinised Health Care', becuase the correct word is 'Nationalised', where it belongs and is run by the nation. Seriously, I've absolutely no respect for anyone who gets there news from Fox news, OR the daily show, what kind of sources are these with which to judge the running of the country?
I mostly stick to the BBC RSS feed for my news. It seems to me to be reasonably fair and balanced. In stories that have clear places where different ideologies would form different opinions they make sure to throw in a "some say _____m while critics reply _____" That's generally all I want from a piece of breaking news. The facts and a quick summary of how people are responding to the news. After that I hit up my blogs to see what some intelligent commentators have to say on the topic. These blogs also tend to occasionally link to a heavy piece of investigative journalism from a variety of sources with like 7-8 page articles on the subject. The one place I do deduct points from BBC is when they report on scientific happenings/new studies. I don't think I've found a single news source that manages to report on scientific happenings properly though. Then again, who can blame them? They're journalists, not scientists and so they wont pick up on flaws in research, no matter how basic. In fact that's probably worth an entire corollary thread; the incredible ineptitude by which all news sources report on scientific happenings and scientific papers/studies. To the older folks on the board, has anyone ever managed to get this right? Or does anyone know of some place that does?
Through work I've had quite a bit of dealing with news media. This has mainly been in newspapers, with a couple of television and radio interviews. And what I can safely say about my state, and possibly about my country as a whole, is that we don't have any journalists.... we have editorialists. The rate at which these idiots get things wrong or just make shit up you'd swear they'd done creative writing as their major. I've been fed misrepresentations and lied to in quantities that would have the fair trading department up your ass in five seconds flat if it was anyone else. And that doesn't even consider the unequal voice given when there's opposing views on the subject. I've given up to half hour in-depth interviews with reporters, only to have three words quoted completely out of context. On many occasions they've taken what I've said and given it to someone with an opposing viewpoint and printed their comments, but not done me the same courtesy (or even informed me of it). Not many people have, but I've sat down with the chief editor of a state newspaper. He didn't give a rat's ass about concerns of bias, errors or any of those other things you'd expect to be slightly important in delivering news. He was only interested, and I quote, in "selling as many newspapers as possible".
I suppose a thread about media was destined to become political, I am impressed it managed to get to the third page without fully diving in though. Generally speaking I get my news from the radio and online, but so much of it seems focus where I'm less interested that I find it hard to regularly consume. As others have said, the news in various formats gravitates, understandably, to the sensational and does it in a very easy to quite fashion that leaves out the nuances that actually make up a story. The desire for nuance has to come from the consumer or else it will never be reflected by the producer.