How to solve the media problem?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Moolk, Sep 9, 2020.

  1. Injeun

    Injeun Well-Known Member

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    Very nice post/topic, well thought out and fairly presented. I don't know how we'd go about holding a free press to equitable standards. I think it was taken as a given that the media would be, as well as reporting the news, a watch dog or fail safe to expose governmental corruption, and corruption in every quarter. And it seems to defy reason that a free press would itself be given to bias, as it would be incongruous to the very concept of truth bearer. Who would do such a thing? Does a Mother feed poison to her darling infant? Yet here we are. The media has become a celebrity, with the wickedness, baked in. Perhaps the route is to use the lefts own golden calf as the standard. And hold the media to regulatory standards of diversity and affirmative action, where every side of an issue must have equal airtime and representation, without any appearance or suggestion of bias. To violate the standards is to lose your license to operate.
     
  2. Daniel Light

    Daniel Light Well-Known Member

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    Again, you confuse entertainment and op ed shows with news.

    If I said, "While Donald Trump has been President, the National Debt has risen to new record levels." That would be a statement of fact.
    But you, as a Trump supporter, wouldn't want a news story like that. You want to go somewhere and watch a "news" channel that will tell
    you that the absolute fact that the National Debt is at its highest levels while Trump has been in office is because the Democrats are the devil.

    You don't want just news. You want someone to tell you why the bad news is the other guy's fault. And Fox and CNN are businesses that
    will do just that. So stop blaming these companies for catering to your wants and desires - it's how they make money.

    And no, this isn't something new to society, it's been going on since Guttenburg printed the first Bible.
     
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  3. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Both have lied repeatedly about climate change.
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2020
  4. Daniel Light

    Daniel Light Well-Known Member

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    And FOXRN would be out of business in a year.

    You don't want someone reading you the bare facts, because the bare facts can make your team look bad. You don't want someone saying that thousands of people have died from complications of Covid while Trump has been President - and leaving it at that. You want someone to tell you that thousands of people have died of complications of Covid because the Democrats are the devil.

    Just a plain reading of facts would make you uncomfortable because you would be afraid that other people might interpret those bare facts to be something you don't want them to think.

    If Mr. Fox News came on the tube and said, "Today, the National Debt reached the highest level in history." You would worry that someone might blame Trump, so you want Mr. Fox News guy to editorialize that with, "... because the Democrats are the devil ...". And Fox News knows you come to Fox News for comfort and reassurance. Same with CNN or any of the others.
     
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  5. Darthcervantes

    Darthcervantes Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You are trying to compare "news with a spin" (FOX) to "fake" news (CNN)...sorry but they are not at all in the same category but feel free to prove me wrong. I mean we are talking about the same network that had a guy reporting at a RIOT with FIRES burning in the background with the reporter saying "fiery but mostly peaceful protesting here"...and the same network that just photoshopped out the redskins logo on a picture of biden and his kid. They may both be shady but CNN is like 1000x worse!
     
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  6. Sirius Black

    Sirius Black Well-Known Member

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    Fox hasn't always reported facts. Although I am strongly supportive of facts on every news channel.
     
  7. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    NOT so, Daniel. I want HONEST news, not selectively edited news that gives distorted facts legitimacy.

    Your example- the national debt. The report it is at a new record is accurate. However, if one does not include the impact of the pandemic and the massive need for public support, the story would appear to say that Trump just wastes money. The MSM has indeed taken that position when remarking about debt- just conveniently ignoring the unique need of the times. IF Trump had not created the special support rebates and aid to the people, they would be trashing him for not caring if people starved to death. Hell, if Trump engineered the second coming of Jesus, the left would find a way to make it witchcraft or criminal. Happens on everything, and the last ones to notice the despicable side of these actions are the people doing them. Honesty in news or discussions can't tell half a story and hide the other half- that makes them frauds and liars.

    For most of the history of journalism in the United States, the purpose has been to provide the public with legitimate, truthful news- and let the actual events be the basis for them to draw their own conclusions.
    How else will anyone make choices that have meaning?

    Newspapers honored this ethic for a hundred years- and made money. They became popular and respected for their honesty- often bucking political power, often revealing corruption....
    BUT NOT BY BEING THE CORRUPTOR OR AIDING THE CORRUPTORS.

    That is a monumental difference in the ethics of today's media and that of a few decades ago. Barbara Walters, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley- literally the legendary names in journalism would never participate in what most of today's major "news" agencies do. Their integrity and self-respect would make it impossible.
     
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  8. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    So then, your interest lies elsewhere. I still think you're interested in control, not honesty.

    You can't force people to be honest. Any attempt to do so is naive, and will be met with failure.
     
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  9. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    You responded in the exact manner Daniel predicted. You took a fact, and explained it away, to the benefit of your political narrative. Someone with a different narrative will take the same fact, and explain it away by noting Trump's response was slow and inadequate.

