Depends on what media you are talking about. There are “news” sources, websites and on television that purposely push out misinformation, false news, to confuse and twist the real narrative. BUT, we have to have a free press to hold people in power accountable. Trump’s administration is pushing to delegitimize all the press except the one they like and who go easy on Trump, FOX News. That’s just what Nazi Germany did, and it’s what Putin has done in Russia.
Did you know:
(The FBI launched an investigation after a Michigan man reportedly made 22 calls to CNN a week ago, “I’m coming to gun you all down,” the man, who was identified as 19-year-old Brandon Griesemer.
Mr Griesemer reportedly made claims of “fake news” to the CNN operator.
“I’m smarter than you. More powerful than you. I have more guns than you. More manpower. Your cast is about to get gunned down in a matter of hours.”
He threatened to come to Atlanta, Georgia, where CNN is based and “gun every single last one of you”. ) That’s Trump, our president’s constant rhetoric firing up crazy people.
We all have to be more diligent in what news we choose to digest, and double, triple check the story. I have my trusted sources and Amy Goodman is one of them.
Every time this subject is brought up, I have to post my Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now! meme. She is one of the great people in the media who speak the truth.
It hurts, and not just in the ways people might first think: misinformation, opinion-mills, political echo-chambers, tribal partisanship.
They hurt to a great degree, in how we consume them: as in how lustily and unquestionably we consume our “favorites”. Many of which become “favorites” not because of objective reporting, but because of how they subjectively make us feel.
Let’s remember that at their very core . . . they are just entertainment products, fishing for ratings. Say what people like, want, or expect to hear, the ratings soar, and they can up the price (or budget) for their product.
Too much, the public is like a child demanding candy. And the media gives them what they demand . . . regardless of whether it is healthy, accurate, well-balanced, or good for them.
@griz I agree to an extent that it hurts, but I am talking about the Corporate Owned media. Bottom line, their job is to draw in sponsors. I follow non-corporate owned news. But, since Trump many in the corporate owned media are speaking out against the atrocities of this administration. We have many Edward R. Murrows out there. They will help save the day.
Murrow quotes:
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
@Gina no question that Murrow is the icon of an ethical reporting process. I wonder though if he may have been the exception to the rule.
No matter which form of media we are talking about here (TV, radio, social, newspapers…) they all generate a power based on viewers, listeners and subscribers. That invariably leads to money and the immortal words of Scarface, “First ya get da money and den you get da power”. There might be a slight adjustment to that in this day and age. First you get the eyeballs, and then you get the power, and then you get the money.
I have become very cynical of all news, because I seem to look past the what of a news report and seem to focus on the why it is being reported. What is the agenda behind to report? Even the seemingly good reporters seem to present a face that has been programmed by the need to be recognized as such. Ratings. When does a wealth of ratings lead to a corruption fed by power? It seems inevitable to me.
The funny thing is that I think comedians have become the most trusted source of news and maybe that is as it should be, because the unbelievable level of ridiculousness of what’s going on just can’t be taken seriously. Both report and response has become factual satire.
@spitfire3dc You didn’t respond to my original response. What are we supposed to do without journalists? Let the government control it all, and as this current administration does daily, intentionally lie to us?
I agree the pundits are great at giving us information, but they are not journalists. Their job is to make us laugh. I do watch them nightly, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers & weekly Samantha Bee, Bill Maher & John Oliver. John Oliver takes a topic and spends the most time on it than all of them. All very informative and funny….but their job isn’t to face the powers that be. It’s the job of journalists and reporters.
Watch a few videos of The WH press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ press conferences. Reporters are not taking her lies, and they push hard for the truth. We have to have a free press for checks and balances.
Sounds like you want to throw out the baby with the bath water.
I will give you a couple of journalists I trust, and who I believe are fighting the good fight. And, please give me a few names of Canadian reporters/journalists you trust.
Jake Tapper of CNN
Rachel Maddow of MSNBC
Joy Reid of MSNBC
Bill Moyers formerly of PBS
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
Thom Hartmann – radio
The Harvey Weinstein scandal of years of sexual abuse wouldn’t have been found out if it wasn’t for a journalist interviewing people and writing a story.
@Gina Here’s the thing Gina. There are journalists who have integrity, but they get paid by others who own the method of distribution. They are managed for the most part to support a business strategy that they have no control over.
Watch the series The Network with Jeff Daniels. It gives you a good idea of what is going on in the business associated with broadcasting the news.
Talking heads are trained to make you think they have integrity. Journalists are trained to determine the message first and then fill in the gaps with information that supports that closing communication objective.
