Slashdot Mirror
Internet Gains Ground As Trusted News Source
Khammurabi writes "Yahoo is reporting that the younger generation is trusting internet news sources more and more. From the article, 'The survey confirmed that media consumption is shifting online for younger generations, as 19 percent of those aged 18 to 24 named the Internet as their most important source of news compared with 9 percent overall.' Also in the article is the factoid that Americans consider Fox News the most trustworthy national news program overall (coming in at 11%)."
I think the fact that we read about this survey on the internet says it all.
Personally, internet is my most important source of news, but also the least trusted. It's like watching "Days of our Lives", you simply don't want to miss a single episode, but it's the same emptiness after each one of them. This is also the reason why we just keep on posting comments even if it's a dupe.
Please stop entering code 2,2,7,6,6,4
I didn't see Slashdot, DIGG, Fark, etc. listed - why not?!? ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Heard about this on the BBC this morning. One of the sites I get a lot of my info from, however even the BBC is under certain strain these days after fallout from accusations of the Blair government (The Bush-Blair memo, Hutton Inquiry, suicide of David Kelly) and is being restructured, so you never really know what your going to be left with. Cut-backs have certainly been visible in coverage.
I also visit Al Jazeera from time to time. Maybe there's some propaganda at work on the site, or maybe that's what I've been trained to believe from american media. Either way, they seem to have the credibility I once associated with CNN long before Ted Turner sold them out.
the younger generation is trusting internet news sources more and more.
I sure don't watch news on TV anymore. If I see something interesting I do my own digging, lest I get trapped in a honeypot news site with propaganda all over the place.
The survey confirmed that media consumption is shifting online for younger generations, as 19 percent of those aged 18 to 24 named the Internet as their most important source of news compared with 9 percent overall.
Well, good, just take care where you read from and who you trust. I find a smattering of international sites gives a broader view and avoids the pitfall of buying into one nation's "truth"
Also in the article is the factoid that Americans consider Fox News the most trustworthy national news program overall (coming in at 11%)
An interesting and very, very sad tidbit. The country is in a war it never should have entered, China is financing USA debt, which will give it tremendous leverage, while the president continues to boost 'defense' spending at the expense of social programs, Iran is spearheading a move away from the Dollar for petroleum trading, and a lot more. It's only taken 5 years for some people to come around to the facts that this is not a forthcoming or particularly well run government. Thanks Fox News, you've helped make that possible by bluring corporate interference in the news room, info-tainment and politics.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Also in the article is the factoid that Americans consider Fox News the most trustworthy national news program overall (coming in at 11%).
More proof that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it.
I bet they just got it off some website.
Well, since the majority of the news on the Internet comes from the same companies that publish newspapers and run the TV stations (cnn.com, foxnews.com, washingtonpost.com, etc), for all intents and purposes the Internet is almost exactly equally trustworthy as them. As for Fox News, their spin is hard to deal with and makes them almost untrustworthy. Not that the other networks are a whole lot better, although Tucker Carlson is running a great show with a pretty objective and fair perspective on everything these days. He is not the "Partisan Hack" that John Stewart once called him any longer.
The survey confirmed that media consumption is shifting online for younger generations, as 19 percent of those aged 18 to 24 named the Internet as their most important source of news compared with 9 percent overall.
It is much easier to find news sources on the Internet that overlook the things you want overlooked. I.e., if you have the opnion that the war in Iraq is going great and there are no problems, you can find a news source that will give you only information that supports that view. If you think the war in Iraq is a debacle/illegal/disaster/whatever, you can also find a news source to support only that view. It's nothing new. Poeple go where they hear the things they want to hear because it's easier than hearing everything and ignoring what you don't like.
So, the same people who consider Fox News reliable also consider the internet a reliable news source? Might not be the best group to get a representative sample from, if you ask me...
I think as soon as something becomes 'trusted' the advertising jackels and political propagandist quickly move in and use it to their own ends. Then, as it becomes more and more obvious that it is so, they move on to something else. Lather, rinse, repeat.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Ok, let me go out on a limb and predict where the slashdot crowd will direct their wrath on. Behold, Fox News.
I'll admit Fox News has its ups and downs, but the ire and hatred that liberals have for it is over the top.
I doubt you'll hear a peep about Al Jazeera or the BBC on this thread.
100% - 11% = 89%
This means that 89% of the American public, according to this summary, do not think that fox is the most trusted name in news.