    That's the way the media has always operated. Go back to the days of Huntley-Brinkley and you'll see the WSJ and NYT doing the same thing they do today, each presenting a different narrative, from which people can chose. That's how free societies work.
     
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  10. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    Citation?

    Very few media outlets are perfect. The two I named are highly reputable, especially PBS. My point is that there are reliable sources available if one seeks accurate reporting.
     
  11. NightOwl

    NightOwl Banned

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    The "news" has done a thing recently in that no one believes them anymore. Some news outlets are better than others but largely the entire industry is circling the toilet and has been for some time. TDS has crippled the MSM to the point they are just actively shilling for the democrats now with no hint of objectivity.
     
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  12. NightOwl

    NightOwl Banned

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    PBS is garbage.
     
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  13. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm an old guy, lived and watched those old-time reporters. The talking heads of today would have been kicked out the door in a day or two in their time.
    You seem to imply I explained something away as if to deny it, which I did not. However, if your house is all wet and you complain about the water damage, but fail to mention the house was on fire and that required the firemen to hose it, you are hardly representing truth. That is the situation with the national debt change. Any president (assuming that actually wanted to serve the nation's best interests) would do the same thing- but the left would glorify the wisdom of a democrat doing it as quickly as they express horror at a republican doing it. Double-speak; double standard. NOT unnoticed by rational people.
     
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  14. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Citation from what? Some other "reputable source" that also lies about climate change?
     
  15. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    So you got nothing. Alrighty then.
     
  16. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    You are giving your opinion, which is what I meant by "explain away." Others have different opinions. All these opinions (there are more than two) are arrived at using the same facts.

    I'm old, too. Huntley-Brinkley was always on in my house growing up. As an adult, the trio of Brokaw, Rather and Jennings was probably the best and longest lived. I preferred Jennings, myself. Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer were the most serious, the most in-depth, and the most reliable. I agree nobody today meets those standards, but that doesn't mean the news isn't accurate. And Norah O'Donnell is much hotter than Dan Rather.
     
  17. Daniel Light

    Daniel Light Well-Known Member

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    You are simply saying that the general public is too stupid to understand the bare facts news and you want people who think as you do to explain it to them.

    Again, you confuse news with OP ED and entertainment shows.

    And you have rose-colored glasses on if your that at any time news papers did not alter facts to make their advertisers look better or that editors
    and owners of the paper didn't shade facts to meet their agendas of newspaper sales (think Hearst and the Spanish Wars).
     
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  18. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    Fox is actually fair if not balanced to the distress of the left. I don't read anything in this forum that isn't also reported by Fox news. They cover it all. The conservatives outnumber the liberals on the talk and analysis shows and that causes bias. But the news reporting on Fox covers more than any other medium. If you want right biased news reporting then OAN may be just the ticket for you.
     
  19. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I do think the general public is becoming less and less savvy, more gullible. Plenty to prove that- beside things like people calling violent rioters peaceful protestors.
    But even so, manipulated facts, or reporting designed to cause facts to be inaccurately seen, IS fake news. Regardless- people should all have the chance to draw their own conclusions based on realistic reporting; anything less by anyone is not only abuse of journalistic privilege, but abuse of the duty such people have to their fellow man. You never justly take people's free choice away from them, and that is what is happening when news is distorted.

    People are never perfect, and that includes all of us. NO excuse for anyone. When we "explain it to them", we are explaining opinion, but if you want anyone to listen (assuming they are willing and able) you have to be honest- and that invariably includes supporting truth whether they want to hear it or not. If you can't hear what you don't want to hear, and give it fair consideration- you are the person deceiving yourself. We have a multitude of such people today, and they would have been laughed at 50 years ago. Now, we have enough they can believe the ridiculous, because somebody else does too. Independent thinking seems beyond many of them.
     
  20. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Wrong again. I've got the fact that there is self-evidently and indisputably no climate "crisis" or climate "emergency" as PBS and the WSJ both claim, and that is citation enough to prove they are lying about it.
     
  21. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    I guess that must be why research has found that Fox viewers are objectively less informed not only than people who watch mainstream news, but than people who don't watch any news at all...
     
  22. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    Ah. Leftist research. Sounds fascinating.
     
  23. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    Good luck with what's self-evident to you. It's never worked before, for any anti-science argument, but hey, don't let me discourage you.

    What ever happened to that other self-evident "theory," intelligent design?
     
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  24. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    It is also self-evident to you and everyone else reading this. I am just the one who is honest about it.
    It is the anti-fossil-fuel hysteria-mongers who are anti-science, as proved by their claim that "the debate is over," and I will thank you to remember it.
    ID was never self-evident. It was always an argument from analogy. Analogies are sometimes valid, sometimes not.
     
  25. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    BWAHAHAHHAHAHAAAA!!
     

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