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On 1/14/2017 12:49 PM, clipka wrote:
> Am 14.01.2017 um 13:25 schrieb Patrick Elliott:
>
>>>> 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,
> [...]
>
> Mind you, what you are describing is the situation in the US.
>
> I, on the other hand, am also (and in fact even more) worried about
> stuff happening over here in Germany, where at least a reasonable
> portion of the news media is indeed (according to my view of things)
> quite independent.
>
> It is /particularly/ this independent portion of news media that has
> recently become more and more frequently titulated as "Lügenpresse"
> ("lies press").
>
Already being done here in the US. Even as far back as when Palin was
running as VP (shudder), she and others have been rambling about how the
"main stream media" are all liars (while apparently Fox didn't count as
one of them, for some reason). Our new idiot in chief Trumpkins has, in
the mean time, praised a penny dreadful (as the brits call them) called
the National Enquirer as, "One of the best news sources in print", or
something to the effect. This silly assed rag mag has been pushing BS
about everything from celebrities to Democrats, ranging from the still
not dead birther BS, to trying to claim that, "If the Russians where
really mixing up in the election, it was those losers, the Clintons they
where helping!!" About.. 10 years ago, I guess, they where also the
paper that bought out one called, "The Weekly World News", which... lets
say we call it the rag that would be most likely to be consulted in the
fictional universe of Men In Black about whether or not "The Bat Boy",
had recently been discovered to have come from Alpha Centauri, and his
alien parents where due to arrive to recover him.
Basically... you will find nitwits with Info War bumper stickers running
around the US (the number one, "We believe every right wing conspiracy
theory there is, even the ones that contradict each other.", website on
the internet, who think the only legit TV news is Fox. What you won't
find, at least in the city/state I am in, would be someone with a bumper
sticker praising... anything that actually bothers to do real research
on their stories. In fact... even the ones that actually, usually, as
the other replying put it, is, "The one print media that actually checks
their facts.", has been caught advocating things that are *not* factual,
but fit the narrative of what their readers believe (usually involving
alternative medicines, claimed, but not factually correct breakthroughs,
etc. Though, this seems to be more of an author issue - they picked
people to write for them with serious biases, who are impervious, on
those subjects, to actual facts, or contradictory explanations/positions.
The problem, sadly, is that they are all becoming Russel's Teapotters.
For so, so, many of them, popularity of an idea is more important than
whether its backed by facts. Worse, for some the idea have become
religion, and, like with the Tea Pot, once its cast as, "It must be
there!", anyone, whether they have facts, or merely opinion, to the
contrary, must be mentally unbalanced for not accepting it. So, you get
some bloody idiot, in a paper who, on every other subject, actually does
fact checking, who calls everyone fools for not believing that their
"Teapot" will cure your cancer, and all but calling you a fool for not
accepting this.
Some days it makes be dispair, because.. with fact checking itself being
deemed either "too hard" or "unnecessary" to merely "report people's
opinions", i.e., its not their job to tell you which one is pulling it
out of their ass, even if they don't have an agenda of their own... how
do you convince anyone to either a) stop doing this absurd nonsense,
when supposedly reporting news, or b) actually start doing what they
need to inform the public - which is make sure that the public knows
which one of the two is lying their ass off, or merely making shit up,
instead of presenting an evidenced opinion?
When even the ones that usually get things right publish complete BS,
with no factual basis. Or, worse, in my opinion, a "factual basis" that
is based on bad studies, with small sample sizes, which amount to pure
opinion and speculation.... who do you trust then? Not everyone, even
those with internet access, know where, or who, to go to, among actual
scientists, or any other legit source, to find out if the story was
based on, say, 20 years of research, and a credible claim, or either a)
a leftist version of a study, conducted on 5 people, who already believe
in the effects of stuffing mushrooms up their ass, or something.., or b)
a right wing study, which turns out to have been shoveled out the door
of some study farm, like Cato, which just makes shit up, whole cloth,
without actually even doing a study at all.
What ever the press once aspired to, it has discovered, almost
universally, across the board, that fiction pays more than telling the
public they are actually wrong about what they believe. And.. when that
happens... how do you salvage it?
--
Commander Vimes: "You take a bunch of people who don't seem any
different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get
this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem."
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