Anyone ever seen a film called Outfoxed?
Yes and only people who do not watch Fox would believe a word of that trash.
Printable View
Anyone ever seen a film called Outfoxed?
Yes and only people who do not watch Fox would believe a word of that trash.
QuiteQuote:
How pathetic have the U.S. media become?
The health of the fourth estate is necessary to the well-being of our country, and government manipulation, corporate decision-making, a pop-culture spun out of control, and an apathetic population bode poorly for the future.
ichi
Its kind of funny how all us conservatives have been saying how pathetic the US mews media has become and you guys over in Europe use a litlle cable outfit that is different from all the others and point to that as the bad organization in our media as proof of how bad it is.
Actually, Gawain makes a great point. I think Fox News sucks. I think it's jingoistic, slanted, biased, draws lines, not dots, and despite what it says about 'fair and balanced', I think it does have an agenda.
I also think it is probably less of everything I just desribed than any other network news broadcast available. Which is why I DO NOT WATCH TELEVISION FOR NEWS. For crying out loud people, there's a reason they call it the idiot box. Read a paper.
And as papers go, I read the Christian Science Monitor & the Wall Street Journal. Both have acknowledged agendas, opposite to each other, and both have a staff and a rulebook above comparison. I think 20 years ago I probably would have read the NY Times, but it's lost any credibility in my eyes. The Washington Post is slightly better, but slightly is the operative word. I read it when I'm looking for details on a Washington story.
News magazines (story reporting) are the worst of all. They're totally irrelevant so they have to 'rock the boat' to get any attention at all, and they know it. I don't just condemn Newsweek, I have no use for US News & World Report anymore either (a conservtative version) or Time (fairly neutral, but more left than right). They're all just garbage, talking about Brittany's new tattoo.
The only future I see for the News Magazine is the detailed essay. For that, again, I take a left & right approach, the highest quality I can find in either. I read the Atlantic & National Review. Everything else in this category (American Spectator, New Republic, Mother Jones) is rant, with a somber air.
As far as I can tell, the US media seems to be a lot like US opinions in that outlets get drawn to either extreme, and have difficulty occupying the middle (this is paraphrasing Don Corelone somewhat, if I've got that wrong correct me).
Hmm, this could be interesting. What came first, the polarization of hte people or the polarization of the media.
Well, that was what I was saying, and you raise an interesting point. Do they 'give us what we want to read' as they claim, or do they shape our expectations. I don't know, but either way, it hasn't been good for journalism. I don't trust most folks on this question, but I'll ask Adrian, a fairly good critic of the media... do YOU see a good place to invest the 15 minutes of the day the average American has available to dedicate to world events? Not well Left is safer then Right, no slant... do you see it anywhere?
I'll go out on a limb here and say that the media environment, as a whole, isn't that bad. There are plenty of good news sources, and if you make an effort to try to understand the world, you can get excellent coverage. It just takes quite a bit of work. Luckily, in the age of the computer, we've got some good tools at our disposal.Quote:
I think hes way off the mark. Fox is the aternative and the others are mostly in line with the BBC and just as unamerican. Its you people who follow the mainstream press like they were gods. We dont even bother to read this crap like the NY Times here anymore. We see what they want us to see not what we want to see. Other than of course police chases and the like that have no real newsworthyness. Do you find us americans here less informed or less knowledgible on world matters than yourselves?
However, at least on the right, even good news coverage is going to seem biased and unfair if it's not 'what you want to see'. If there are no WMDs in Iraq, or the President's social security plan is bad, and the media cover it in a way that reflects objective reality, then the media will seem 'biased' because it appears to be taking sides against your guy. The mainstream media will seem "un-American". However, if the media knuckles under to political pressure and fails to provide context or an informed appraisal of a particular situation, then all we are left with is a flacid beast giving us 2 second 'he said/she said' soundbites.
Part of the reason that the media looks biased to Republicans is that it exists to 'comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable'. That is the antithesis of the contemporary conservative worldview that sees the comfortable as morally superior and the afflicted as morally inferior. Investigative journalism rarely looks good to a conservative whose primary concern is to give uncritical loyalty to the institutions being investigated.
Of course, there are serious problems in the contemporary media environment. As others noted, the media has become much more sensationalistic and ratings driven. That is a result of media conglomeration and the increasing corporatization of the newsroom. Many news departments are now run solely as businesses, or divisions of businesses, and they are expected to be lean and driven by the bottom line. That doesn't leave a lot of room for foreign bureaus or expensive investigative journalism. It is much cheaper and easier to have talking heads screaming at each other (ala Fox) than it is to actually try to present an accurate picture of the world.
