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Journalists Looking For Government Money
We've been following the ongoing struggles of the print media, watching as some publications have died off and others have held to outdated principles and decried the influence of the internet. A side effect of this has been many journalists put out of work and many others fearful that informed reporting is on its way out as well. Now, an editorial in the Washington Post calls for a solution journalists would likely have scoffed at only a few years ago: federal subsidies. Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols write, "What to do? Bailing out media conglomerates would be morally and politically absurd. These firms have run journalism into the ground. If they cannot make it, let them go. Wait for 'pay-wall' technologies, billionaire philanthropists or unimagined business models to generate enough news to meet the immense demands of a self-governing society? There is no evidence that such a panacea is on the horizon. This leaves one place to look for a solution: the government." They hasten to add, "Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite."
They have run journalism into the ground...
If they would move past "Infotainment" and got back to writing good "News" instead of creating "Crisis" and attacking an administration simply to raise advertising funding I'd be inclined to buy a newspaper to read.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
What a fantastic way to ensure a free press: have them paid by the very institution they're supposed to be the watchdogs for. I'm sure they won't forget how to be objective and unbiased though... /sarcasm
Else we'll have the situation with Boscovs which was bailed-out, but after examining the store, I think should have died.
This store has not been modernized its look since the 1980s, still employs three people to man every single register (wasteful), and carries product a modern consumer has little-to-no interest in buying (sewing patterns & machines to make your own clothes). Other stores like Penneys and Sears have streamlined their operations, eliminating product that doesn't sell, and having 3 employees serve an entire QUARTER of a store not just one register. They've cut costs and grown more efficient. Boscovs has not.
Government bail-outs for stores just encourage inefficiency. Ditto bail-outs for newspapers. Let the papers innovate or pass-away into history (along with horsewhips and cobblers).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Once you start getting $$$ from good ole goobermint teet they pretty much tell you what you can do. Same will happen with the media. After all, if they allow journalists to get money, how are they going to control who gets the $$$ or not?
It's simple! They only fund people that are "favorable" to this years 'fad' administration.
How would government financing of media be anything but state-run media? The media is already tainted with clear and evident bias. And that's on all fronts, for those who want to taunt Fox news. We expect it from commentators and that is generally where the most overt lies but most news agencies get their news from AP and Reuters feeds. And many of them frankly read like commentary. As if personal bias hasn't destroyed true journalism over the past several decades what do you think asking for a hand-out from an administration already quite intolerant of dissent is going to do?
The broadcast spectrum monopolies that CBS,NBC,ABC don't pay a cent for and use to ram nonstop propaganda and spam down our throats, plus the entire copyright system (deployment of government power to control what people can do with the information on their own computers). That's many many billions of bucks worth of subsidies, maybe 100's of billions. The cellular phone spectrum monopolies are at least creating revenue, but the broadcast garbage is supposedly a public service.
Shut down broadcast TV completely, I mean all of it, have one govt-operated channel for emergency info but have it show weather reports and/or CSPAN 24/7 unless an actual emergency is taking place. Turn the rest of the spectrum over to low-power unlicensed use (like wifi). If companies want to show cheesy sitcoms, use the internet. And adjust the copyright system to stay out of people's private noncommercial communications, but to clamp down on companies (that means Google, Facebook, etc) cashing in on incidental noncommercial publishing (that means stuff like slashdot comments, that are essentially ephemeral and conversational in nature, but get vacuumed and monetized by 3rd parties who had nothing to do with producing them).
If you take their money, they get power over you. Sorry but it's true to at least some degree. It might be all above board for a while, but eventually some if not all are bound to get comfortable working for the government, and they wouldn't want to rock the boat once that happens. If they were the sort of people to be completely honest anyway, they would also have trouble working for the current, highly political, news landscape.
Huh, so maybe things wouldn't be that different after all.
How do you kill that which has no life?
...like a print version of National Public Radio? NPR is pretty much the last bastion of fact-based news on the air waves, why not do a similar setup for print? National syndicated stories partially subsidized by the federal government, local NPR news papers, supported by local donations, subscribe to the national content and supplement it with their own local content.
oh, sounds a lot like how commercial news papers and the AP news wire work already, minus the federal subsidies... besides, who wants to have their local print paper begging for donations for 2 weeks every year?
I'm sure the constant threat of their government funding being cut would NEVER affect their critical coverage of said government.
a state-run media is exactly what they're calling for. Craven fools.
Dog is my co-pilot.
you sir are correct - I'd mod you up if I had some mod points - bravo
Hell, every large newspaper in the United States already represents the same lobbyist/corporate line as the government. Why shouldn't the government pay them, and make it official?
The thing is, the criticism they'll hand out will be like the BBC, bitching about how the government isn't doing enough.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Am I the only person who is slightly appalled by saving a "medium"? I mean, fuck, why don't we just bailout the papyrus manufacturers while we're at it?
Obviously it's time to bail out Polaroid, or else there won't be any quality pictures ever taken ever again!!
Journalism will thrive. It will go back to its roots: pamphleteers. The idea of the monolithic newspaper journalistic elite is a product of a brief period during which corporations controlled the best distribution channels. Now they don't. Bloggers do. And journalism will be the better to show for it.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
On The Media has pretty good coverage in their October 30'th episode, which you can download as an .mp3.
The American Press is already owned by the government, just not directly. When was the last, really hard hitting documentary you saw on American television? When was the last time you saw a journalist beat up on a senator or congressman (with good, tough, questions and a refusal to yeild) that led to them "blackballing" that particular newspaper/journalist?
One of the best Australian TV shows that is quite prepared to ask tough/embaressing questions of any member of parliament is the "7:30 Report", on the ABC. The ABC (Australian Broadcast Comission) television station is solely funded by the Government, yet there is never, ever, any question about the integrity of its host (Kerry O'Brien), despite the interviewees often being the ones responsible for his pay cheque.
I imagine it is a lot worse for all of the commercial outlets beceause they have to walk the line of being tough but nice so that where there's a new, exclusive, story to break, they have a chance of getting it. To Government funded media, there's no quest to be first with a major, breaking, story, only to do it right and do it well.
Without corruption, I can't find a way to justify the pandering of American reporters to their politicians. And that exists today, without any subsidies, etc.
Stop Google "cashing in on incidental noncommercial publishing" ? Do you want to destroy Google by not allowing them to be a search engine ? This is very strange.
A solution journalists would have scoffed at a few years ago? Given that more of them are left-leaning Democrats than any other specific political orientation, why would journalists have opposed government subsidy?
Look, these guys claim that the job of journalism is to "question, analyze and speak truth to power". What a weaselly bunch of crap. They'll cover up anything for people they like (and that crosses the political spectrum). They even quote Obama as saying "Government without a tough and vibrant media is not an option for the United States of America." This is the same guy whose administration says that Fox News isn't a real news organization, mostly because a lot of its shows spend their time attacking him and his policies - i.e., being tough and vibrant. If you disagree with my politics, then imagine if instead of the Republican kabuki of not financially supporting information about abortion in worldwide birth control efforts were suddenly to apply to domestic newspapers the next time the political tide turns. Do you think that's good for democracy?