I think as soon as something becomes 'trusted' the advertising jackels and political propagandist quickly move in and use it to their own ends.
Ah, that may be a problem for the internet, but that's the great thing about Fox News! Fox News will never meet the fate you describe-- because it was founded by advertising jackels and political propagandists! And if they know nothing else, they know how to keep control of the message on their own network.
People never quite seem to realize, nobody guards a henhouse as well as a fox-- because the fox doesn't want any of the other foxes to eat the food out of his henhouse.
Neither of these claims are true in a generic sense. All of these are mere information channels containing good as well as bad information sources (definition of "good" and "bad" left as an exercise to the reader). It is up to the individual to discern which particular websites/channels/newspapers are worthy, and which are not.
Discriminating between fiction and non-fiction is one of the most important skills kids could and should learn.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Whenever I see a big mainstream news headline and read the story, I'll usually hit Google News to see what opposing views there are. Lately I've typed in some headlines and found 200 newspapers using the exact same wire article, verbatim. After wading through that junk, I'll slowly find opposing views -- views that were impossible to find just a few years ago.
I'm not sure that any news is really news anymore; more and more news is colored by opinion. That is fine with me, but I would like to see more sources given tribute and more news reporters coming up with unique news rather than regurgitating the same stories over and over again. I figure why don't these major news outlets just run an RSS feed of the AP and be done with it?
For me, I prefer the news that was normally marginalized out of existance. It gives me a dose of unique opinions, and it also helps create interesting debate topics that help in relationship at home and my relationships with friends and customers.
I think more and more people are starting to think outside the box -- and the Internet is a great place to find every opinion. Are all of them newsworthy? Probably not.
With companies like BlogBurst.com bringing amateur news and opinions to large mainstream media outlets, we'll see more and more integration of the sidestream media, and maybe we'll see less and less need to rely on sources such as CNN and FoxNN.
It wouldn't be hard for Fox to just take the bottom 11% of the audience -- after all, 50% of the populace has a below-average IQ anyway...
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
...is http://www.nakednews.com/.
Schools bear some responsibility, by accepting sources on the Internet as valid footnotes in essays students make.
However,I found a school making a page for children to show them what a "fake" website on the Internet looks like. Here's the background behind one of the "fakes", which is actually a real item I sell, but is clearly a joke as well.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Also in the article is the factoid that Americans consider Fox News the most trustworthy national news program overall (coming in at 11%).
I think I'd want to see the actual methodology of the survey before I'm going to believe this. Maybe I'm too naive but I have a hard time believing my fellow Americans actually trust the Republican mouthpieces at Fox more than any other media.
Only 11% do, so about 1 in 10 people are foolish enough to think this. 89% of us realize there are better sources. Considering Bush is still at 33% approval, 11% believing Fox seems too low by two thirds.
Does one spread tripe? Is it like butter? I've never had it.
blarg.
I have a hard time believing my fellow Americans actually trust the Republican mouthpieces at Fox more than any other media.
Look at the posts immediately before and after your own.
Think hard about what all those numbers actually mean.
KFG
I wonder how many of those surveyed claim to get trustworthy news from The Onion?
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Every other week the New York Times is retracting / appoligizing for something it printed that was wrong. I think this is just a reflection of the Internet losing it's monolopy on crazy people posting weird stuff that's not true.
Isn't that the premise behind Doublethink?
:(){
While it's perhaps unfair to label both Fox and Al Jazeera as "extremists", but let's be honest: the people I've known who tend to rely soley on one or the other of these two news organizations tend to have very particular views (most hard-core Republicans I have known tend to swear by Fox "the only fair news" as they tell me).
So is it that people give greater trust then to news that reinforce their own views (which is why I'm sure more progressives would swear by Slate and Salon instead)? I'd be curious to see how news organizations do against political/religious/ethnic/age background (though this study at least looked into age).
And which one is the most "accurate"? It reminds me of a study done back in the 2004 elections who shows that viewers of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" scored higher on current events and political events accuracy than watchers of any other news organizations (including Fox).
Either way, it's interesting to see the Internet rising, but that's not surprising as the population gets older. I know I rarely watch TV news anymore save for the "Daily Show" (and that's not for information, but for perspective so I can laugh at the world a bit) and Sunday talking heads shows (so my children can ask me why I'm telling the people in the TV to "answer the question, you hack!").