Then there is the problem of the media's reliance on 'official sources'. Here's a great bit about the media reliance on official news releases from a recent speech on this subject:
Mermin also quotes public television’s Jim Lehrer, whom I greatly respect, acknowledging that unless an official says something is so, it isn’t news. Why were journalists not discussing the occupation of Iraq? “Because,” says Jim Lehrer, “the word ‘occupation’ was never mentioned in the run up to the war. Washington talked about the war as a war of liberation, not a war of occupation. So as a consequence, those of us in journalism,” says Lehrer, “never even looked at the issue of occupation.” “In other words,” says Jonathan Mermin, “if the government isn’t talking about it, we don’t report it.” He concludes, “Lehrer’s somewhat jarring declaration, one of many recent admissions by journalists that their reporting failed to prepare the public for the calamitous occupation that has followed the liberation of Iraq, reveals just how far the actual practice of American journalism has deviated from the First Amendment idea of a press that is independent of government.”
Take the example, also cited by Mermin, of Charles Hanley. Hanley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Associated Press whose 2003 story of the torture of Iraqis in American prisons before a U.S. Army report and photographs documenting the abuse surfaced, was ignored by major American newspapers. Hanley attributes this lack of interest to the fact, (quote), “it was not an officially-sanctioned story that begins with a handout from an official source. Furthermore, Iraqis recounting their own personal experience of Abu Ghraib simply did not have the credibility with Beltway journalists of American officials denying that such things happened.”
Judith Miller of The New York Times, among others, relied on that credibility, relied on that credibility of official but unnamed sources when she served essentially as the government stenographer for claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. So the rules of the game permit Washington officials to set the agenda for journalism, leaving the press all too simply to recount what officials say instead of subjecting their words and deeds to critical scrutiny. Instead of acting as filters for readers and viewers sifting the truth from the propaganda, reporters and anchors attentively transcribe both sides of the spin invariably failing to provide context, background or any sense of which claims hold up and which are misleading.
That pretty much sums up the primary media problem these days (at least in the US). One of the reasons that FOX looks so good to conservatives is that it always plays the role of cheerleader for the administration (and scourge of the Democrats). News that would be unsettling to a conservative worldview is always spun with daily talking points to put the best face on it for conservative viewers. Of course, as we've seen with the recent U of MD studies, the price for all the pro-administration spin is a worldview that doesn't approximate reality (LINK ). News isn't supposed to make you feel all warm, fuzzy, and patriotic all the time.
Where do you come off calling people who disagree with you "comfortable people feeling morally superior".
Has it ever occured to you that some of us just like to be left alone? Not all of us want you Washington lawyers dictating that our children need to be taught how to perform blowjobs to prevent AIDS, or that despite what you think, Granny is just fine with us and doesn't need the 'merciful solution'.
I'm not going to argue you don't belive what you claim to belive in, but how dare you claim that I don't belive what I believe in. I give more of a percentage of my salary to the poor then you do, and more or my time too. I'll trade 1040's with you to prove it, Mr. High and Mighty. You're a smug ambulance chaser with an attack of conscience.
That pretty much sums up the primary media problem these days (at least in the US). One of the reasons that FOX looks so good to conservatives is that it always plays the role of cheerleader for the administration (and scourge of the Democrats). News that would be unsettling to a conservative worldview is always spun with daily talking points to put the best face on it for conservative viewers. Of course, as we've seen with the recent U of MD studies, the price for all the pro-administration spin is a worldview that doesn't approximate reality (LINK ). News isn't supposed to make you feel all warm, fuzzy, and patriotic all the time.
These attacks on Fox have little basis in reality.
If you go to the websites of both Fox and CNN, you will find the same headlines.
If you watch the hard news shows of both Fox and CNN, they will 99% of the time be reporting the same headlines.
Hell, dont they both get their news from the same place? (AP)
What leftist have against Fox is that they actually employ some conservatives for their editorial shows.. but thats exactly what they are - editorial shows.
You will find very little difference between the news Brit Hume reports and that of Wolf Blitzer. The only difference is that Brits show is much more interesting because of the way he and the staff run it.
NRC and Trouw are very decent newspapers I think.Quote:
Originally Posted by AdrianII
You see, it's people saying things like this that makes me glad I am not in the U.S.Quote:
Has it ever occured to you that some of us just like to be left alone? Not all of us want you Washington lawyers dictating that our children need to be taught how to perform blowjobs to prevent AIDS
It's still amazing to me, no matter what spin Aurelian or Gawain put on it.
