On 14-1-2017 13:25, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 1/14/2017 4:57 AM, Thomas de Groot wrote:
>> On 14-1-2017 12:33, clipka wrote:
>>> Am 14.01.2017 um 08:49 schrieb Thomas de Groot:
>>>> On 13-1-2017 10:12, clipka wrote:
>>>>> Am 13.01.2017 um 08:54 schrieb Thomas de Groot:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes indeed. I used to laugh about those "silly" Americans that
>>>>>> thought
>>>>>> such quixotic things. For a number of years, I am not laughing any
>>>>>> more
>>>>>> as the disease is spreading outside the US, and deriding/disbelieving
>>>>>> science in general is becoming fashionable in more places in the
>>>>>> world,
>>>>>> including Europe. It is a worrisome development. With the new
>>>>>> administration in place, things are not likely to become better I am
>>>>>> afraid.
>>>>>
>>>>> At least The Pumpkin himself doesn't seem to be motivated by religion.
>>>>> Just by pure narcissism.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> That is true, but is is not only about religion I am afraid. It is
>>>> about
>>>> a growing scepticism about science /per se/. The internet and utube are
>>>> not entirely foreign to this.
>>>
>>> What I actually find even more worrying is the growing scepticism about
>>> the press. Free journalism plays an important role in any free society,
>>> and widespread distrust in it might be just as disruptive to its
>>> function as anything else.
>>>
>>
>> You are absolutely right.
>>
> Mind you, in this case, one needs to make a distinction between a "free
> press", which may not have entirely ever existed, and one solely owned,
> and directed, by specific people and ideologies. When one person owns
> 90% of the press on one side of the line, and the other side is owned,
> again, by a similarly small handful of corporations, with their own
> roughly uniform agenda... where is the "free" coming in exactly. Most of
> radio is now owned by conservatives, who run the same people on there as
> Fox News. Worse, the only opposition to them, on TV at least, is MSNBC,
> which has been caught firing people, like Fox does, for saying things
> that their owners don't like, even when factual, and CNN - which the
> running joke has, in recent years, been either than they should start
> re-running old content, where they used to get things right once in a
> while, or that they just repeat what everyone else says, without
> bothering to check if any of it is factually accurate - i.e., "We report
> the news, what ever the heck someone else thinks is the news. Its not
> our job to check any of it."
>
> Most of the "free press" as is stands today is online, not even if the
> news stands (where often, if you are lucky, instead of 10 papers, from
> all over the country, you might get one local one, one right wing owned
> one, a few rags/penny dreadful types, and maybe one from a nearby bigger
> city. Heck, here we get the local, which is worthless, one from another
> state, because no one will deliver the nearest one from Pheonix, and the
> bloody Wallstreet Urinal.). And, of course, the biggest problem with the
> online sources is that there *is* no news stand, so everyone just
> migrates, in most cases, to which ever source most supports their views,
> even if that means the "source" is batshit insane places like Info Wars,
> or the like.
>
> Its kind of hard to have a true free press when "all" of them are owned
> by political entities, with their single goal being, "Tell people what
> we want them to believe, not what is actually happening."
>
> Of course no one trusts the press right now, especially in the US. The
> problem is... most of them only really distrust the press that is
> telling them the opposite of what they want to hear, not the whole mess
> in general. So, its always the "other side" that needs to be fixed, and
> to stop lying.
>

The only press I recognise are the fact-finding and fact-checking 
national newspapers like Le Monde in France for instance. Each country 
has at least one of those. They can make errors and misjudgements but I 
recognise them as honest.

-- 
Thomas

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