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
The way everyone's been spinning things, I honestly thought that you'd see much higher numbers than that for Fox - I mean, I was really expecting numbers three or four times as high So much for the "unwashed masses", I guess.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The raw numbers from this study are available here.
If you look at the US numbers: The most trusted specific news sources mentioned without prompting by Americans include FOX News (mentioned by 11%), CNN (11%), ABC (4%), NBC (4%), National Public Radio (3%), CBS (3%), Microsoft/MSN (2%), USA Today (2%), New York Times (2%), CNN.com (1%), Time Magazine (1%), and friends/family (1%).
Before everybody correctly points out that the Internet is not a reliable source, I would like to point out that newspapers are not really up to the standards they are purported to be. Every time I read a newspaper article on a subject I know well, I very, very rarely read anything insightful, and very often loads of bullshit. Most of the times, the writer probably had to finish an article and deliver X lines, and put a few "facts" together—possibly naïvely got from the Internet as well.
I tend to trust sources where readers can write down their views, integrate, and if necessary insult the writer. I trust Slashdot commentaries (the whole page, not single comments), an often-edited Wikipedia article or a high-traffic blog way more than an article in a newspaper, because if there is something to be known you will probably find it. Even if you have to wade through flame wars and moderators on crack, it's likely there.
There's no such thing as a totally reliable news source, anyway.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Seriously I thought no one trusted this now but I spose there's always the bottom 11% to consider.
Personally I gave up trusting the MSM (mainstream media) a couple of years ago and have developed my own preferences for sites to visit for news and world events. This is also more entertaining because one has to verify everything you read and not take it for granted - you naturally become a more adept critical thinker this way.
I think governments are pretty worried about this and are trying to find ways to reduce the amount of independent information out there. This is what worries me for the future . . .
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Lets just hope that those that trust the Internet are using multiple sources to get their information. That's one of the best aspects of the Internet - to quickly get information from many sources.
Hopefully people aren't putting all their trust in Joe Schmoe's blog (or any other single source).
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Unfortunately, i notice that a lot of internet news tends to be the same 3-sentence paragraphs repeated over and over in different wording. It's not so much about bringing any real content as it is about being the first to report something. Anything.
It's progressed until they've got 3 and 4 page articles to tell you something that can be summarized into 6 sentences (more ad exposure, maybe?). If seen some t.v. news reports (On Faux News, no less) do the same thing, but the internets are the worst.
Let's see if i can do an example:
The car sped down the street and hit the man on the bicycle. One witness saw the incident in the 400 block of Windsor street.
"He was struck by the car as it headed eastbound" the witness reported. "He was just riding his bike and got hit". Police estimate the car was traveling in excess of 40 mph.
"It was moving at a high rate of speed" Police spokesman said. "By time he struck the bicyclist, he was traveling anywhere between 35 and 40 mph"
The bicycle lay in disarray on Windsor street, the site of the incident. It was on the corner of Windsor and Chalmers, in the 400 block.
Or something.
You want to see some other repetition though, go read Consumer Reports auto reviews.
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...in the words of Stephen Colbert, "Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president's side, and the vice president's side."
The thing about the internet is that it opens up the media, and gives us the ability to hear directly from industry insiders. In contrast, the mainstream media has stagnated, settling for a relatively small ring of sources, interpreted, filtered and censored by an even smaller ring of reporters and media channels.
The question for me though is, how many of the people who read "internet news" are actively tracking down information from sources they respect (though not necessarily trust) vs. those who simply read Yahoo or Google or MSN(BC)'s news feed.
I agree with some of the other points in your post, however:
An interesting and very, very sad tidbit. The country is in a war it never should have entered, China is financing USA debt, which will give it tremendous leverage, while the president continues to boost 'defense' spending at the expense of social programs, Iran is spearheading a move away from the Dollar for petroleum trading, and a lot more. It's only taken 5 years for some people to come around to the facts that this is not a forthcoming or particularly well run government. Thanks Fox News, you've helped make that possible by bluring corporate interference in the news room, info-tainment and politics.
You just blamed a news outlet for starting a war, causing a trade deficit, budgetary and foreign relations problems and mistakes... at the behest of corporations?
Clarfiy this, is your whole jumpsuit made of tinfoil or is it just your hat?