They then cite the historical example of some printing and postal subsidies (presumably similar to the current subsidies for books and other media via mail) and then suggest we should honor that by "greatly expand[ing] funding for public and community media, and establish[ing] policies that help convert dying daily newspapers into post-corporate low-profit news operations that realize the potential of the Internet." Do I get to qualify for "public and community" funding if I add a couple of news items to my posts about how home sales are doing in my neighborhood? (They're fine, FWIW.) Because otherwise it sounds suspiciously like how "community" funding keeps getting distributed via the same few organizations - the ones with the connections get solid government funding, and in return they toe the line.
I like newspapers. I enjoy sitting down on Sunday morning and slowly making my way through the whole thing. So, apparently, does the president. But making public policy based on the Sunday morning habits of the upper middle class is wasteful snobbery. They're dead. Move on. And if you're a journalism major, strongly consider switching.
is that so many rich boys have been fleecing the gov for so long, that the other rich boys want in on this.
Now, the idiots in the press have not learned to adopt to new realities, so are calling on a free hand-out.
Instead, the press should be calling on the feds to do more to help MANUFACTURING. Why?
Because rebuilding the middle class and dropping our imports would actually strengthen THEIR position.
THey also DESPERATELY need to get new management. There is a real lack of intelligence running so many businesses.
Government bailouts for private media companies would be a bad idea, similar to the unwise nature of subsidising private insurance companies. We are simply funding a biased source of information controlled by plutocratic media instutions with conflicts of interest.
Immediately when anyone mentioned public funding of a media institution, however, they assume immediately that would be a state run media that would propogate governments version of the story.
This is not the way it has to be set up. We could have a completely independnat source of news and information that was funded not by congress but directly from tax revenue, and whose directors are elected by the people. By charter design of this independant media all of the journalists involved would have complete journalistic freedom and would have a tenure, meaning that they would not have some corporation which receives financing from advertisers and perhaps is tied in with other economic interests looking over their shoulder. Such journalists could be randomly selected (like a jury selection pool from the general population), and some elected to assure all of the different ideological viewpoints are being represented. Since it is not tied to corporations or government, it would be completely free to report on things without having a conflict of interest.
The private media today is not independant, and instead of having an independant watch dog we have a media that has sympathies with large corporate interests which drive their advertising revenue, it is a conflict of interest, and therefore the media can be pushed into ignoring or whitewashing corporate corruption that it is exposing. Since the media today is owned by large corporate entities, which are connected to large parts of the corporate economy, it basically is an establishment "state media" that propagates an elites interests and viewpoints. People get far too wrapped up in terms like "government", "public", and so on, we need to realise that corporations are manifestation characteristics of government, they perhaps have even more power than government and have used their wealth to basically purchase the government, they are gaining control of almost the entire economy and effectively control our lives, if they dont like your hair or political views, they can fire you, and in this ownership society where all basic essentials are tied to money which is increasingly controlled in corporate dominated markets, this basically is a death sentence. Real power today lies with corporations, and unlike government, everyone does not have an equal right these corporations which have such a dramatic effect on our lives and our economy. Libertarians, ironically, attack the very democratic institutions that we have and that we actually elect, while at the same time supporting private corporations which are effectively enslaving us. All you need to do is control resources and you can control people by making people dependant on uyou for those resources. This is possible under capitalism and all you need is to get rid of any government regulation to have yourself a corporate police state where corporations for instance can tell you not to protest the way it is polluting a river or beating up workers, or else you will be fired and left absolutely homeless.
An independant media I think would be essential to helping us regain control over our democracy and our lives, as an independant media and source of news and information, and the ability for their to be pluralistic diversity where all sides are able to be heard equally so people can make up their own minds and are not indoctrinated and propogandised is essential to a functioning democracy and to freedom.
There is a crisis for journalists as a result of the sudden crash in their industry but that crash isn't the result of some horrible failure of the market for journalism. Just the opposite. The newspaper industry has hit bottom because the internet has made the buisness of reporting so much more efficient. I mean just thinking about the huge number of daily papers across the states carrying the same national and international news on print is enough to make one sick at the waste. Not only does it cost a great deal to publish a print daily but each of these dailies employs editors and layout people to format the same news availible anywhere in their particular style. Many of them even insist on hiring their own reporters even when it's obviously duplicated effort (say reviewing national movies/TV shows).
Once competition drives most local papers to focus on local intersts and everyone to publish online it will free up a quite substantial amount of money for real reporting. Though actually a lot of what journalists call real reporting is duplicated effort for the sake of status. I mean does it really help the public understand what's going on better to have 40+ journalists at the white house press briefings and who knows how much AV equitment? If they just sent over a single camera crew and agreed on a way to pick questions there would be no harm to the quality of reporting. Much of this is just done because historically that behavior signaled prestige and seriousness in the news industry.
I don't think the newspapers are doing anything wrong. But when technology lets you accomplish the same job with disruptively less total effort (delivering news to the nation) many people are going to lose their jobs and most of the companies in that industry will go out of buisness. I feel sorry for the people with careers in the industry but I think there is every reason to believe that after things settle down there will be just as much investigative reporting and important journalism. There will just be less redundancy and a more efficient use of reporting resources.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Sure everyone says the problem is the cost of health care, and government regulation, and the excessive wages negotiated by unions. But none of this explains why AIG payed a multi hundred million dollar bonus to executives responsible for bankrupting the company(and before any says that they were not responsible, if management is not responsible, who is? The labour who everyone says is overpaid?) The fact is that management all too often overextends itself assuming that profits will accelerate and cover the additional expenses. For instance, the United way recently build a huge building in the most expensive part of the city outside of downtown at the height of the housing bubble. I am sure this was an investment, and the assumption was that it would pay for itself over time, but one wonders if the core business of the United Way is provided luxurious office space to it's staff, and what impact this has recently had on it's funds.
So the issue is often overhead. The local newspaper has a city block of prime downtown real estate. At one time this probably made sense. It is near city hall, the courthouse, and many other news making entities. Now I am not so sure. I know I would want the newspaper to decentralize and cut costs before giving it any money. Smaller cheaper office scattered through the city so it could more easily cover more news. Offices near school district offices, since parents will buy newspapers about thier kids. I know the printing press does not have to be downtown. Web services does not even have to be onsite.
And maybe none of this make sense. Maybe a lush building downtown does make the most sense. I don't know. I am not in the newspaper business, any more than I am in the finance business or the real estate business. Which is why my tax dollars should not go to directly propping up these businesses. I don't know how to manage these businesses. Evidently the people who think they do, don't, since the need a government bailout. And since we don't know how to do it, the best thing to do might be to let the firms fail, and allow new blood in that might have a better feeling for what is needed to make a go of it.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
In norway print media is getting significant goverment subsidies. The consequence is that rather than having media which is a watchdog over goverment, they have become a shill of the leftist 'big-goverment' political parties. (Since these are the parties that will guarantee their continued pipe into taxpayer money)
Every time somone brings up the question of subsidies you can trust that every newspaper will write long editorials why they need to keep getting money.