Maybe I did throw out the baby with the bathwater, but I stopped watching the “news” after having direct experience with a nationally recognized reporter that fudged his interview with me to support a case he wanted to make. I heard a blatant lie. I’ll admit that I was trained to deal with the media and turn their questions towards key message we wanted expressed, but at the close of the interview (off camera) I asked him, ” Do you feel that I didn’t adequately respond to any of your questions?” He responded no, and then when the news anchor asked him one of the question he had directly asked m,e he told the anchor that they were unable to get the representative of the company to respond to that question. I did, but the answer didn’t fit the message that he was wanted to convey. Corporations are scum and he was their heroic messiah.
Now, I had taped the interview I could demand a retraction, but they controlled the delivery mechanism. I had a similar issue with a newspaper. A misleading half page story in a newspaper. I demanded a retraction. They did. A one inch by one inch retraction admitting their error buried in a back section of the paper. They cant make it known the f’d up. It reduces the credibility that they have falsely built up over time.
Talk to a person in the business. I have. People who have left it because they knew their integrity was being compromised. You know what they end up doing for a living? They become consultants that enable corporations to use the media to distribute the messages they want the public to see. Its cheaper to use a story supplied by a PR firm, than it is to have in house journalists.
Social media content is virtually unregulated and few social media celebrities deliver facts. They deliver opinionated facts.
Canadian reporters I trust? Zero. Its a business. The politics associated with making it to the top is not about integrity. It’s about pleasing the master.
Two highly respected media “heads” got appointed to our Senate. Both of them caught in eating at the public trough like the pigs they are. Makes it clear they got their appointments by serving the political party, by using the trust people had in them to manage their sense of the political party they were actually representing. Sickening.
@spitfire3dc You keep ignoring the fact that there are non-profit news groups out there, and I mentioned a bunch of them. They are not owned by any corporation. They are paid by the viewers and readers. I am sure Canada has the same.
You are playing into the hands of the people who are trying to tear down governments, democracy and anything that is good. Getting rid of the free press is the first step.
What do you think about the Amy Goodman meme, and what she said?
@Gina I continue to think about things you have said on this thread and I want to offer one other alternative to the media in keeping the government honest.
I think musicians are the poets of our time that are capable of expressing the requirements of the masses. I think Billy Joe Armstrong said it best when he wrote this:
Don’t wanna be an American idiot
Don’t want a nation under the new media
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind-fuck America
@spitfire3dc@griz The arts will save us for sure. But, they are giving their opinion too. Remember Dan Rather? He was head of a major news network for decades, and got pushed out by the little bush administration for daring to report that George W went AWOL in the military. Anyhow, he is back on the non-profit youtube channel, The Young Turks. Check out he says why he joined this show and what he hopes to accomplish. This is hits all the stuff we have been talking about on this post:
@Gina
Consider that “how we partake/consume” the news, is still an issue regardless of whether it is corporate or non-corporate owned.
And so is bias an issue. Everyone has a slant. I allude back to my many threads over the years where I’ve tried to introduce the idea of objective Truths . . . and have almost always run head-long into those insisting that there are none and that only subjective truths matter.
Meaning . . . secular humanism has succeeded in implanting this “slant” in most of society. They measure something as “Truth” . . . based entirely on how “nice” it plays with their feelings.
We need to remember we are consuming an “entertainment product”, with aspects of crowd-control to it. There is traction to the “spoiling” analogy, where they remain powerful or liked by giving “the children” what they want. (With some of the more insidious ones defining what it is “we should want” and then giving it to us!).
None is the “owners of Truth”. They have aspects of it. Shades of it. They twist it, augment it, limit it to varying degrees. For their own ultimate glory.
Because this is what people do.
Even if they don’t answer to corporations or boards seek killings of financial capital.
The media . . . is a tool.
And they have “a bigger stick” in the short term, than musicians, poets, deeper thinkers as @spitfire3dc mentions. But because these ones don’t have “the big stick” of the media . . . they have to present their influence to the people as an offering.
@griz how is it possible that two guys with such different sets of experiences, that are the foundation of our opinions, can be so similar in outlook?
There is something encouraging to me in the recognition of that.
Please put you thought process to work on that question. I’d like your opinion. I get as far as; how is this possible? But to me it stops there and remains rhetorical.
@spitfire3dc
There is perhaps a “unifying traction” among all people who are seeking “a Truth beyond self”.
I think you can see many people (and collections of them reporting news) have a hard time getting past “the truth that is just self”. Even some of the media outlets @gina4peas mentions can have both articles where they are seeking “Truth” and ones where they are seeking just “agenda” (the truth that is just self).
