John Forrest Tomlinson said:On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 00:20:03 +0100, Kyle Legate <[email hidden]>
Quoted message said:John Forrest Tomlinson said:On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 08:45:06 -0600, "Carl Sundquist" <[email hidden]>
wrote:
>What argument? That was 500 people telling one person that he was
>bullshitting.
>
Well, there were two sides to the issue, so they should get equal
coverage.
Man, that's so PC it's disconcerting.
I didn't mean it that way, I meant it to parody the lameness of too
much mass media in the US, which just puts back talking points of two
sides of each issue rather than actually trying to find out what is
correct.
JT
Way too many people are lazy and pick their favorite news oultet or
talking head to tell them what's correct, and the talking heads usually
do a good job of making their case, but unless you're an idiot what
someone else thinks is correct isn't going to be what and how you think
it's correct. Let's face it anything related to human action makes the
actions described by Heisenbergs little theory and Chaos theory look
simple and predictable.
I hate the concept of moral relativism but it's undeniable in the real
world. The concept of "Truth" is pretty tough to pin down too when you
toss humans into the mix so I'm much happier to have journalists
telling me What, When, Where, Who, but the last thing I need is for
them to tell me why, and even worse deciding "why" before they write
they story and selectively writing their "hard news" story to fit their
concept of why it happened, usually leaving out, or minimalising
anything that doesn't fit with their why.
This goes with a conversation Howard and I are having about news and
bias due to a questionable UCLA study on bias in the news. Every outlet
is going to be biased to some degree, that's impossible to avoid. My
argument, and the studies finding, was that the major media outlets
were mostly biased to the left. I believe that because from the late
60s on and especially after Watergate both the teaching of Journalism
and the "sexy" side of journalism was on the left. One of the opposing
arguments is that, since they are all corporate controlled, they are
right leaning capitalist tools so they can't be leftist. My response is
that the first thing corporations care about is the dollar. They are
going to take the slant that allows them to sell the most copies
etc...in their market, no matter the ideology. Whwere this falls down
is going after the corporate/business tpyes because that hits too close
to home, but sure as hell applies to social and political stories and
op-eds.
The Union Leader in Manchester NH was a notorious and powerful force
from the right forever, but as the demographics of the cities of New
Hampshire in general, and Manchester in particular became more
Democratic/liberal they have really toned it down and moved towards the
center, because that's what sells to thier current audience.
I don't see Fox as being any farther to the right than CNN is to the
left, and they were both run by serious activist/extremist types. I'm
just happy to have adversarial journalism instead of the one
sided/party [censored] we had nationally for decades. Neither one may have
the "truth", but both will give you pieces the other didn't and that
gets us a little closer to what actually is. There is nothing sadder
than only reading, listening to, or watching what you agree with.
Unfortunately there's way too much "wisdom" being tossed around by like
minded morons who never discuss rationally with anyone who has a
different point of view.
Thinking for yourself seems to be a dying concept, especially in the
propaganda purveyed as fact Red/Blue war, everyone seems to want to
line up and let their little Goebbels writing for the progressive
Pravda shape their Brave New Worlds.
Bill C
Rant off