Particularly aggravating is the fact that a small selection of newspapers are getting preferential treatment (more money than others). These papers just happen to be the papers that used to be the publishing fronts for four leftist political parties. They claim to be independent of cource, but it won't take much reading to realize just how skewed their presentation really is.
So just take a look around and you will quickly find good reasons why not to start subsidizing the press.
>>>The broadcast spectrum monopolies that CBS,NBC,ABC don't pay a cent for
False. I wish people would stop repeating this oft-stated lie. The ~2000 TV stations plus ~10,000 lowpower/clear air neighborhood stations all pay a lease for their spectrum (called a license fee).
>>>plus the entire copyright system
On this we agree. The original version in the 1790 Act was reasonable - 14 years of monopoly helped the authors stand on their own feet and earn money from their labor. Today's 105-year span is ridiculous. It's like creating a welfare state where an author pen a best-seller in his 20s, and then sit on his ass for the rest of his life, signing books, and collecting the residuals. (cough J.K.Rowlings). The rest of us poor slobs have to work 'til we're 70 or 80.
14 years plus a possibility for renewal (28 years total) is long enough.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
If you can't convince people to pay for your product, have the government take it for you. It works for auto companies, why not reporters?
We already have state-run media. They might as well get paid by the government for their services.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I really, really, really don't want any of my money going toward Fox "News". Thank you.
Like it didn't affect NPR when their sponsors threatened to cut funding if they continued to have liberal viewpoints...
If a newspaper owner holds a certain view, then that's the line the editorial tone will take. It's a long standing conclusion with "independent" publications and will only transfer into government subsidised publications. If you want state-subsidised newspapers, then expect them to carry stories that show their paymasters in a beneficial light.
God help you when elections come around.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
lost perhaps? clearly easier game for the 'wolves'.
the lights are all about us now.
Hold on, I just noticed this:
>>>Shut down broadcast TV completely, I mean all of it
I like my free television, thank you very much. Including the subchannels I am able to get 40 different programs at any time of the day. Why should I give that up for some inferior slow, interference-prone, overloaded, non-HD Wifi connection? I do watch some steaming television via the net, but don't particularly like it. It's poor sub-standard definition VHS-level quality and prone to sudden pauses in the middle of the show. I tried to watch Sanctuary on scifi.com, and the damn thing got stuck in an infinite loop - the same 30 seconds repeated over and over.
I prefer broadcast. Maybe someday in the future, say 2030, the internet will finally catchup to the same HD-level quality as over-the-air ATSC, but certainly not now.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
News is alive an well, just not in the traditional, dominant media outlets. We have online blogs and weekly newspapers that are in many cases thriving. In my hometown, a tiny rural weekly called "The Altamont Enterprise" has such a demand for local advertising that they've had to add a second section. 15 years ago, it was a 10 page weekly, now its closer to 50.
Why the growth? The local newspaper, the Hearst-owned Albany Times-Union doesn't really provide a service to people in the outlying areas of Albany. Even within the area that the traditional paper claims to serve, the editorial practices of the paper marginalize it as a provider of news that people want to hear. Often, you know when important things are going on because they don't appear in the paper.
When the daily papers die, others will take their place. The only thing missing will be the editorial boards that are typically in cahoots with politicians and business. Keeping them on life support is suppressing the development of new news organizations.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool (or a liar who wants government control).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Government money = tax money = our money.
This is just an end run around the consumer: Pay us voluntarily or we'll reach into your wallet ourselves. Of course, right now we're reaching into our childrens' childrens' wallets.
And if you're a journalism major, strongly consider switching.
If anything, current media sorely lacks qualified and educated journalists.
You know... people who actually studied ethics, writing, reporting, investigating etc.
Not people who climbed the social/corporate ladder based on the whiteness of their teeth and strength of their elbows (and/or knees).
Nor the people who believe that the Twitter is a viable tool for journalist reports or even an article or debate.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Personally I can't wait for the demise of corporate media -- which is beholden to advertising and other corporate interests, and has a dismal record for blatant editorialising.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I can't stress how important good journalism is. It's vital to a democracy. Look around, Kwame Kilpatrick, the former Mayor of Detroit, was taken down by hard work done by a newspaper. Feet on the ground, reviewing the details detecting millions of dollars of waste and fraud. I believe they said they had over $70k in legal expenses just in that one story. A newspaper did what the feds couldn't.
I think the model that might be sustainable is switching to a more NPR format. Supported by people who value the news, not by the ad revenue. Go non-profit, rely on donations. I believe NPR gets a majority of it's funding from donations, not from the government. But I strongly strongly hope that good journalism doesn't die. And don't cite blogs and the new journalism. How many blogs do anything more than recycle news from whatever news source.
I'd buy into one... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_cooperative
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Or the communications arm of the democratic party called MSNBC, NBC, GE, or any other organization that stands to gain huge profits from Carbon Taxes. 'k thanks.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
...won't lead to government-controlled newspapers like government money for car companies won't lead to government controlled car companies. You'll never see a President firing a CEO of a private company just because that company gets governmen.... err, wait, that actually did happen, didn't it? Never mind.
Though the Washington Post could accept government money without conflict so long as a Democratic administration was in charge.
I worked for the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Newspaper Agency (DNA) for a number of years. I'd like to share my thoughts on why newspapers companies are failing.
First, in this era where Content is King, the quality of newspaper content has been declining steadily. Most reporting is little more than regurgitated press releases and wire stories. The original writing is largely confined to the sports section. Reporting quality has been discussed to death so I won't go into details. Suffice to say that most of the original reporting in the main section is stories about stories. These secondary stories have very little value.
Second is the rampant cronyism in the executive ranks. At the DNA I watched a seemingly endless parade of senior executives come and go. These people move from one newspaper to another every couple of years. Much ballyhooed when they arrive, they never accomplish anything. At least two senior execs are on their second round at the DNA. These are the people who lead the newspaper industry right to the brink. They do not know what to do now. Most of them are nearing retirement age and I doubt the newspaper industry can recover until they do retire.
Next, ignoring the web was a huge mistake. It might be fatal. As an example, in the spring of 2009, the new President of the DNA (he was President of The Denver Post a few years ago) said something like "We've barely scratched the surface of what we're going to do with the web". The voice in my head was screaming "That's why they're eating our lunch!" So what have they done with the web since then? If you read the preceding paragraph you already know the answer to that question.
Finally, there is the revenue problem. The last twenty years or so have seen an explosion in the amount of available advertising space. Think back a few years, half a dozen local TV stations, a few radio stations, and your local newspaper were the main venues for advertising. Today, advertising is everywhere. It's a simple case of Supply and Demand. The skyrocketing supply drove prices down. Meanwhile, the price of newsprint was also skyrocketing. It's reached the point where newspapers can't compete because their costs are too high.