Personally I think that the only way beneficial change can happen, is if we get people weaned off “the truth that is just self” and entertaining “the Truth greater than self”.
Then we will not be so vulnerable to media (or religion!) manipulators . . . and be better able to urge/guide our governors into more beneficial, less corrupt paths over time.
This needs to be a grassroots change.
I’m having trouble tracking the threads (ie, what a response is responding to) in the current format. Let me know if that touched on the “how is this possible” block you mentioned.
A Joe Friday; Just the facts Ma’am approach to making us aware of what’s occurring without any expression in the delivery designed to manipulate our own opinion. I’d subscribe to that. Unfiltered facts.
Can any of us be trusted to form opinions just based on the facts, or do we need someone we perceive to be smarter than us to spoon feed us our opinions?
@spitfire3dc
I do see the increasing backwards trend of us becoming “opinion/idea infants”.
Critical “feelings” opinions like love, hate, greed, fear etc we often don’t need other to chew up for us.
But for the “lesser things” — the many smaller things that play into our love/hate/greed/fear — we still seem to prefer having someone mush it all up for us, present it as a uniform gruel, which we then consume without question.
In too many exchanges in recent years, particularly on-line, I find people are not quoting others (or presenting links) as things that helped them formulate intelligent opinions or ideas.
They just point to them or trot them out, saying little more than “DITTO” . . . showing they are less interested in formulating intelligent opinions and ideas . . . as just repeating them. (“”Liking”” them? Wisdom-mooches?)
@spitfire3dc
The idea of an “informed opinion” . . . is to inform. At it’s most noble, it is an invite to the kind of open human interaction that has been a vital part of our progress from grunting troglodytes to the dominant species.
A wisdom mooch uses this process to dismiss interaction, isolate, and shut down the process so they can remain “safe” within a dark web of relatively un-informed opinion.
19 responses to “Does the media help or hurt?”
Depends on what media you are talking about. There are “news” sources, websites and on television that purposely push out misinformation, false news, to confuse and twist the real narrative. BUT, we have to have a free press to hold people in power accountable. Trump’s administration is pushing to delegitimize all the press except the one they like and who go easy on Trump, FOX News. That’s just what Nazi Germany did, and it’s what Putin has done in Russia.
Did you know:
(The FBI launched an investigation after a Michigan man reportedly made 22 calls to CNN a week ago, “I’m coming to gun you all down,” the man, who was identified as 19-year-old Brandon Griesemer.
Mr Griesemer reportedly made claims of “fake news” to the CNN operator.
“I’m smarter than you. More powerful than you. I have more guns than you. More manpower. Your cast is about to get gunned down in a matter of hours.”
He threatened to come to Atlanta, Georgia, where CNN is based and “gun every single last one of you”. ) That’s Trump, our president’s constant rhetoric firing up crazy people.
We all have to be more diligent in what news we choose to digest, and double, triple check the story. I have my trusted sources and Amy Goodman is one of them.
Every time this subject is brought up, I have to post my Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now! meme. She is one of the great people in the media who speak the truth.
…let’s not forget…
It hurts, and not just in the ways people might first think: misinformation, opinion-mills, political echo-chambers, tribal partisanship.
They hurt to a great degree, in how we consume them: as in how lustily and unquestionably we consume our “favorites”. Many of which become “favorites” not because of objective reporting, but because of how they subjectively make us feel.
Let’s remember that at their very core . . . they are just entertainment products, fishing for ratings. Say what people like, want, or expect to hear, the ratings soar, and they can up the price (or budget) for their product.
Too much, the public is like a child demanding candy. And the media gives them what they demand . . . regardless of whether it is healthy, accurate, well-balanced, or good for them.
@griz I agree to an extent that it hurts, but I am talking about the Corporate Owned media. Bottom line, their job is to draw in sponsors. I follow non-corporate owned news. But, since Trump many in the corporate owned media are speaking out against the atrocities of this administration. We have many Edward R. Murrows out there. They will help save the day.
Murrow quotes:
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
@Gina no question that Murrow is the icon of an ethical reporting process. I wonder though if he may have been the exception to the rule.
No matter which form of media we are talking about here (TV, radio, social, newspapers…) they all generate a power based on viewers, listeners and subscribers. That invariably leads to money and the immortal words of Scarface, “First ya get da money and den you get da power”. There might be a slight adjustment to that in this day and age. First you get the eyeballs, and then you get the power, and then you get the money.