News media tends to be a mirror of the public at large, and there are dissenting views in other outlets. You just said that you tend to trust those outlets. What you're doing in that last statement is trying to assign a "face" to the millions of people that simply don't agree with you. All media slants facts with opinion, so you're doing the right thing by cross checking news organizations to see that they are providing the facts... Which is what news is about... News organizations don't stay in business when they blatently lie and misrepresent the core facts of an issue.
I tend to find it "very, very sad" that less people vote than they should... I am also pissed off that Iran says that they're going to attack Israel if anyone moves against them... I am upset that my stocks went down in the market today... but blame NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and ABC... I'm not that crazy.
19 percent of those aged 18 to 24 named the Internet as their most important source of news
In related news, a new study points to at least 19 percent of those aged 18 to 24 are idiots.
It's been a long time since any news source wanted to inform you.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
It's only the top 10 or 11 percent which are noticeably above and the bottom 10 or 11 percent which are noticeably- hey, wait a minute.
Albuquerque PC
What Fox News viewers believe
Did you say "almost untrustworthy"?
I have never liked this line of reasoning; it simplifies an entire segment of society that people spend their entire lives trying to study/understand. If you are close-minded and believe that one information source is enough, or can't distinguish between news commentary and reporting, nothing will "save" you from being "mislead", including internet news.
You've asserted that the internet makes viewpoint-shopping easier and that the public "shops" for news sources based on viewpoint. It has increased the public's news-gathering ability (or "mobility"), given the public greater access to more potentially diverse viewpoints, and news now transcends local, state, and national borders...and hence all but draconian government controls. I can bring up the BBC's website and see the UK perspective, for example. If I don't want to read what some washington press core reporter says happened at a white house briefing- I can damn well go to the Whitehouse website and download the transcript myself.
The Internet has also given non-populist viewpoints much easier access to the news marketplace; coupled with the ease at which one can compare news sources. Hence the explosion of "web loggers" engaging in news commentary and the increased onus on major media outlets to get their facts straight.
Please help metamoderate.
Fox news has risen to prominence because it is the singluar major news outlet that doesn't pander to leftist sympathies. Roughly 1 in 4 americans is a "liberal." The rest are either moderates or conservatives. All of the other major news outlets are competing for that 1 in 4, and ignoring the rest of us. The success of Fox news is due to the fact that it works to attract the 75% of the country that the other news outlets aren't interested in. What wasn't mentioned in this story is the fact that the Nielsen ratings for Fox news are higher than those for CNN and MSNBC combined. It all comes down to who your viewers are, and there are quite simply more conservative and moderate viewers out there than there are liberal ones.
Fox news is not alone in this either. A similar phenomena can be found in print media where long time bastions of liberal journalism like the Washington Post, the NYT, and the LA Times are suffering from a loss of readership. Both the LA Times and the NYT have had to lay off workers because of this. Meanwhile conservative-leaning newspapers like the Washington Times are experiencing record subscription levels.
I think that the internet also plays a large role in this. I'm sure that everyone here is familiar with the role that bloggers played in what has come to be known as "Rathergate." They say that online no one knows you're a dog. The internet is a virtual soap-box from which anyone with even a dial-up connection can speak to the world. The blogosphere represents a ruthlessly democratic medium where no single ideology reigns supreme. This is wonderful because it means freedom of information, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience. The days when those with a particular ideological bent could blithely put their special spin on the news are over. It also puts to rest the silly notion that anyone can be unbiased. Everyone operates off their own prejudices. The most an information consumer can hope for is to be cognizant of the prejudices of the source. One can only hope that as the blogosphere and internet media evolves as an information source, the critical thinking skills of consumers experiences a similar evolution. Too many people believe what they are told and a free society will not long endure when so many of its citizens are damned fools.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
My short wave radio was my most trusted source. I still use it a lot. I like having stories read to me. And it shows the continued advantage of wireless. Screen readers sound so robotic. Does anybody have a "Walter Winchell" voice that I could download?
What?
BIGTIME... He didn't blame a news media company for starting the war - he blamed them for hiding the true information that would've exposed this as a bullshit war, therefore helping the government pull the wool over our eyes and screw us over. Again, a particular George Carlin quote comes to mind, pal. If you're gonna have such a knee-jerk reaction, at least make it a useful one involving you dragging a hacksaw blade across the major arteries in your body.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
sites like Google News, which let you see an aggregate of all the mainstream sources at once. This pretty much ensures that you get to see all stories from all angles, which is quite different than if you stuck to a single print (or online) news source. There's also the added social factor, in that you can read blogs, sites, etc. that will point you directly to articles on a given topic or with a given viewpoint that might interest you, regardless of what source they came from. Ideally /. would be in this category, but I can hardly remember the last time I felt the urge to RTFA on a story here ... the editors are a joke, but the comments keep me coming back.