So what's the solution? I don't know. I do know that government subsidies aren't the answer. Propping up an industry that's killing itself won't help you or me. It will help those old newspaper execs retire comfortably. That is all.
Are already bought and paid for anyway. Who are they kidding?
The BBC is paid for by a Tax. They are not influenced by government or commercial interests, and run a highly respected news organisation.
I vote for a % of GDP tax to be given to a organisations like the BBC whose job is to entertain and inform.
Seems to me, if people are turning away from the 'educated' journalists in news-media and reading bloggers, etc., instead... a better solution than forcing the government to artificially extend the life of print publications would be to launch education or certification programmes to improve the quality of the free online news-media. Bloggers and websites are already giving us for free what we used to pay journalists for... if we can use these programmes to increase the quality of these news sources to be equal to or greater than the current print media (not hard in some cases), and give them the rights, resources and opportunities to investigate and report unbiased, factual news, then the death of the traditional media would hardly be felt by anybody. It's easy to slip partisan politics and sensationalist bullshit past your editor these days - but try to post that kind of crap on Wikipedia, and see how long it takes for the real facts to reassert themselves. People don't need newspapers any more, they just need to work together and to know what they're doing. Look at the quality of Wikinews today, with no paid employees, no particular educational aids or special resources, and tell me the government's money is better spent propping up failing media rather than making the New Media better.
Yes you called for a state run media.
Just like angry advertisers can get an objectionable story pulled, so can an angry government. Because they pay you.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The press is indeed the watchdog. So watches the media moguls? The journalists paid by those moguls?
Why do you think you see so little info in the big media controlled press about copyright abuses by big media? Gosh, I wonder why.
Amazing, you can spot that it is a bad idea for the press to be owned by anyone but only think it is bad if the government is the one doing the owning. My complements to your brainwasher, he did a wonderful job, especially considering how delicate it is to wash such a small brain.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
" Remember, in times of conflict all for-profit media repeats the ruling paty's information. Therefore, all for-profit media becomes state-run."- Anti-Flag
If end consumers continue to buy less and less of the crap that print media churn out now, as they have done for a decade or so on the news channels, what do you do when "consumers" don't read the "newsloggers" (or whatever you want to call them)?
How do you fire a reporter once he is on the governement dole and you now have a beaurocrat in charge of "paying" newsloggers or whatever?
Incestuous is the best word I can think of right now.
To be fair, in the fourteen years since her first book, JK Rowlings has already earned enough to "sit on her ass for the rest of her life."
Personally, I don't think it's as undeserved as you seem to believe. Indeed, I see JKR as positive argument for shorter-term copyrights: how well they can reward even when they are for a short time.
Bring back Calvin & Hobbes !
Yes the above in in jest, but only partly so. As part of the downhill slide of newspapers, has been an old staple, the funnies. Even if you can find them in your local paper, they are usually too small to read.
I can't believe the comments that say that government-funded media will be Soviet-style Propaganda machines. Are you people out of your minds? Can anyone here name me one program or reporter more critical of the government than Bill Moyers? His programs get financed by PBS, a government corporation.
In fact, that's exactly what corporations want you to believe, because public funding will be the only thing that frees journalists from the corporate teat. It will effectively shut down the corporate media oligarchy we have today.
Are you all slaves for the corporations or whatever organization pays your salaries? Is that the only lens through which you can see the world?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The BBC is the single best news organization in the world, full stop. Nobody else comes close for global reach and insight. It receives "government" money, i.e. the TV license fee. As a result, it is required by law to be politically neutral, which is one of the best things about it. (So too, is NPR, and if you think NPR is biased, as many conservatives do, it just shows where YOU stand.)
Because the BBC is government funded it is watched like a hawk by everybody -- the party in power, the party in opposition, the taxpayers' lobby, and so on. It just cut out 20% of its own management thanks to public pressure.
It's not perfect; there is waste and abuse at times. But it beats the hell out of any American news organization whatsoever.
I piss off bigots.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... newspapers and journalists to start "getting it" and understand how this new media can work to keep the world informed. "get it" number 1 is that the profit model is not going to work the way it used to ... news will no longer be a monopoly affair that allows the newspaper owners to get rich. If they want to get rich they will have to compete and bring in the eyeballs.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Where has that been hiding? Where were they during the buildup to the iraq invasion, covering all the WMD non stories, that they were pushing after getting "the real info" from out of the government's lie-hole? Parrots, not journalists, the safe way, no boat rocking, no fact checking. Where was all this "fact checking" going on, the post, the ny times, where? Where has been the useful coverage of the economic situation, where were the *good articles*, with the real skinny, main stream traditional news, regurgitating Whitehouse and Fed and Treasury press releases, or places like matt taibbi's stuff in the rolling stone, and dr. housing bubble blog and so on? Why can't they investigate government COMPLETE BS statistics on the economy, and you have to go to shadowstats instead to get it de obfuscated? Where has the real news of war come from, those "embedded" reporters? Ha! How about black box voting? Main stream news..not a peep, it took blackbox voting dog org and brad blog and places like that to get some notice and action going out there, you sure as hell didn't see abcnbccbswallstreethjournalnewyorktimeswapo nonsense bringing it up, and that is sort of *important* in an alleged free democracy. Where the hell is their coverage of sibel edmonds rather *interesting* tale?
One million examples there, tends to indicate a "trend"
Blow dried blowhards. They know where their check comes from and what they can say or not.
Naw, let the controlled establishment propaganda arm of government/ big money interests (the same exact thing) crash and burn, they DESERVE it. They deserved it years ago, as pointed out by an insider journalist a long ago, who grew disillusioned working for the mainstream press and switched to being independent and working for the then new labor movement:
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
Shut down broadcast TV completely
There's already an "off" button on your TV set.
But that's not good enough for you, you want to stifle information and entertainment across the nation just because you don't like it when other people make money. How does them making money hurt you any more than your neighbor getting a cow?
People like you are why the founders of this country felt the need for a written Bill of Rights.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
They all choose which 'facts' to report.
When Fox news get caught fabricating documents in MS word then they will be equal.
Fox is at least as trustworthy as any of them (which is to say not at all).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
False. I wish people would stop repeating this oft-stated lie. The ~2000 TV stations plus ~10,000 lowpower/clear air neighborhood stations all pay a lease for their spectrum (called a license fee).
Can you provide some evidence of this? I can find application fees, but not spectrum license fees for the TV stations.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Except when you don't pay that TV license fee (tax), then the BBC calls on the government to round you up and toss you in jail, or extract the funds from your paycheck.
lol!
That what it means to hold your own purse strings. The BBC doesn't beg the government for money, but raises their own taxes.
Not in the States. NPR and PBS sucks when it comes to news gathering since it was biased towards a statist regime (more/bigger government).
Scientific analysis disagrees. Perhaps you disagree with information provided by PBS/NPR, because it is critical of some of the corporate distortions being pushed by for-profit media.