I'm trying to think of a similar effect in The Netherlands.
Suppose a Belgian paper would leak a secret memo from the Belgian government. Suppose the memo says they had met with Dutch officials in 2002 to talk about the coming EU Constitution and discovered that the Dutch goverment had a secret deal with Germany to subvert that Constitution. Would it be all over the Dutch papers and channels? I bet it would.
That is pretty damn naive.Quote:
Originally Posted by AdrianII
And that is pretty darn cheeky! ~:cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
~DQuote:
Where do you come off calling people who disagree with you "comfortable people feeling morally superior".
Has it ever occured to you that some of us just like to be left alone? Not all of us want you Washington lawyers dictating that our children need to be taught how to perform blowjobs to prevent AIDS, or that despite what you think, Granny is just fine with us and doesn't need the 'merciful solution'.
I'm not going to argue you don't belive what you claim to belive in, but how dare you claim that I don't belive what I believe in. I give more of a percentage of my salary to the poor then you do, and more or my time too. I'll trade 1040's with you to prove it, Mr. High and Mighty. You're a smug ambulance chaser with an attack of conscience.
Weird.
First of all, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know where you got that.
Second, I never called anyone "comfortable people feeling morally superior".
I did say: "Part of the reason that the media looks biased to Republicans is that it exists to 'comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable'. That is the antithesis of the contemporary conservative worldview that sees the comfortable as morally superior and the afflicted as morally inferior. Investigative journalism rarely looks good to a conservative whose primary concern is to give uncritical loyalty to the institutions being investigated."
To explain: American conservatism sees people's outcomes as a result of their moral choices. In this schema, the poor are poor because they have made bad life choices and are unwilling to do what it takes to become rich. The rich are rich because they have made good choices and worked hard. Therefore, the social order is moral and based on the actions of individuals.
The main conservative complaint about liberal social programs and economic ideas is that they undermine the "tough love" that is required to force those with less moral fortitude to do what is required to better themselves. The critique is primarily moral.
When liberals question the social order, or want to divert resources from the better off to support social goals, conservatives see those actions as attacks on the moral order. Those who have done what they are supposed to are being forced to support those who haven't.
As I'm sure you've noticed, conservatives often get antsy about investigative journalism that looks at the institutions they think are key to maintaining the kind of moral/economic order they like: corporations, the military, and the church. It is through these institutions that conservatives seek to act in a morally constructive way. Liberal left critiques of these institutions are seen as hostile attacks on the conservative notions of moral/economic justice.
However, since those are the institutions of power, and journalism exists largely to expose the misdeeds of those in power, a lot of conservatives see fiesty muckraking journalism as threatening to their 'side'.
Well, that's too much said even though it might be said better.
By the way, I would never claim that you don't believe what you believe in (whatever that might be). It sounds like you're charitable, and that's a good thing in my book.
As for teaching blowjobs to children, I don't think that anyone in Washington is actively promoting blowjobs as a way to prevent AIDS. From all reports, the children are figuring that out by themselves.
It seems that I was born at just the wrong time. I missed out on the sexual revolution in the 60's/70's, and now I'm missing out on the casual blowjob revolution. Damn. ~D
i used to live in (near) dc.. if you lost your casual blowjob hot-spots list, i'll see if i can find mine and get back to you. ix-nay on the upont-day ircle-say..Quote:
Originally Posted by Aurelian
Well, Fox is very heavy on editorial shows, and the editorializing doesn't stop with those shows but continues with the banter of the news crew, the way stories are reported, and which stories are emphasized over the course of the day. Also, Fox's editorial shows are heavily slanted in a rightward direction... which is okay as long as that's acknowledged. The main thing disturbing about Fox is that the editorializing gets so partisan that viewers are left with a vision of reality that's factually wrong on a lot of issues.Quote:
What leftist have against Fox is that they actually employ some conservatives for their editorial shows.. but thats exactly what they are - editorial shows.
You will find very little difference between the news Brit Hume reports and that of Wolf Blitzer. The only difference is that Brits show is much more interesting because of the way he and the staff run it.
To someone who is actually on the left, Wolf Blitzer and Brit Hume both seem to be right wing. Brit Hume is usually just a lot more open and opinionated about it. That's probably what makes him more entertaining to people on the right.
FOX the other 'ex-Aussie' owned media outlet :charge:
It does ~:confused: Youve got to be kidding.Quote:
"Part of the reason that the media looks biased to Republicans is that it exists to 'comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable'.