This is a pretty wide area. IMHO you cant really compare the sources - those are news staions not the whole TV and in the article they mention the general Internet.
If they want to compare they should compare the TV the Radio, the newspaper and the Internet. Otherwise just compare BBC, CNN, FOX, Al-Jazeera with Slashdot and google news:))
Whatever online news sources they trust should be put on some sort of blacklist.
This space intentionally left blank.
Fox news has risen to prominence because it is the singluar major news outlet that doesn't pander to leftist sympathies.
Or it could be that Americans want feel-good news. Good reporting digs up uncomfortable truths. After being barraged by many uncomfortable truths in the 60s and 70s, Americans ushered in the feel-good-about-America Reagan Era. Arguably it was America's collective desire to avoid complicated reality in favor of a more jingoistic and easily-digestible view of the world that led both to the rightward political turn of the last two decades, and the simultaneous rise of Fox News and breathless "as it happens" reportage devoid of context or depth.
You don't have to be a leftist to understand that America does actually make mistakes, but you do have to practice willful ignorance if you watch Fox and expect you're getting an unvarnished look at current events. As for the Washington Times, calling it "conservative-leaning" is like referring to the John Birch Society as "mildly conservative."
The most an information consumer can hope for is to be cognizant of the prejudices of the source. One can only hope that as the blogosphere and internet media evolves as an information source, the critical thinking skills of consumers experiences a similar evolution. Too many people believe what they are told and a free society will not long endure when so many of its citizens are damned fools.
Being cognizant of the prejudices of the source is vital. I definitely agree with you there. It's a pity that so many people still take most of their news from one TV network. TV is the most easily-manipulated, most infotainment-oriented, most passive news medium. I find it baffling that anyone could watch Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS, or ABC, and think that they're being informed in anything but the most minimal fashion. Read one issue of the Economist, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the NY Times, and compare that to a week's worth of TV news viewing. The difference in the amount and quality of information received is staggering.
Sadly, I'm not sure that the blogosphere is much better than TV. Disinformation and spin can be passed through the blogosphere just as rapidly as via TV. When everyone's opinions are equal in weight, the opinions that fit our own predispositions and desires (as with feel-good Fox TV reporting) get amplified. Minority voices do get heard in the blogosphere, which is good. But ultimately we're still left with the fact that most of what we read on blogs is opinion, derived from primary sources in the mainstream media. If the MSM isn't doing its job and practicing good, in-depth journalism, bloggers can act as primary information gatherers, but it's not easy, particularly in places like war zones and Congressional office buildings.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
How many liberals would jump to the defense of a major news network before even a word of criticism is uttered? Almost none. Yet you have to defend one and attack all liberals at the same time, even though the article has nothing to do with liberalism and has not mentioned any flaws of Fox News.
You may not realize it, but you are reinforcing certain stereotypes regarding blind loyalty and subservience among conservatives.
Also in the article is the factoid that Americans consider Fox News the most trustworthy national news program overall (coming in at 11%)
How many channels that have television news sources are there in the US? I can think of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, MSNBC and BBC America, please correct me if I'm wrong. Let's leave out CNN Headline News, guessing that most people probably equate both channels as one and the same source. If Fox is highest at 11%, let's assume that the others average 9%, which implies a total of 65%, leaving 35% undecided, not a figure that lends credibility to any poll.
However, if you split CBS into CBS Morning News, CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes, NBC into Today, Nightly News and Meet The Press, and so on with every other channel, the poll results might make a bit more sense mathwise if referring to specific news shows, as the quoted text on top specifically says program.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Slashdot IS a trustworthy news source.
The internet is not gaining trust, the mainstream media (MSM) is loosing trust. I'd Rather not have my news from a biased, lying SOB.
The FCC makes things worse by censoring all but a few negative reports about the govt.
Andy Out!
Not many news sources these days make an effort to do any investigative reporting, or to actually educate the public on matters important to them... Television and internet sources are generally the worst. I can go through all of CNN and FOX new's sites without finding an article that isn't essentially fluff. People talk about fox news being bad, and it is. However, they miss the real, much bigger problem, that *all* of the 24 hour news channels are generally filled with uninformative crap and sensationalistic nonsense. FOX news is just the worst (a real shitstorm of misinformation, staged interviews, and sensationalism).
What really bugs me, is just what kind of uninsightful hacks they have anchoring CNN, FOX, and MSNBC. I want the news to report politics, not to get political. These guys don't seem to get that, and think that to report politics means they have to pick a side, and demonize whatever party they don't like. I want them to report all the pertinent *events that actually happen* and let me make my own judgements. Anchors can render their own judgement on a situation when appropriate, but there's a clear distinction between that and the constant political hackery that goes on. Don't even get me started on the interviews they give...
Really, newspapers are the best source that I've seen, but not all newspapers. The Seattle Times is a really good paper, and family run so that they aren't totally beholden to corporate interests. They do a lot of investigative reporting, and I rarely see them putting sensationalistic trash (celebrity murders, hyped up disasters that aren't actually that important, etc) on their front page like many other sources. Many people across the country seem to read the New York Times, but I'm a little iffy on them. It seems that their reporters have been caught lying, and doing other unscrupulous things a number of times.
I haven't been listening to NPR recently, but I remember they used to give really good interviews.
Newspapers are a good news source in the sense that there are numerous good newspapers and widely read newspapers.
Television is a poor news source since the 24 hour news channels are all utterly so worthless. I suppose the nightly news might still be good, but I wonder how many people still tune into that? It's just not that convenient for me.
When we say "class of things x is good," we mean that the well known elements are good. The elements that are most likely to effect anything are what they are judged by. If there is a really excellent news channel, but no one watches it, for practical purposes there might as well not be such a channel.
This is a different kind of reasoning than the reasoning that you *personally* use to turn into a news channel. It doens't matter to *you* if no one else watches your news channel, but when you pick *that news channel* you aren't making any kind of judgement whatsoever about the form of media in *general*. If you were making such a general judgement, you'd be discussing something different, and you'd probably use the measure above.
A few years ago, there was an ad on TV here (Ontario, Canada) that featured what is says to be Hippopotamus domesticus, the House Hippo. It lives in homes across North America, in people's houses.
:: Drupal development, consulting and customization.
The ad shows a very small hippopotamus (3-4 inches long) in various scenes in a normal house.
The following claims are made in the ad, in a voice that looks like Attenbourough on BBC nature programs:
- house hippos are friendly, but will defend their territory if necessary
- house hippos live in bedroom closets, where they make nests
- house hippos sleep 16 hours a day
- house hippos come out at night when they search for food
- house hippos like to eat chips, raisins, and crumbs
The ad then says something like : "Do not believe everything you see on TV. Ask questions".
Read the Wikipedia article, or see the UK version of it here
--
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The Baheyeldin Dynasty.
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I also visit Al Jazeera from time to time.
;)
I get all my international new from The People's Daily.
Well there is always Pravda if you don't mind the UFO stories.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Hunt my News.
I have grown dis-interested in the "Main Stream Media", mainly because I have to wait for them to serve me what they care to. They select the stories they care to report, and they also select the facts they care to report.
Whereas, the 'net allows me to hunt for my own self. Much to the god damn dismay of people who wish me to believe their point-of-view, let me tell you right now.
In Soviet China, internet filters YOU.
In Lobbist America, corporations decide for YOU.
In Saudi Arabia, the Moral Police bludgeon YOU.
I mean, they make shit up all the time, so the Internet can't be any worse.
Everything spoken there is nothing but the truth
Perl, n. A language spoken by Eskimos.
I admit that I was surprised to see FOX News listed as America's most trusted news source. Among the many journalists I've spoken to, none appear to have any respect for the reporting they see on FOX News. The network clearly leans towards the political right in its coverage of national and world events. Despite the network's motto, FOX News is all to often 'fair' only to conservatives and 'balanced' between the center and the extreme right of the Republican Party. According to the New Yorker, this was Murdoch's intention all along. Certainly, the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) watchdog group seems to spend an awful lot of time lambasting FOX News for its coverage. At the moment, FAIR's top story on their website is an article on inaccurate reporting by FOX's own Bill O'Reilly during the May 1 immigrant demonstrations. Considering the controversy over FOX News, I find it strange that more Americans trust FOX News than any other news source.
However, if you look at the country-by-country breakdown from the poll, it starts to make more sense. According to Globescan, CNN has almost the same trust numbers as FOX News, at 11 percent, with the other three major networks adding up to another 11 percent. Take that figure against the poll numbers in other countries and the American news market seems much more fractured than it at first appeared. Surprisingly, the poll also shows that most Americans still trust their local newspapers more than they trust national television news, by a margin of 81 percent to 75 percent. I suspect, but I can't confirm, that what we're actually looking at is ratings numbers in this category, not who the public really trusts more. Since FOX News has the highest ratings in the American market, the network comes out ahead of the competition when Americans are asked to name a single national news source. Tellingly, other poll numbers indicate that Americans are much more skeptical about their news sources than respondents in most other countries, with nearly 9 out of 10 Americans reporting that they look to multiple sources for their news. That fits the hypothesis. Internationally, according to the original Reuters article, CNN is the second most trusted news brand, right behind the BBC. That also seems about what I'd expect if you translate 'trust' to 'ratings' in the poll.
In any case, regardless of the poll numbers, I guess it shouldn't surprise me that many Americans prefer to get their news from sources who share their own political and social views. If I thought that Bush could do no wrong, and that the Republican Party was the greatest thing since sliced bread, I imagine I'd find it very believable too when FOX News reports on the latest victory in Iraq, followed by a story on how Republicans will bring about an economic Golden Age through more tax cuts for the wealthy.
There's a remote to change the channel. Why do you liberals resort to bashing Fox News? Just don't watch it! You know, like the conservatives don't watch CBS!! And here's a clue... you will NEVER convince viewers of Fox to follow your socialist dogma.
Egypt and Brazil are VERY lopsided: they each have over 50% trust in one source. And even the UK is fairly lopsided: almost 1/3 trust the BBC, and nearly 1/2 put their trust into only 3 sources. But then look down a bit farther: the US only puts 26% of its trust into the top 3 sources, and India only puts 28% of its trust into the top 3 sources.
Personally, I think it's better to have low percentages. It shows that no single source can alter the opinion of the entire nation. Think of it this way: Fox+CNN can only sway 22% of the voters. However, in the UK, the BBC can swing 32% of the votes. In Egypt, Al Jazeera has a majority. Ouch. So much for the idea of ever having a meaningful election in Egypt.
The Internet represents the return of the free press. Stories on the Internet are not written for the sole purpose of selling content or ad space. One reasons why certain stories are glossed over or buried is because if these stories hurt advertisers when they are brought to light, advertisers may take their business elsewhere. Also sensationalism sell more content. I remember when O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson were tried. That is all I heard about round the clock. It was boring and rather insignificant in the course of history, but it solve subscriptions as well as made advertisers happy, so that is why it got reported so extensively.
Some of the stuff I dug up online made for some very interesting articles. One of the big stories of 2004 in my humbl opinion was the Marvin Heemeyer story in Granby Colorado. This guy destroyed a town without physically hurting a single person (except himself). He would have done in plenty of people had he had the desire. Some say he was a raving lunatic madman, and others say he was an ordinary guy who was wronged once too many times by a corrupt local government.
He was big news in the region for a while, but he was only a footnote in national news. Other stories that receive only a small bit of coverage in the lamescream media such as Time magazine's "pitchfork rebellion" can gain national prominance in quite a hurry. Also, police corruption is being brought to light in many areas. In North Florida, the coverup of a boy who died as a result of a beating by sheriff's deputies has resulted in the top law enforcer of the state resigning. Had it not been for the Internet, lamescream media would most likely pass the story by. Since this story has received national spotlight, the "cockroaches have run for cover," so to speak. Coverups have become much more difficult, and those in power are very afraid.
Because the Internet is being used to cut out the middleman as well as being used to expose the wrongdoing of the powerful, policies are being passed to make it more intimidating, more regulated, as well as more watched. These policies will stifle free speech on the net as well as make it less useful. When this happens, hopefully, enough people will work to create a new type of network where the infrastructure will be owned by individual common people. The technology exists to easily create such a network.
I think Stephen Colbert said it best: "Fox News gives time to both sides: the President's side and the Vice-President's side."