I think it's telling that you believe PBS/NPR is pushing a pro-big government statist regime, when really they have no such agenda. One might believe they had such an agenda by contrasting their reporting to corporate media -- which has a very well established corporate bias, and is responsible for much conservative hysteria. Effectively, you've got a powerful elitist media manipulating the impressions and social discourse of the USA -- to suit their own private political agendas.
The only good news is that NPR/PBS only costs me about $10 a year in taxation
Yeah, corporate media is really expensive, isn't it. Exactly what is good about corporate media, when it's more costly, and sings to the tune of its corporate and political interests??
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
If they would move past "Infotainment" and got back to writing good "News" instead of creating "Crisis" and attacking an administration simply to raise advertising funding I'd be inclined to buy a newspaper to read.
You seem to be confusing newspapers with cable TV. The print-dominated era of "you give me the pictures and I'll give you the war" is long past. All the synthetic-outrage action has moved to cable.
Today's typical American newspaper is tame to the point of being lame, filled with a mix of generic wire copy and poorly written local stories from an underpaid staff that's been cut to the bone. This endangered species typically is turning a gross profit between 10 and 30 percent of revenues even today, in the worst business recession since Herbert Hoover. The parent companies -- conglomerates that bought newspapers with borrowed money -- are in trouble because they were expecting profit margins of 20 to 40 percent on higher gross revenues than are possible today.
Newspapers aren't offending readers by taking positions -- they're offending readers by not taking positions that reinforce their prejudices. And those prejudices are being constantly fanned by the cable political-infotainment machines.
Sadly, the Nielsen ratings of the cable channels tell us clearly that people prefer to consume infotainment that reinforces their prejudices, not actual news.
Here are the prime-time ratings for last Wednesday night:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/10/29/cable-news-ratings-for-wednesday-october-28-2009/32044#more-32044
Fox has demonstrated that if you put a raving lunatic in front of a TV camera and let him make up any lies he wants, he'll draw way more viewers than an actual news program.
Here I go again.
No I'm NOT trying to revive dead tree edition, but "I'm advocating for consumers paying to use the Post Office's IT infrastructure to get access to RSS files to get access to the publishers' content and for the post office paying for publishers for giving access to that content, regardless of where the consumer and the publisher are."*
Think about it.
The US Post Office is part of an international information distribution network. (What is the internet?)
It has franking privileges (stamps are legal tender.)
It is used to dealing in small amounts.
It is legally entitled to be a common carrier.
It has an IT infrastructure.
It can collect for and grant access to RSS files.
It operates at "arms length" from every government.
This would work.
*Google it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Of the end. The failing news media is just a symptom of our society's greater sickness: Literacy is going down the drain. Our vocabulary is rapidly diminishing and the appreciation of the written word is almost non-existent.
Eventually we will be the "phrase" society, where everyone speaks in canned phrases we've learned from movie trailers. Don't believe me? Listen to teenagers these days. They are the "Preview" of what's to come.
Talking Points Memo has broken big stories. They were all over the Ted Stevens scandal years before anyone in the traditional media was on it.
Also, thanks for digging in to the other two examples before -- oh, wait . . . you didn't. Way to follow the entire point.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
NewsPAPERS are dying and for a couple of reasons. 1) Pulping a tree is a stupid, disconnected way to get a message out there. 2) Advertisers are deserting the 1:N communication capabilities of the old media for the N:M communication capabilities of the web. You, the reader of a paper, or even of a news web site, don't enter into the equation. The advertisers are disappearing because the web gives them a better ways to do what arboricide or even a news organization's web site can do: advertise their brand and their products in a a quiet, uncluttered space. Not to mention that they can: collect customer and potential customer info, take orders, follow up on orders, track shipments, do post-sale follow-up do interactive problem resolution. Tell me again why I would want somebody to slaughter a tree for me. The internet is winning. Deal with it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Marat grew quite famous for his anti-royalty papers written that inflamed the French Revolution, but then he got stabbed to death in his bathtub by a fan of the royals. She ultimately got killed for it.
Thus, we had the famous writer, and harsh critic, in one example. But, hey, at least a famous painter made his most famous painting about the whole thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Marat
This is my sig.
Did you even bother reading the source you linked? It completely undermines your argument, and supports mine.
Take this little snippet: Despite the commonness of such claims, little evidence has ever been presented for a left bias at NPR , and FAIR’s latest study gives it no support.
It's hilarious that blatantly biased conservative media will call something like NPR/PBS as "liberal media".
Conservatives are circumspect when talking about the bias in their favourite media -- and invariably go on the offensive, accusing objective media outlets as being liberally biased -- when there is no evidence for that in NPR/PBS. The supposition is that people disagree with your life-stance because of poor education, and are suckered by the liberal media elite, when no such elite operates in comparison to the conservative media elite.
In psychological terms, that's called projection. It's also irrational, since there are ways to operationally define media objectivity, even though it's a complex issue.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Are you disputing the above legal opinion? Would you rather that it was illegal to lie, and let the courts/juries be the arbiter of all facts (not just the facts relevant to a particular case)?
You're are misreading. The precedent is that news organisations can intentionally lie. Get it? They don't even have to pretend that they didn't know they were lying!
I'm also suspicious of the study itself, because it depends on the selection of facts chosen. If you collect all of the test questions from PBS, and then quiz FNC viewers on those facts, it doesn't surprise me that FNC viewers might score lower.
Congratulations, you've impugned the methodology of the study, without investigating the methodology of the study. That raises the bar for being credulous, but perhaps that's what conservatives look for in their media.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite.
We seek to renew a rich if largely forgotten legacy of the American free-press tradition, one that speaks directly to today's crisis. The First Amendment necessarily prohibits state censorship, but it does not prevent citizens from using their government to subsidize and spawn independent media.
Indeed, the post-colonial press system was built on massive postal and printing subsidies. The first generations of Americans never imagined that the market would provide sound or sufficient journalism. The notion was unthinkable. They established enlightened subsidies, which broadened the marketplace of ideas and enhanced and protected core freedoms. Their initiatives were essential to America's progress.
So, the subsidies were on the infrastructure of free speech, eh?
Fine; how about this: The government subsidizes the Internent, and to satisfy that "first amendment" thing you mention, they also require net neutrality. For the subsidy side, I propose that the United States government establish and fund some sort of entity for assigned names and numbers that can remove the expense of individual corporations having to develop their own contentious and lawsuit-encumbered system for apportioning such things, and a do the same for a name resolution system of some sort, with root nameservers provisioned largely at government expense. Perhaps the government could even go back in time and invent the system itself.
Would that be enough of a subsidy and guarantee of freedom of speech? I think it is a pretty solid foundation at the least.
Now, jerkwad, go forth and take advantage of all that we taxpayers have given ourselves through the creation of the Internet and the continued provision of its core infrastructural metadata. You want to journalize? Good! Be fruitful and journalize. Compete, you putz. And if you think the competition is skewed (and I think it is) perhaps you can start by journalizing about what is wrong with the system, just as the pamphleteers started not by begging for handouts but by invigorating the public furor.