I have become very cynical of all news, because I seem to look past the what of a news report and seem to focus on the why it is being reported. What is the agenda behind to report? Even the seemingly good reporters seem to present a face that has been programmed by the need to be recognized as such. Ratings. When does a wealth of ratings lead to a corruption fed by power? It seems inevitable to me.
The funny thing is that I think comedians have become the most trusted source of news and maybe that is as it should be, because the unbelievable level of ridiculousness of what’s going on just can’t be taken seriously. Both report and response has become factual satire.
@spitfire3dc You didn’t respond to my original response. What are we supposed to do without journalists? Let the government control it all, and as this current administration does daily, intentionally lie to us?
I agree the pundits are great at giving us information, but they are not journalists. Their job is to make us laugh. I do watch them nightly, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers & weekly Samantha Bee, Bill Maher & John Oliver. John Oliver takes a topic and spends the most time on it than all of them. All very informative and funny….but their job isn’t to face the powers that be. It’s the job of journalists and reporters.
Watch a few videos of The WH press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ press conferences. Reporters are not taking her lies, and they push hard for the truth. We have to have a free press for checks and balances.
Sounds like you want to throw out the baby with the bath water.
I will give you a couple of journalists I trust, and who I believe are fighting the good fight. And, please give me a few names of Canadian reporters/journalists you trust.
Jake Tapper of CNN
Rachel Maddow of MSNBC
Joy Reid of MSNBC
Bill Moyers formerly of PBS
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
Thom Hartmann – radio
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbjBOso0vpWgDht9dPIVwhQ
All the reporters from The Young Turks – TYT – youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks
The Harvey Weinstein scandal of years of sexual abuse wouldn’t have been found out if it wasn’t for a journalist interviewing people and writing a story.
Magazines:
Yes!
The Nation
Mother Jones
@Gina Here’s the thing Gina. There are journalists who have integrity, but they get paid by others who own the method of distribution. They are managed for the most part to support a business strategy that they have no control over.
Watch the series The Network with Jeff Daniels. It gives you a good idea of what is going on in the business associated with broadcasting the news.
Talking heads are trained to make you think they have integrity. Journalists are trained to determine the message first and then fill in the gaps with information that supports that closing communication objective.
Maybe I did throw out the baby with the bathwater, but I stopped watching the “news” after having direct experience with a nationally recognized reporter that fudged his interview with me to support a case he wanted to make. I heard a blatant lie. I’ll admit that I was trained to deal with the media and turn their questions towards key message we wanted expressed, but at the close of the interview (off camera) I asked him, ” Do you feel that I didn’t adequately respond to any of your questions?” He responded no, and then when the news anchor asked him one of the question he had directly asked m,e he told the anchor that they were unable to get the representative of the company to respond to that question. I did, but the answer didn’t fit the message that he was wanted to convey. Corporations are scum and he was their heroic messiah.
Now, I had taped the interview I could demand a retraction, but they controlled the delivery mechanism. I had a similar issue with a newspaper. A misleading half page story in a newspaper. I demanded a retraction. They did. A one inch by one inch retraction admitting their error buried in a back section of the paper. They cant make it known the f’d up. It reduces the credibility that they have falsely built up over time.
Talk to a person in the business. I have. People who have left it because they knew their integrity was being compromised. You know what they end up doing for a living? They become consultants that enable corporations to use the media to distribute the messages they want the public to see. Its cheaper to use a story supplied by a PR firm, than it is to have in house journalists.
Social media content is virtually unregulated and few social media celebrities deliver facts. They deliver opinionated facts.
Canadian reporters I trust? Zero. Its a business. The politics associated with making it to the top is not about integrity. It’s about pleasing the master.
Two highly respected media “heads” got appointed to our Senate. Both of them caught in eating at the public trough like the pigs they are. Makes it clear they got their appointments by serving the political party, by using the trust people had in them to manage their sense of the political party they were actually representing. Sickening.
@spitfire3dc You keep ignoring the fact that there are non-profit news groups out there, and I mentioned a bunch of them. They are not owned by any corporation. They are paid by the viewers and readers. I am sure Canada has the same.
You are playing into the hands of the people who are trying to tear down governments, democracy and anything that is good. Getting rid of the free press is the first step.
What do you think about the Amy Goodman meme, and what she said?
@Gina Amy Goodman is exactly correct. It is VERY important to keep the government’s feet to the fire. I have no issue with what she is saying.
What I am saying that reality and idealism rarely coincide.
@Gina I continue to think about things you have said on this thread and I want to offer one other alternative to the media in keeping the government honest.