How is this flamebait? It's a perfect example of Fox News' "Fair and Balanced" reporting. Completely unbiased.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
Bah. I won't believe it until I see it on Fox News!
http://outcampaign.org/
And we use the AP wire. It comes in off of satellite updated every couple of minutes. The decoding/reception box also acts as a server to our LAN which distributes the news when it is downloaded from the bird. All of the computers that need it have an AP desktop application which reads the stories off of the AP server in the building.
At the top of every hour when the news guys are in (about 15 hours a day) they will select the best pick of local and national/regional/int'l stories to read over a 3 minute span from x:00-x:03. Unless something is specifically called to their attention or it is a very unique situation (it usually is not), they simply read and/or rewrite the news coming off of the 'AP wire'.
When no one is manning our news booth, from 9pm until 05:30am, we simply take an audio feed from ABC News at the top of the hour.
Most news outlets are like this. Newspapers will do a fair amount of "on-the-street" fact-finding (and then maybe up-link it to the AP), and your local TV station might do some of the same. However the majority of news copy that you will read/see/hear usually comes off of a wire, typically AP, sometimes Reuters, and occasionally others.
For more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press
Libertas in infinitum
Also in the article is the factoid that Americans consider Fox News the most trustworthy national news program overall
Official: you really are doomed...
realkiwi
the younger generation is trusting internet news sources more and more.
The youth of today are so trusting - just the other day I said to my girlfriend 'But its really good for your skin!'
It is an obvious triviality that everyone is biased, and therefore every news source is biased. But we have developed certain social institutions that bind themselves by practices and rules that are intended to filter out as much of that bias as possible by taking into account multiple views and removing emotionally charged presentation. Or more precisely, the bias is made the same as whatever the general bias is of the community or society concerned, rather than simply being the bias of one side. This is the difference between listening to someone on a soapbox and listening to someone who is part of a scientific or journalistic community.
For example, this is part of why science works so well. In science, you get lots of little contributions by biased individuals, but because they are peer reviewed and some of them (experiments) are repeated, and this happens over a large and diverse community that is nevertheless following the same rules of conduct, the result generally averages out to something whose only bias is toward the very principles of science itself.
Journalistic organisations (with the exception of overtly biased ones) are 'supposed' to act in the same kind of way. They know their journalists, editors, etc, are all biased as individuals, so they follow a strong code of journalistic and editorial conduct to try to remove whatever bias there may be toward one side or another. That is why, for example, British interviewers will typically interview *everyone* extremely harshly, regardless of whether or not they deserve it, or whether or not the reporter agrees with them. It is a way of making sure you don't let anyone off easy so that the impact of your own personal bias is minimised.
The difference between the BBC and an organisation like Sky or Fox News is that the BBC tries very hard to follow its own rules. Those rules, incidentally, do include an explicit bias: they claim they are biased in favour of liberal democracies. But within that framework, the BBC tries to eliminate internal bias. The evidence that they have succeeded in that comes from the millions around the world who see the BBC as the only impartial news source, the only one that could be trusted (for example, in Eastern Europe, no one would trust Radio Free Europe, run by the Americans, because they knew it was propaganda, but everyone trusted the BBC). The fact is it works. Whereas Fox News intentionally biases its news in a very skewed, very particular direction. Fox is not interested in being unbiased, it is interested in making money. The BBC is providing a public service and they know it, so journalistic ethics mostly prevail.
Old soviet saying. (Pravda means "truth", Izvestia means "news")
"There is no truth in the news, and no news in the truth
Ask any Zen master: every view of reality is unique, yet there is only one reality. It is the way that each person senses reality that makes us different, and yet the same, all at once.
When people offer their viewpoint as being unbiased or "fair and balanced," we should understand that this is "branding." It is up to us to be intelligent enough to hear what our news sources are not saying about themselves or their agenda. We may choose to say that a news source such as Fox, or, by extension, Rush Limbaugh, is ridiculously slanted. But here's what's important to remember: the most honest person is one who tells you up front he's a conservative, a liberal, a socialist, a radical muslim, and so on. Rush Limbaugh lets us know just who he is so that we immediately use a different filter when we listen to him. Fox makes little, if any, effort to cover their agenda. If a news agency is to be denigrated, it should be one that portrays itself as white while subtly delivering black. Network TV news has been rather adept at doing this for many years, and people figured it out. Thus, the move to Fox, which makes its position clear. You might not agree with a lot that, say, Fox News delivers, but you know who's bringing it to you, and that helps you get closer to the truth.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
FirsT PosT!