But stop trying to dip in my pocket, you welfare queen.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It matters not a whit to CNN that a few hundreds of thousands of people more or less in America watch Fox News. Nobody outside America would be seen dead watching it. CNN is a global news network; it is watched by tens of millions around the world. (It's still not up to the BBC, however.)
Turn on the TV in a hotel in ANY world capital that has satellite or cable, and you'll find CNN. You'll never find Fox.
I piss off bigots.
The BBC does not support Labour or the Conservatives or the LibDems, and not one of them would say that it does. It is politically neutral. It let a howling Fascist on the other night, despite many protests from left and right. (He got trashed by the other guests -- dumbass.)
If you think the BBC is slanted, that's just because it doesn't kiss your ass.
I piss off bigots.
PBS and NPR are largely funded by corporate underwriting. But trumpeting that isn't in line with their image. If you really want news media that's funded without government or corporate influence, send a check to Amy Goodman or your local Pacifica radio station.
Mr Murdock et al : Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Your business model sucks, your content is trash. We don't need you or want your services.
Go Away.
Dear Print Media,
Please fuck off and die already.
Sincerely,
The Internet
There is no such thing as "Government Money". The Government is constitutionally required to derive funds for upkeep and maintenance of their duties by laying tariffs on imports ,so they obviously don't have enough money to become powerful enough to oppress the citizenry.( you can jam that bullshit amendment about congress laying taxes up your own ass, hoodwinked sucker)
Seriously, all that money is money worked for by the non lazy among us and supposed to go to relevant serious needs. Journalism should be a civic duty not a job description and the definition of modern journalism is not serious nor a REAL occupation, instead it is a pretend job, pretending to report relevant things of interest . In reality, it is just a control device for any wack job special interest to thrust its lies and propaganda in your face. Journalism in the 21st century is useless as pet rocks. Reading or observing the "news" is just a timekiller like solitaire. No one really believes anything they see or hear from the media (unless they are wack jobs too)
We might as well use the money to pay the poor chronically unemployed so they can drive Cadillacs and sports cars and breed like rabbits to increase their monies. LOL , yeah I guess we do.
Betcha T. Jeffersons thoughts on bloody revolutions is closer than the next episode of "Fringe".
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I prefer articles that have been edited for accuracy and English usage. This could be either print or electronic. However most electronc sources- called blogs- are not edited for either. They are often a waste of time then.
... than the news in print and the news on TV. Most of what is in print and TV is usually negative and shocking because it has become pretty clear that people care about bad things.
But I'm sick of it. I'm old enough to know the world has bad things, and I respect those, but will not focus my interests around it.
It is sites like slashdot where I can find out information that is usually actually interesting or positive without the horrors and scares of mainstream media shock tactics.
And no, they don't deserve a frikkin handout. You think the guys who do journalism on the net didn't innovate, adapt, and change with the market? (Rhetorical question). If we don't buy print media, why would we want to subsidize it? That just a handout --- the people won't buy it willingly, so lobbyists convince our government to spend our money on it despite our lack of interest as people.
>>>you want to stifle information and entertainment across the nation just because you don't like it
Also it's ridiculous to act as if TV is at fault for lack-of-space for wireless internet. Since the TV band was shrunk from 81 channels to 49 channels*, it's only using 6*49== 1/4 gigahertz of bandwidth. That still leaves a hell of a lot of space (~500 gigahertz) for other things like cellphones and wireless internet.
Spectrum MAP: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fast-company/3683064554/sizes/o/
*
* channels 1 and 34 are not used for television
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
http://democracynow.org/
you've got spectrum monopolies being given to propaganda outlets. 40 programs at any time of day is nowhere near enough: imagine you could access only 40 web sites. Media conglomerates would totally own the web too. If you've got a way to make broadcasting like the web, so EVERYONE can broadcast, then that's worth pursuing. Unless you've got that, it's better to kill broadcasting completely.
It's about the time that several of my local newspapers started using child labor that I stopped having any sympathy for the plight of the newspapers. Convincing a school full of high schoolers to sell newspaper subscriptions door to door, not for money, but for some nebulous reward that they'll never see fits my definition of "underpaid child labor" perfectly. Very very shady, it's also why I won't shed any tears when the Long Beach Press Telegram dies. Of course, they're actually doing decently well due to the aforementioned child labor...
Shut down broadcast TV completely? If you want to watch cheesy shows use the internet? Seriously? I do stream some things off the internet but I find it to be pretty inconsistent. Stutter, lag, sometimes even stopping are pretty common when watching TV over the internet. Maybe you have a dedicated 10 Megabit line or live in a neighborhood where nobody else uses their bandwidth but a lot of us have internet access that is spotty...and I live in a major city. That isn't even considering those living in more rural areas who have the choice between Dial up, Cellular, and Satellite.
I don't watch very much TV but I do like watching say...Pro Football games (which are not legally streamed over the internet) in my own home. The cheapest cable television package is something ridiculous like $60/month. I'll keep my broadcast TV at that price.
You said: "Whoever holds the purse strings is in control."
The Canadian government funds the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). While the CBC has a mandate to promote Canadian unity, which I feel compromises its reporting on Quebec nationalism, I think nobody in Canada would say the government controls what the CBC reports. It is well known the current government has very little use for the CBC.
The CBC has in the past had a very strong independent culture of high quality reporting. That is the key, no matter who is paying.
As the MSM audience bleeds away, the danger to quality journalism at the CBC comes from market forces, not government forces. We don't need to worry so much about someone in power whispering into an editors ear. Desperation to remain relevant (measured in mere-eyeballs) will lead the newsroom to compromise itself until it is nothing but infotainment, sensationalism, shock stories, and panic.
You said: "Whoever holds the purse strings is in control."
The Canadian government funds the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). While the CBC has a mandate to promote Canadian unity, which I feel compromises its reporting on Quebec nationalism, I think nobody in Canada would say the government controls what the CBC reports. It is well known the current government has very little use for the CBC.
The CBC has in the past had a very strong independent culture of high quality reporting. That is the key, no matter who is paying.
As the MSM audience bleeds away, the danger to quality journalism at the CBC comes from market forces, not government forces. We don't need to worry so much about someone in power whispering into an editors ear. Desperation to remain relevant (measured in mere-eyeballs) will lead the newsroom to compromise itself until it is nothing but infotainment, sensationalism, shock stories, and panic.
You said: "The CBC is notoriously biased and uncritical of government." The CBC is not notoriously biased and uncritical of government. Anyone who spends an hour watching the CBC will see stories raising issues about government policy. Nobody believes the CBC is in the pocket of Stephen Harper. Nobody but you!
It takes more than just funding to have state-run media. It would require direct or indirect oversight of reporting by government bodies.
Countries with quality publicly funded journalism do not dictate what can and cannot be reported. Instead there are ombuds positions through which complaints can be lodged after the fact.