I think musicians are the poets of our time that are capable of expressing the requirements of the masses. I think Billy Joe Armstrong said it best when he wrote this:
Don’t wanna be an American idiot
Don’t want a nation under the new media
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind-fuck America
@spitfire3dc @griz The arts will save us for sure. But, they are giving their opinion too. Remember Dan Rather? He was head of a major news network for decades, and got pushed out by the little bush administration for daring to report that George W went AWOL in the military. Anyhow, he is back on the non-profit youtube channel, The Young Turks. Check out he says why he joined this show and what he hopes to accomplish. This is hits all the stuff we have been talking about on this post:
@Gina
Consider that “how we partake/consume” the news, is still an issue regardless of whether it is corporate or non-corporate owned.
And so is bias an issue. Everyone has a slant. I allude back to my many threads over the years where I’ve tried to introduce the idea of objective Truths . . . and have almost always run head-long into those insisting that there are none and that only subjective truths matter.
Meaning . . . secular humanism has succeeded in implanting this “slant” in most of society. They measure something as “Truth” . . . based entirely on how “nice” it plays with their feelings.
We need to remember we are consuming an “entertainment product”, with aspects of crowd-control to it. There is traction to the “spoiling” analogy, where they remain powerful or liked by giving “the children” what they want. (With some of the more insidious ones defining what it is “we should want” and then giving it to us!).
None is the “owners of Truth”. They have aspects of it. Shades of it. They twist it, augment it, limit it to varying degrees. For their own ultimate glory.
Because this is what people do.
Even if they don’t answer to corporations or boards seek killings of financial capital.
The media . . . is a tool.
And they have “a bigger stick” in the short term, than musicians, poets, deeper thinkers as @spitfire3dc mentions. But because these ones don’t have “the big stick” of the media . . . they have to present their influence to the people as an offering.
And not as edicts or control measures.
@griz how is it possible that two guys with such different sets of experiences, that are the foundation of our opinions, can be so similar in outlook?
There is something encouraging to me in the recognition of that.
Please put you thought process to work on that question. I’d like your opinion. I get as far as; how is this possible? But to me it stops there and remains rhetorical.
@spitfire3dc
There is perhaps a “unifying traction” among all people who are seeking “a Truth beyond self”.
I think you can see many people (and collections of them reporting news) have a hard time getting past “the truth that is just self”. Even some of the media outlets @gina4peas mentions can have both articles where they are seeking “Truth” and ones where they are seeking just “agenda” (the truth that is just self).
Personally I think that the only way beneficial change can happen, is if we get people weaned off “the truth that is just self” and entertaining “the Truth greater than self”.
Then we will not be so vulnerable to media (or religion!) manipulators . . . and be better able to urge/guide our governors into more beneficial, less corrupt paths over time.
This needs to be a grassroots change.
I’m having trouble tracking the threads (ie, what a response is responding to) in the current format. Let me know if that touched on the “how is this possible” block you mentioned.
@griz good answer to the question posed. It gave me something to chew on.
Are we ready for the format News Without Views?
A Joe Friday; Just the facts Ma’am approach to making us aware of what’s occurring without any expression in the delivery designed to manipulate our own opinion. I’d subscribe to that. Unfiltered facts.
Can any of us be trusted to form opinions just based on the facts, or do we need someone we perceive to be smarter than us to spoon feed us our opinions?
@spitfire3dc
I do see the increasing backwards trend of us becoming “opinion/idea infants”.
Critical “feelings” opinions like love, hate, greed, fear etc we often don’t need other to chew up for us.
But for the “lesser things” — the many smaller things that play into our love/hate/greed/fear — we still seem to prefer having someone mush it all up for us, present it as a uniform gruel, which we then consume without question.
In too many exchanges in recent years, particularly on-line, I find people are not quoting others (or presenting links) as things that helped them formulate intelligent opinions or ideas.
They just point to them or trot them out, saying little more than “DITTO” . . . showing they are less interested in formulating intelligent opinions and ideas . . . as just repeating them. (“”Liking”” them? Wisdom-mooches?)
@griz Good term; wisdom mooch. Unfortunately many wisdom mooches are unaware that all they are, are the echoes of others’ opinions.
@spitfire3dc
The idea of an “informed opinion” . . . is to inform. At it’s most noble, it is an invite to the kind of open human interaction that has been a vital part of our progress from grunting troglodytes to the dominant species.
A wisdom mooch uses this process to dismiss interaction, isolate, and shut down the process so they can remain “safe” within a dark web of relatively un-informed opinion.
They are coat-tail-riders, akin to this meme;
https://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/bigdogmetoo.htm