That's how!
*That* is true however so very rarely in human history has any organization or public entity shown so much clearly detestable behavior for so long with so little apparent attention paid to reconciliation and so little apparent capacity to enforce the their fascist regime as Circuit City. You might find the U.S. government a little bit better at holding their ground against public opinion because of, oh, I dunno ARMIES or something.
They spend the least amount of time pushing sensational stories.
They report the news evenly. They do not stop everything just to get a shot of the Balloon Boy.
They do not manipulate the viewer with false outrage or emotionalism.
They promote dialog (the Doha Debates), not punditry.
They gather stories from all over the world, not just one place, i.e. the USA.
They do hard-hitting indepth interviews with intelligent people (Hardtalk)
I could go on.
Yes the BBC is slanted: towards quality journalism.
There is no comparison between the it and CNN/MSNBC/FOX.
I think many people here defending CNN/Fox/MSNBC (pick your poison) confuse the righteousness of their political beliefs (and therefore the villainy of any news organization that promotes alternative ideas) with the qualities of good journalism in general. Good journalism is what furthers their beliefs. Bad journalism is the other guy.
I watched the CNN global network during the Mumbai terrorist attacks. The world report is superior to the American CNN. But not by much. I see CNN/MSNBC/FOX as roughly equivalent stations, not in terms of explicit political ideology -FOX is extreme right, where as the others are merely far right. Instead, they hold roughly the same principles sensationalism. The differences we call ideological are just what gets sensationalized, who the pundits are, and what they think we should fear. That is the real ideology of these news stations -sensationalism- and it destroys political discourse in America.
Years ago, shows that had 7 millions viewers in the USA would be canceled as failures. Today, everyone is crowing about how Fox is destroying the competition by getting 3.5 million viewers. All these stations are being demolished. They are on an unstoppable declining path which they are accelerating by replacing quality journalism with sensationalism.
I agree with you. We should distinguish between television journalism and newspaper journalism. The best television report rarely reaches the average newspaper article. Look at the report transcripts available on television stations (local stations, ABC/CBC/CTV, CNN/FOX/MSNBC). Then compare them to related articles in print newspapers. Throw the New York Times in the mix. (Compare to a quality monograph or academic journal to deflate the pretensions of the quality of journalism; but you'll have to wait 6 months to a year.) Television, either by its nature or the way we use it, is not conducive to analysis. In print it comes easy. On TV it requires principles and money.
The problem is not numbers but culture. If 100 uncritical, unsavvy, cowards show up at the Whitehouse, nothing will be accomplished. If 3 or 4 critical, savvy, and courageous journalists in the pocket of the big corporations show up, nothing will be accomplished. Personally, I'd rather we have 100 journalists than 3 because 100 are more difficult to control than 3.
What we need is a strong culture of quality journalism. This culture has been in decline for decades now. We are at the point where the major network television is imploding with sensationalism and irrelevance. Their failure to ask critical questions in the run up to Iraq ought to prove their value.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
what will the government want in return?
Government in bed with... military industrial complex (Cheney) Afghanistan/Iran/Iraq Hoax Wars and highway robbery of our youth.
Government in bed with... Wall St. financial collapse + Wall St.'s "Mortgage Bailout" and highway robbery of the tax dollar.
Government in bed with... Journalism government "tuned" journalism and highway robbery of any journalistic independence.
Dilution of Common Rights & Principles more Plutonomics (See Michael Moore's film, "Capitalism: A Love Story").
-- Bottom Line --
US Democracy US Peasantocracy (no rights, no power, no money: See "The Matrix"; yes, "The Matrix" but with a plutonomics view).
The fees paid to the FCC seem to be meant to reflect the cost of processing the application and performing the FCC's regulatory duties. Not a word about paying to use the spectrum itself. [src]
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
>> How does them making money hurt you any more than your neighbor getting a cow?
If that cow is being fed on public grass, and your neighbor's cow cannot coexist with your own cow on the same land, you end up with a tragedy of the commons situation. In your "nobody should worry about what anyone else is doing" utopia, I would just be able to set up my own competing station on the same frequency? How long would it take for the airwaves to become completely useless?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
While the CBC has a mandate to promote Canadian unity, which I feel compromises its reporting on Quebec nationalism, I think nobody in Canada would say the government controls what the CBC reports.
So apart from where it controls what the CBC reports, it doesn't control what the CBC reports.
OK. :-)
I am not saying that the press can't act independently most of the time. I am saying that -- unless you have full transparency, which of course (ironically) doesn't exist in journalism -- you never know if there's something they are hiding or misrepresenting. Maybe 99 percent of the time they are independent, but you never where that one percent is lurking. And this strikes directly at the issue of trust, without which most mainstream media cannot survive.
As the MSM audience bleeds away, the danger to quality journalism at the CBC comes from market forces, not government forces.
For now. As far as you know. And as the MSM audience bleeds away, there's less opportunity to KNOW whether the government has undue influence, because there's fewer other people from other media checking up on the stories.
Whether or not the CBC is independent now or in the past is not the point. It's about trust for the next story, and the next, and the next after that. And trust requires not just a track record but also a reliable foundation, and being paid by the people you're covering is simply not such a foundation.
The current bill in Congress allows newspapers to become non-profits. The thinking behind it, is that they have been losing money and don't pay taxes anyway. They must follow different rules if a newspaper wants to take this route. There in a educational content to ad ratio of 50:50 and they can't endorse any party or politician. They also have to provide equal access to parties/candidates/issues. This would be much better than the heavily left leaning paper where I live. After subscribing for many years, I finally stopped my subscription last year, because I was sick of their politics. I stopped the national edition of the NY Times shortly after. I would gladly subscribe to a non-union, non-biased paper, if I could find one.
If only it was true.
Apart from the first amendment it just words on paper.
"People like you are why the founders of this country felt the need for a written Bill of Rights" sounds good until you get to the next century when A.J. Liebling said "The Power of The Press Belongs to Those Who Own One."
We have always had a love/hate relationship with the press.
Its actually just a megaphone rented by an oligopoly to the Global Village Idiot.
Its audience is the advertisers and it merely promises to deliver a certain readership, measured by dubious means, to potentially catch their advertising, wrapped around a fish, lining the bottom of a bird cage or rolled up to hit the dog for shitting on the floor instead of on the newspaper.
Radio and television are no better.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Journalists don't need to know EVERY THING in the world to be able to write or report about it.
What they DO NEED though is critical thinking and logic.
You don't need math and physics to tell you that perpetual motion machine is someone's pipe dream or a hoax - logic should be enough (you put 4 cookies in the box, you get 4 cookies or less out of the box tomorrow).
That same logic should tell you that if you are going to write on a subject that you don't have a degree or years of experience in (stuff that makes you the resident expert on said subject) - you should research it first.
Read some books on the subject, talk to some actual experts, etc.
And one thing that they should MOST CERTAINLY take with them is that they should report FACTS - not opinions. Leave those to the experts and bloggers.
That way they can report the local man's CLAIM to have created the perpetual motion machine as a strait story without it being contradictory to the facts or science.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Straight story, not strait. :P
Damn spellcheckers.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The problem with newspapers is that they wish to provide news but people only want to receive entertainment. As newspapers increased their circulation, they increased the entertainment portions of their paper and eventually they ended up competing with radio, television and the music industry and making all their profits off classified ads instead of display ads.
They cannot fix the issue because if they drop entertainment (comix, horoscope, sudoku), they lose what they refer to as 'readers' so they cut the news instead (to keep circulation dollars for a short time) and end up losing the only customers who have few places to go for real news. It's a death spiral after that.
The post to which I replied said "Shut down broadcast TV completely". His arguments were mostly jealousy about the profits broadcast companies are making.
He didn't make any attempt to weigh the benefits of using that broadcast space for unlicensed low-power use versus the benefits of TV. That means he probably doesn't really care whether people use the spectrum or not, all he cares about is that TV cannot.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
"The problem is that newspaper newsrooms, once packed with reporters, are disappearing, and neither broadcast nor digital media are filling the void."
First off, I'd argue that digital media is not filling the void. Many sections have supplanted the print. Classifieds are not much better served by Craigslist - and cheaper. National and global news is addressed quite well via the internet. Local news is pretty prevalent on my iPhone. In fact, I didn't start reading my newspaper much until I started viewing the articles online via the Associated Press' application. I have Dilbert in my RSS reader.
So I'd argue that what we're really in is a transitional period from print to digital. And of course there will be some who will not move to digital - largely the older generations. But for the rest the transition is coming, and it's happening now.
***
"Obama is right when he says that finding a model to pay journalists to question, analyze and speak truth to power "is absolutely critical to the health of our democracy.""
Maybe if the media actually questioned, analyzed and spoke the truth it would not be in such a critical state. But the media which has long been filled with bias has become increasingly one-sided. In taking such biased positions and ostracizing and offending 50% of their potential readership the media has sealed their own fate.
Further add the fact that few in the media even research their articles. Take for example how many times the media refers to some firearm as an AK or fully automatic incorrectly. Do your research if you want respect. Stop just politicking soundbites.
"For the first time in American history, we are nearing a point where we will no longer have more than minimal resources (relative to the nation's size) dedicated to reporting the news."
I would argue that for the first time in nearly a century we are nearing a point where we have an abundance of resources dedicated to reporting the news.
Rather than one or two dedicated papers in a given town or journals on a given issue. We now have thousands of blogs, online papers and franchises reporting. Instead of having photographers taking pictures after the events we have onsite photographers capturing the events as they happen with their cell phones.
***
"The prospect that this "information age" could be characterized by unchecked spin and propaganda, where the best-financed voice almost always wins, and cynicism, ignorance and demoralization reach pandemic levels, is real."
This is EXACTLY what many people feel has been going on for decades. I'll give a great case in point. How well did the mainstream media with their leftist bias cover the shooting and murder of pro-life protestors. How did that coverage compare to the incidents where abortion doctors were killed. Why was coverage literally a 1-2 magnitude in difference. The murder of the pro-life protestors nearly ignored by the media. A side note tucked away in back pages.
So the real issue is that the expansion of media and reporting is affecting the ability of the left to control spin, and to deride all opposition with cynicism.
***
"Our Constitution is, the Supreme Court reminds us, predicated on the assumption of an informed and participating citizenry. If insufficient news media exist to make that a realistic outcome, the foundation crumbles."
We've already concluded it is not insufficient. If anything we are leaving a period of insufficiency for more coverage.
A moving away from the mega newspaper and media conglomerates back to the "pamphleteers" such as Thomas Payne and Benjamin Franklin - only now they're called "bloggers".
***
"Obama, the former constitutional law professor, says, "Government without a tough and vibrant media is not an option for the United States of America.""
Where is this so called tough media? You mean like CNN which leapt to defend Obama from a mild Saturday Night Live skit?
***
"Unfortunately, the marketplace now e
Going waaaay off topic here... but hey...
The 'laws of physics' are great tools for critical thinking.
No they are not. They are laws pertaining to a specific case. That is why there is so many of them.
You base the UNDERSTANDING of the second law of thermodynamics on the fact that the ice melts and that the hot tea cools - you CALCULATE how that will happen based on the said law (and other things).
That "Numb3rs" crap where they pull out an applicable math theory every time they find a body on the beech - that shit only works on TV.
Also, applied logic is a much "lower level language" and far more practical for future journalists as it pertains to ALL FIELDS of human (and other) work, thoughts, emotions just as it does to the laws of nature.
Computers work on logic - but so do human relationships.
Mind you, I said "critical thinking and logic" - not Logic 101 or whatever the name of the course may be.
Simply cramming theories and names of philosophers is utterly useless - unless you are prepping for "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire".
Adding a real math/science requirement would prevent the morons from becoming reporters.
No it would not.
Math and sciences are simply learnable skills. More often than not, like all courses, they come down to memorizing and repeating.
Something "morons" are as good at as most, often even better.
Memorize rules, memorize formulae, apply to current assignment. Repeat step 3 until you can complete assignment in the given time frame.
The reason doctors are required to take physics is that it is a great washout tool for medical programs.
God do I hope that you never get to teach. Or decide other people's fate in any way.
Physics, like any other course IN ANY FIELD OF STUDY, is taken in order to TEACH THE STUDENT physics.
NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT in order to flunk those who "don't understand it" or "think that they don't need it" or "don't like it".
Both human body AND nearly all tools doctors use to treat and heal patients work based on the laws of physics and chemistry.
And I am not talking MRI here - simply measuring blood pressure and temperature requires SOME understanding of physics of the matter.
You don't need to know the equation for the ideal gas law to take someones blood pressure but you sure as hell need to know that you are dealing with pressures there and what kind of pressures those are.
E.g. stress can be result of pressure but that is not the kind of pressure you measure with a blood pressure meter - though stress has an effect on the blood pressure.
You know... You need physics simply to understand what the further medical books are talking about and referring to.
Many med students are great memorize and regurgitators, but lack the smarts to understand physics.
Many Comp. Sci. students are even dumber. And don't make me start on Math. students.
Most those guys are down right one-trick pony idiot savants - above average with numbers, complete fuckups in everything else.
And like I said - you don't need "smarts" to pass exams. You need tenacity.
Sure, smarts helps but it all comes down to that old Edison's maxim "10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration".
Dumbest fuck on the planet with a strong enough desire or ego to drive him/her will pass ANY exam sooner and with better grades than most "smart" people.
My dad taught 'med school physics' for a solid decade, he personally prevented dozens of idiots from becoming doctors.
'You all memorize most of your classes, to get an A in this class you need to understand and be able to apply.
Ask your dad did he ever, in those 10 years, met a student that had understanding of the subject but had poor grades on the exams due to errors in calculation or due to lack of knowledge of the course material.
E.g. someone who knows how a microscope works and und
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens