Slashdot Mirror
Your Opinion Counts At CNN — But Should It?
theodp writes "Some people love how CNN employs Twitter to engage its audience. Not Steve Dahl. 'I am not interested in the take of @stinky on the Fort Hood shootings or any other current events,' complains Dahl of the access the media gives to Internet know-it-alls. 'I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news, not act as a clearinghouse for any bonehead with a computer, a cable modem and a half-baked opinion.'"
I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news, not act as a clearinghouse for any bonehead with a computer, a cable modem and a half-baked opinion
Yeah! That is slashdot's job!!
This question on a site like this seems incredibly ironic.
While I mostly love Slashdot for its comments and the talks between members, it just doesn't work everywhere. If I'm watching CNN from TV, I'm looking for intelligent, fact-checked news and opinions from professionals, not from some mommy who is twittering without understanding any of the issues behind specific things.
and why should I care...?
but half baked opions taste so good.
I would give everything i own for a little bit more.
I agree. News in America is dead. It turned into entertainment a long time ago. It isn't so much about news anymore as it is about yellow journalism or picking a station that validate one's political views. I stopped watching American news when I discovered BBC news.
I would say that Edward R Murrow is rolling in his grave, but he was cremated.
Ted Turner is right, they need to put him back in charge.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Don't like it, don't read it. Christ, the only reason why I read user comments on CNN, or Amazon reviews, or anything else where the wisdom of the masses extrudes itself is an urge to rubberneck. It isn't as if they're touting these commentaries as fact-- it's just a poorly moderated scribble board, and it says so on the flap.
How funny is that: A guy airing his opinion on a public medium about how other people's opinions shouldn't be aired on public media...
We need a CNN story on this (complete with tweets) to bring things full circle.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Great thing about cnn is the HLN's "your voice" where they display a graphic of some kind of cellphone bars or audio bars or something in the shape of a hand flicking you off and the great thing about it is that its animated to make it look like its flicking you off over and over again.
CNN will do anything to boost ratings, even fake war coverage Who would want to watch a news channel that puts corporate profit above journalistic integrity? These guys are right up there with faux news.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
In my opinion, *MY* opinion should *always* count.
But that's just my opinion.
I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news [...]
Yeah, that's definitely where you went wrong.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
I guess you didn't see wolf blitzer on celebrity jeopardy.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
This isn't a story, this is one cranky old guy being cranky because he 'did six hour shifts at Podunk in a small newspaper' and his opinion should count more than Joe SixPack with a Computer and a Modem (we've got cable and fiber these days dude!). Well, the point of the matter is that CNN and others who use the typed in opinions of others gets perhaps a chance to get a different perspective than that given by Cranky Chicago pundit who doesn't get to be the wise old pundit any longer. Shooting at Fort Hood? Indeed I think I would like to hear the insights of people who I don't know, - actually have been to Fort Hood or who are more familiar with the potential situation than the idiots/ex military pundits they normally bring to ponder and muse over 'how far the PX is from the baseball fields' as seen for the first time by them by looking at the Google Map. You know, especially on those breaking situations where Wolf Blitzer is trying to put the scariest and most ominous slant on every bit of information, a chance to hear the words of actual real people instead of just the usual crowd of Emotional Vampires we usually get is refreshing. And old dude who resents that the guy who is stationed at Fort Hood and who texts in an opinion, well get over yourself, it's a Brave New World after all where the old ways are being changed and remade.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Gone are the days of dry Toria Tolley, now it's the opinionated presenter of the teleprompter !! It's all crap. The twits are just the next step. It won't be the last.
any bonehead with...a half-baked opinion.
You Americans. You love to talk.
You love to say 'Let me tell ya something' and
'Here's what I think about that'.
Well, shut the fuck up.
-Death in "The Meaning of Life"
The Germans have a nice saying for that phenomenon: "Vox populi, vox Rindvieh.", which loosely translates to "the voice of the people is the voice of idiots." (more precisely, the voice of stupid cows).
Do your own thing. And overdo it!
Of course CNN filters any comments that don't match it's agenda so how would you ever get any thought provoking comments?
It's a way to cover airtime without any extra cost. Anyone watching BBC and CNN can really see the difference in reporting style, CNN will beat a single story to death, spending a better part of the hour discussing it, while BBC will spend at most 10 minutes on any one story, provide the information and move one. CNN is really infotainment, where it doesn't matter what the news is.
I find it amusing that there's an opinion piece that's against opinion pieces. What's Dahl's claim to lipping off "you aren't allowed to lip off?"
This was a gem (emphasis mine): "I was held accountable by management, listeners and, most important, advertisers."
That's the ugly of a Dahl editorial and the beauty of a slashdot comment -- you can voice your opinion here without anybody threatening to fire you because you spoke out against the status quo.
"When did public opinion merit the same amount of airtime as the actual story?"
When we got the internet. It used to be that only the rich could use the freedom of the press, because you had to actually own a press to have freedom of it. Now we, the people, have freedom of the press, too. The rich and the corporatti don't like us unwashed masses having a voice one bit.
Free Martian Whores!
And yet I have to wade through an entire section called the editorial pages that acts as a clearinghouse for any bonehead with or without a computer and a half-baked opinion.
And frankly, the news section is so status quo. I learn no less from the comics.
None of the mainstream news sources have done that in 20 years, let alone CNN.
And, I mean, white women just aren't disappearing at the rate they used to. Gotta cover the 24 hours with something.
I have to agree. When they first started reading net comments it was OK, but they've taken it too far. Every once in a while if there is a really insightful comments it's fine, but it’s starting to seem like they're crowd sourcing journalism. If they're not just reading something off the internet then their fiddling with their latest data visualization tool. They seem to spend more time mucking about with new technology than they do reporting. Anybody else that hologram they used during the campaign coverage? There is something very wrong with special effects on the news!
I can't tell you how many times I've said that exact thing!
The way I see it, Steve Dahl is nothing more than a bonehead with a DS-3 connection. What's the difference other than the number of readers and the username? Isn't Steve Dahl voicing his opinion? Isn't he just a person, and doesn't that mean you or I could post our opinions? What makes him so special?
Sure, there are some brain-dead yokels on both sides of the spectrum. There are the idiots who worship trees and think that trees feel and believe the "global warming" er "global climate change" chant without asking for the evidence and the raw data (okay, I admit I'm a skeptic given the revelation of how temperature sensors are installed now vs. 40 years ago and what the guidelines dictate. Too many are installed over or next to heat sinks). Then, there are those on the right who pick and choose what to believe in Christianity, you know, pick the part about man having dominion over the earth but ignore the part about being good stewards, etc.
Both extremes of the spectrum should be totally ignored. Use your brain people, moonbats and neo-cons alike! We each have the biological equivalent of a cluster of supercomputers in our head for a reason: to use it! THINK! However, that still doesn't mean every moron doesn't have the right to voice an opinion.
That is just the reality of it when you open your news site up to comments. You're going to invite the whole spectrum, and the sad thing is both moonbats and neocons are equally stupid in equally loud ways, so their posts stand out.
Including this post. ;)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Ironing... er irony aside, The news should be just that.... news. If you want to have a 30 minute opinion show that uses twitter, I don't have a problem with that. The problem is that reporters are not trying to find out new information, just giving me any thing but the shallowest facts. Instead of expert analysis, they fill the airwaves from reactions from people who don't have any direct connection to the event at hand. Big events do touch more than the direct participants, but the news channel is not the forum (at least not 24 hours a day).
"Ones and zeros were everywhere. I even think I saw a two!" - Bender
"If I'm watching CNN from TV, I'm looking for intelligent, fact-checked news and opinions from professionals, not from some mommy who is twittering without understanding any of the issues behind specific things."
... a good example is a website where you could creat a transfer contract for a soccer player. Several magazines in sweden fell right into that trap and published that a famous player had signed a contract with a club in europe. No one checks facts anymore it seems.
The new age brings with it new trolls.
Except from that - it's not just in the US where news media has seen its best but also in scandinavia
When it comes to user comments on stories it's not always good I do agree on that but it acts as a forum for debate on certain subjects which can be good. Or at least in these cases as long as you need to be a registerd user. Too many times there is no name to connect with the opinions which can cause negative effects in several ways. A forum at my school sufferd from anon usage since there was a hot debate over an election and it got a bit out of hand which led to the debate getting mentioned in several news media which didn't fact check and that in turn lead to a blow towards our schools reputation (one of the leading schools in the country in its area)
So to sum it up, maybe not all stories need to have comments avaliable. That and the news agencies do need to catch up on their fact checking.
I understand that 24 hours news sites need to fill a lot of air time or that news web sites would like something new for you to look at each time you refresh but not everyone wants to follow the news as it happens and sort it out themselves.
Do you want to follow the balloon boy story, be fooled and then read about the sorted details as it unfolds... or maybe I just want to read about it a few days later wrapped (mostly) up.
Do you want to read the entire stream of new articles on digg.com when they have 0 diggs or do you only want to read them later when others have dugg them and you can read the cream of the crop?
Why do you read Slashdot? Because the quality of the articles and rated comments is higher than randomly surfing the internet.
this will be marked redundant but I completely agree. I was under the (possibly naive) assumption that the job of the news was to inform the public, not to be informed by it.
As long as @stinky and people like him bring eyeballs and money to their website.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Their remade web page now puts fluff pieces and human interest stories as the most prominent headlines and images. As I am typing this, the largest headline and photo on us.cnn.com is "Obese kids are coronary time bombs" while stories about the economy and Obama's position on Afghanistan are moved to a small sidebar. The most trusted name in news indeed.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
When CNN started broadcasting twit feeds, it just confirmed that they were desperate to fill up air time with any kind of cheap content they could grab. Bad enough that they were giving air time to uninformed idiots, it was uninformed idiots with a 140 character attention span.
I expect my news to bring me more information than I could get myself in the allotted time. When the attorney general (Canadian here) releases a report, reporters sequester themselves in a room for hours ahead of the press conference to go through it and try to make some sense of a dense lot of information so that the high points can be delivered to me in a five minute news segment. I don't have time or expertise to do that myself, but I still want the information. We can go on about how this means news is all editorialized, but the simple fact is I can't gather, assimilate and analyze everything that happens around me, and I need what are essentially public advisors to help guide me through it.
This is why competition in news is so important (if one outlet consistently skips things for editorial reasons, that will come out), why a well funded public broadcaster is essential (to prevent news from becoming infotainment, always trying to maximize the bottom line), and why we need independent competition in news (to keep the publicly funded sources from becoming Pravda.) It's not a perfect system, but it does pretty well.
Aside from all that, nothing has depressed me about my fellow Canadians more than reading the comments on cbc.ca. At least the Letters to the Editor section of papers filters out the people that can't form complete sentences, and I can go on pretending the citizenry has a certain level of intelligence.
And when I do want uninformed opinion, or want to spew my own, I have plenty of online sources to go to. Let's just not pretend it's news.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
Honestly I agree with your comment about twitter and other social networking sites being thrown into the coverage. Maybe this is just a video interpretation of the "editorial" section of the newspaper where this discussion usually happens. Problem that I have noticed with a lot of American news stations is that they rarely report on what is happening in the world. I gather most of my news from BBC (I know the UK's equivalent of CNN) and ZDF (Germany). I find that I gain much more information from these sources than CNN. I mean when the most important news is Brittany Spears or a boy caught in a balloon, the world really must have not problems. Just my 2 cents. Feel free to flame at your convenience. --TR
I remember my Dad Yelling at the TV for whenever those Darn Democrats did A n y t h i n g . And if the news covered too much positive that those darn Democrats did he would change the channel. Hence why like only watches Fox news now... However with CNN just posting the comments from other people it allows think their views have meaning and they may get 2 seconds of fame if they actually read them on the air. They will probably still stick to the station and watch it.
Just like in the old Roman Days right before the collapse lets hide all the problems of the world and give them a good show. As long as they are kept entertained they wont revolt.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's way too late now obviously, but can we get rid of the "24 hour" news cycle and return to the "network news at 6 and 10pm" tradition? You know, before outlets like CNN, Fox etc had to go out and MAKE news because there wasn't enough to report, or have to bring on a bunch of clueless talking heads to fill time with speculation and innuendo that doesn't advance the story one iota? Back in the days when news outlets had enough time to RESEARCH stories, INTERVIEW relevant participants, CHECK their facts, and assemble it all in a format that a news anchor with actual INTEGRITY (i.e. Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Edward R. Murrow, etc) could then present to the public?? Sigh... I guess not...
Zooperman
Propaganda maybe, but CNN sure isn't a place to learn news.
If I'm watching CNN from TV, I'm looking for intelligent, fact-checked news and opinions from professional
You are probably new at that tv watching business.
Only allow people to comment that have provided some kind of verified name and address. It's easy to heckle someone from the cheap seats, but if you are up on center stage, your comments are likely to be much more civil.
There must be real-life social consequences to making an ass of yourself before you see any improvement in the tone of the average comment forum.
That's my 2 cents, and my username is my real name. (admittedly unverified since there is no way I know of to do this currently).
Seen the movie Network . . .?
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." P.T. Barnum
duh-duh-duh dat's all folks!!!!!!
It's a joke. Why the hell would I want to watch a TV newsperson read a web page or twitter feed? It's just dumb. Putting them in front of giant touch displays is also stupid. I don't want to watch someone operate a computer - actually put the damn graphic on the viewer's feed so we can see it straight on without some blow-dried suited idiot in front of it.
CNN seems to have this "child-like wonder" with tech at the moment.
I was somewhat sickened during the recent unrest in Myanmar, because CNN, rather than focus on the actual issue, seemed more obsessed with extolling the virtues of mobile phones and remote Twittering.
That and Christiane Amanpour coaxing people around the world to say "bloody murder" on camera in the name of investigative journalism, which reminded me of the Southpark episode where they used the word "shit" 162 times (complete with counter at the bottom of the screen).
CNN (along with the Beeb) used to be the forefront of news especially for people who tend to travel a lot and live out of hotel rooms, but these days they are becoming Fox for Nerds.
only those which are well-formed should be shown in public.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I think around the time CNN saw Fox staking out the conservative-centric news angles, and MSNBC staking out the liberal-centric news angles they knew they were somewhat screwed. In at attempt to differentiate themselves they embraced the "let the people own it" mantra and started up all the tweeting crap and the iReporter stuff.
They're trying to find a niche, and not doing a good job of it if you go by the ratings. Unfortunately they have been the closest left to a "neutral" cable news channel. If they go under it will be a somewhat sad day.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
At least someone at CNN still thinks they're in the news business. Everyone else seems to be thoroughly convinced that it is better to be in the entertainment business. If I want to know what @stinky has to say, i can follow them directly in Twitter.
-- Flavio
I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news
That is his first problem right there. They don't gather news, they gather entertainment and they present that entertainment with whatever spin they feel will best cause the effect they're looking for whether that be sympathy, outrage, shock, etc.
Don't get me wrong either, I'm not saying CNN is the only one like this and this isn't a political viewpoint where I'm categorizing news media into good, bad, left, or right. I'm saying all "news" programs are like this and have been this way for a while.
As for the public interaction via Twitter I don't see how that is a bad thing. In fact I think its a great way for them to keep in contact with their audience, live, and get the pulse of the public. I think it's great that someone at CNN is at least making an attempt at keeping up with some current technology trends and have found a way to use it as a possibly useful communication tool.
"...any SLASHDOTTER with a computer, a cable modem and a half-baked opinion."
and my sig approves of this message.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Google Trends data over in the past year shows that searches for "Jon Gosselin" exceed searches for "iran election", "healthcare reform", and "iraq war",. . .
The real problem: CNN has no real interest in facts anymore. interview the extremists on every side and leave it there.
Jon Steward has something to say about the problem
The advantage of Twitter is that it can offer raw data when there are quickly developing events. One of the problems with that is that it hasn't been vetted. Questions like "How trustworthy is the source?" or "Do these reports together indicate a trend?" haven't been asked. That's the job of CNN's reporters. And that's what news articles are for. But I don't think you can complain about having access to the raw data feed. So there are people whose intelligence rivals inanimate objects with the ability to upload their observations and thoughts; if you don't want that, don't use Twitter.
Military Intelligence is the same way. The data can be phone calls from informants or reconnaissance photos, but it still needs vetting. As long as leadership remembers they're looking at unprocessed data, there's nothing wrong with them accessing the raw feed. Of course, getting them to remember that can be tricky, but that's another issue.
N P R
/...
I find CNN (and other "news" stations) too often use the internet as a way to inject opinions that they don't want to state themselves because it would make them look bias. For example, you read three message from intelligent people who are in favor of government health care, and one from some moron who is opposed. The message is that the majority of people are in favor and the few who aren't are morons. However, the anchors themselves didn't say anything. They were just giving viewer comments. It is a way to inject opinion in to the segments that are officially reserved for news.
Anyone want to inform him that a cell phone + $15/mo is all you need to twitter?
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
I think there will always be a need for hard news, however editorial style opinion is dead. It used to be that in order to get to the limited number of news outlets, you had to have fairly impressive credentials and be an expert in what you would be discussing. However there are are so many outlets for news now and so many people with inflated credentials it is difficult to determine who is providing analysis and who is providing taglines for their political agenda. Not to mention you have people like Ann Coulter who milk the system by saying outrageous things to grab headlines because she understands that the major networks love to report on controversy, and she only has to sell books to a small percentage of the audience to make money, anyway. I was disappointed recently when Newsweek redesigned their magazine and added _more_ commentary. I can get that for free, what I'm looking for in a news magazine in in-depth coverage of major events, that I can't get from skimming the CNN headlines or from Redstate or Daily Kos.
People with opinions that should never be heard are now public.
Imagine if the world ends and the only thing left to represent life in this century was the server that held all of youtube's comments.....
It's not just CNN. Almost every company wants a Myspace page, twitter, facebook, blog, texting service, user accounts and registration, among other tech toys. The problem is that these tools were clearly intended to empower individuals to connect with other individuals. The companies using these things usually don't have any concerted reason to do so.
Corporations might be legal individuals, but they're not people, and they gain little to no benefit (perhaps even detriment) from attempting to employ socialisation. If you look at corporations as sociopathic, narcissistic, and single-mindedly self-interested individuals, it's clear they see these things as just another manipulation mechanism. They're not socialising; the conversation is unidirectional. They don't absorb, process, and react on the information, they gather and retransmit with absolutely no transformation. They're not talking WITH us, they're just talking AT us.
CNN doesn't do anything with the tweets. It's as useful as going to a Starbucks and having the employees stare blankly at you and repeat to you, verbatim, something a previous customer said while standing in line. "Welcome to Starbucks, Shelly said: I'll have a cafe mocha, damn I shouldn't have stopped in here, I'm gonna be late for work."
The people running companies need to realize that their company isn't one of our pals. They can't talk to us in our social circles, they can't hang out with us at a pub, and they can't sit in on our D&D sessions. They're product and service providers, nothing more. The fact that they desperately try to extend themselves into our social space borders on triggering the uncanny valley feeling.
Instead of bitching about how bad news is (which is obvious and easy), let's think of ways to fix it (more difficult and interesting).
_________
Is it possible for news to be objective AND a product?
i've been wondering if reporters should be part of some non-profit system. To have a press pass you have to pass some kind of ethics class and receive a license. If you violate the standards, they revoke your press pass. No press pass = no freedom of the press for you. The White House and companies can exclude you from press conferences on that basis if they like. If you try to do investigative journalism w/o a pass, the people you spied upon can sue you. Maybe celebrities won't let you interview them if you don't have the pass.
Perhaps you can't call yourself a reporter (or some other title) unless you have your pass.
A for profit company can hire you, but you are still accountable to the board. Your employer might not care if you have a press pass, but the people you talk to might, as might viewers. CNN might fire someone who lost their pass, or has cost them viewership.
Non-profit news organizations can sell articles to for-profit venues. Or maybe they can charge all they want, but otherwise have to conform to the rule for being a non-profit.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
You obviously misunderstand the role of news media today or in the past. It is not to inform, rather it is to initiate and to spin stories to the advantage of their corporate owners and advertisers. It is to control the way people think about issues by channeling them into acceptable and manageable paths for the benefit of their corporate owners. They are very good at it and even in its embryonic form in the middle of the last century, many like George Orwell and Aldus Huxley greatly underestimated their ability to mold and control minds.
How else would you explain a public that is so fooled that they are willing to pay $100-200 per month to spend half of their "viewing hours" watching advertisements?
People don't like to think of themselves as sheep, but they are far more like sheep than they would care to admit.
that someone still actually watches CNN.
... is the moderation system. It's not perfect, but it does improve the signal-to-noise ratio considerably. Maybe the editors at CNN.com or wherever are fulfilling this function over there, but it's not clear to me. In any case, I concur: I'm not really going to CNN to see what a bunch of random people think.
Yet another article about how someone doesn't like what another person is saying and thinks it should be limited. It may be that we don't like the fact that the same channel shows news, analysis, and commentary, or that the lines of those are blurring. If you think it's a phenomenon of modern life, I direct you to the campaign that put Thomas Jefferson in office. The bottom line is that people will say all sorts of things. With the guaranteed First Amendment freedom to be one of those people, we all have the responsibility to be prudent in our consumption of information.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
They used to be #1 and relevant. But, then Fox went Right and MSNBC went Left, and they found themselves in the middle grasping for an identity. The problem is CNN abandoned legitimate news coverage long ago to become the entertainment news channel. They even had a prime time all-entertainment news show. I'm a real-news junkie and I've tried recently to watch CNN, but I just can't stomach the constant Britney Spears/Angelina Jolie social life updates. They gambled that they'd pick up the idiot demographic by going this route and all they've done is alienate their base. Good luck, maybe they'll have more success with a format change like The Nashville Network?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
While on one hand, I agree that a bunch of tweets from random people are not all that interesting or newsworthy, I also have to say that Dahl's column reads an awful lot like the same old media elitism we've become used to. Only the opinions of professional journalists are wanted, the unwashed masses should just shut up. It was a lot nicer in the world of journalism when you could say any old stupid thing and not get called on it. Nowadays, if a journalist says something stupid, he can expect to have his ass handed to him from some pajama-wearing blogger - oh, the humanity. But I do agree that it's primarily bloggers fulfilling this function, rather than random Twitterers, who for the most part are not contributing very much value.
While I agree with you, your example does not well support your conclusion. The increase in American child obesity (it is largely still an American problem), is a huge issue as it points to decades and decades of additional problems for a health care system that is already collapsing between the ravages of inefficiency, human error, excessive greed, over and under regulation, and politicization. Also, we need to keep in mind the "dumbing down" at CNN is part of a larger trend in America the st,eady decline of the education of the average American. Politicians everywhere are cutting education to "pay for" all the mistakes made by insufficiently educated politicians who were voted into office by an increasingly insufficiently educated electorate. If CNN can't appeal to their audience with "fluff", they will only have an increasingly smaller audience, because it is only "fluff" that most are able to comprehend. Audience size is critical as it determines market success for its advertisers and those pushing its story lines, the only reason it exists as a business in the first place. If you take a look at science news, for example, actual stories about science have steadily declined as an overall percentage of total "news" stores, with most "science" tabs on online browser- based "news viewers", being stories about gadgets of one kind or another, as if this was science.
I often wonder if the news was ever any better. I read recently in, I think, Time magazine an article about newspapers from the 1920s. They would also back candidates and bad mouth the opponents, take political sides when reporting stories (and which stories to report), etc. Nothing has changed there. I don't imagine papers weren't "making news" back in the day either -- it's hardly a novel idea. They need to sell papers and, just like Slashdot, there are slow news days. So you go and interview a politician or police captain or waitress and you hope that something more interesting comes out of it. If not, you have a nice "people" piece. But there wasn't any news until you started asking.
With the Internet news, it's likely not any different, it's just faster. 24 hour news can't possibly generate enough facts to keep people going, so even the "famous" journalists like Anderson Cooper are left with filling in the gap with their faces and open mouths. "Gosh, I remember when I was sick with the flu. I coughed and coughed. Really hurt. Really hurt my ribs when I coughed like that. With the flu. So...uh...so you don't want it. The flu. Or to cough."
I read Time magazine (paper edition) because they usually have one or two long, decently-researched articles (thrown in between what are essentially headlines for the rest of the "news" and some opinion pieces). Anything online is essentially under-researched nonsense -- I'd rather see constant updates, then, after a week, see a full write-up on the situation with sources, quotes, facts, etc. Let me know what's going on, as you hear it, but give me the NEWS at some point instead of just a bunch of repeated text.
I'm more concerned with them taking fox news seriously and giving them validation despite their neck-deep role engineering the 9/12 teabagger protests and deliberate manipulation of footage to mislead the public into thinking there are more americans opposed to democratic agendas than there actually are.
I don't appreciate them giving validation to a network which manufactures the news stories they cover, either through acting as a political action committe and then covering their own protest rallies, through lies of omission and quotes out of context, or through lies of manipulation.
Slanted analysis is one thing, but you never see the leftist MSNBC outright fabricating propaganda.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
It seems that since mainstream media has started its decline (thanks to the internet) they take every chance to de-credit 'online journalism' or 'the people' as 'news' (which they themselves defined many a years ago). Hundreds of years ago there was no 'media', no 'mainstream news'. News traveled via word of mouth, and once again, that has become more effective (thanks to the advent of the internet). Fuck 'the news'. Best law spreading medium 2009.
'I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news, not act as a clearinghouse for any bonehead with a computer, a cable modem and a half-baked opinion.'"
That's funny; Steve Dahl pretty much described himself there.
Since FOX has more viewers than all other cable news outlets combined, I'm pretty sure they don't need any validation. Of course, the prevailing view is that FOX just attracts jingoistic idiots and that their ratings have nothing to do with the quality of their product being any good. There may be some issues of professionalism and qulity of product with other outlets. Then again I could have missed Shepard Smith calling the President's supporters "balls to face".
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
Since FOX has more viewers than all other cable news outlets combined, I'm pretty sure they don't need any validation. Of course, the prevailing view is that FOX just attracts jingoistic idiots and that their ratings have nothing to do with the quality of their product being any good. There may be some issues of professionalism and qulity of product with other outlets. Then again I could have missed Shepard Smith calling the President's supporters "balls to face".
It's not my fault that Fox News, while an out-and-out propaganda network, is also the ONLY network covering relevant issues rather than gossip.
Perhaps the producers of the daily show and colbert report should launch a "fact check" network which extracts the relevant stories from all these other networks and subjects them to scathing fact checks which are, at this point, only applied in occasional 9 minutes snippets on the afore mentioned comedy shows.
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What makes the know-it-alls and bone-heads that work in the news any better than know-it-alls and bone-heads who don't?
Most media people you see day-to-day have the mistaken impression that they actually know WTF they're talking about. Unfortunately, they don't.
I don't think it is bad to let people add comments. What I think is bad is that the comments are not regulated by pertinent or entertaining value. I am not certain but I believe this problem has already been solved on some other site.
Murdoch figured out a long time ago that not only could he expand his media empire by gobbling up 60-70% of every market, he could then further consolidate his monopolistic goal of media empire by buying up the cable connections to that news. That way not only could he push his view of the world upon the public, but could charge them $100-200 per month just to spend about 50% of their time watching commercials that he had been paid by advertisers to air, not to mention that the totally advertisement channels, which have displaced channels that actually provide some kind of "programming" pay a flat fee to his empire just to get their channels on the air. The public got screwed when he did his deals with Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II to extend the amount of market dominance he could have in any single market and interjected himself into Chinese/American politics with his Sky News empire in China, so as to give rising Chinese corporatism a greater voice in American markets. No wonder he lives in fear of the old "equal time" rules and why he has so firmly become a "champion" olf wingnut fanatics so eager to do the corporate bidding and anti-tax crusaders.
You don't get to become a billionaire by posting to twitter or slahsdot.
Your solution seems to be that we should get our news from Comedy Central. I submit this is, well, silly. Allow me to offer a better solution.
There are several orginizations now that produce targeted timely coverage in specific areas. Politico is an example. While all these tend to have a point of view, they are generally patronized by those interested in the field. A person could build a list of these focused coverage sites for their own consumption, adding or removing sites as appropriate to their own metrics of value. A sort of "build your own news agregator" list of web links. Some content is available only to paid subscribers, such as most of Stratfor, but paying for news information isn't a particularly new or shocking idea, much less the idea that one has to pay to get teh best of a particular product. Personally I consider Stratfor worth the full price of admision.
Cable news coverage is at a level of depth much less than I want, regardless of network. I've chosen to develop a selection of "expert sites" for my personal consumption. This is how I do it. YMMV.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
Your solution seems to be that we should get our news from Comedy Central. I submit this is, well, silly. Allow me to offer a better solution.
There are several orginizations now that produce targeted timely coverage in specific areas. Politico is an example. While all these tend to have a point of view, they are generally patronized by those interested in the field. A person could build a list of these focused coverage sites for their own consumption, adding or removing sites as appropriate to their own metrics of value. A sort of "build your own news agregator" list of web links. Some content is available only to paid subscribers, such as most of Stratfor, but paying for news information isn't a particularly new or shocking idea, much less the idea that one has to pay to get teh best of a particular product. Personally I consider Stratfor worth the full price of admision.
Cable news coverage is at a level of depth much less than I want, regardless of network. I've chosen to develop a selection of "expert sites" for my personal consumption. This is how I do it. YMMV.
yes, clearly people should not be exposed to perspectives they don't agree with.
There's something to be said for not allowing people to self-select their news coverage.
It allows them to bury their head in the sand and is deleterious to the informed society required for democracy to properly function.
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They take a similarly pessimistic viewpoint of twitter-happy 'citizen journalists' http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/07/nsfw-after-fort-hood-another-example-of-how-citizen-journalists-cant-handle-the-truth/
Before you jump on the bandwagon of libs trying to marginalize Fox News, you have to acknowledge that ALL of the media are guilty of ALL of the practices that you are accusing Fox of.
Case in point. I was in Tallahassee in 2000 at the controversial election certification. If you watched the event on TV, you would think that the Capital was filled with equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats. I watched as a CNN producer asked the crowd if the were for Gore or Bush. There were maybe a hundred Gore supporters but there were easily a thousand Bush supporters. I was surprised to hear the commentator make a comment that the crowd seemed evenly divided.
I later saw the segment air on CNN and had I not been their myself I would have thought that the crowd was evenly divided.
So the reality is that the media creates the images that they need to support the story that they are telling.
Yes, I often see CNN anchors calling for people to attend protests, leading those protests from podiums, sending emails to themselves to create the illusion of public support, manufacturing rumors and citing other programs on their own networks...
oh wait, that only happens with ONE network.
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CNN siding with democrats?
"I just got back from Washington DC at a huge protest."
A protest engineered and promoted by an ultra-right propaganda network for half a year.
"The lone dissenter to these guys is Fox News; funny how 'the fringe' has a typical FOUR TIMES the ratings of this and other, lesser outlets."
Those ratings are less indicative of the popularity of their viewpoint and more indicative of just how horrible the alternatives are. If I had a choice between a yugo and walking, i'd choose the yugo too!
please go back to your bunker, the rest of us in the real world want the government to step in to put a long overdue stop to the insurance industry's "death panels". According to the dingbat right, apparently corporations can never, ever do harm!
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What your are talking abstractly about is the Sean Hannity's, Glen Beck's and Bill O'Reily's, Mike Pappantonio's and Keith Olbermann's of the world. These people are called commentators and they make their living saying outrageous things.
Fox doesn't have to "manufacture support" the proof is in their ratings which they continue to dominate. There was another network that tried to make a living pushing there own agenda. Air America went broke because no one wanted to hear what they had to say.
Before you call these events manufactured, you should probably try attending one.
What your are talking abstractly about is the Sean Hannity's, Glen Beck's and Bill O'Reily's, Mike Pappantonio's and Keith Olbermann's of the world. These people are called commentators and they make their living saying outrageous things.
This is yet another of fox's many fabrications. There is no boundary between these so-called "commentators" and the rest of the news staff.
Fox doesn't have to "manufacture support" the proof is in their ratings which they continue to dominate.
"It's not my fault that Fox News, while an out-and-out propaganda network, is also the ONLY network covering relevant issues rather than gossip."
The popularity of the network has nothing to do with its viewpoints and everything to do with the decay of the sector as a whole. Given the choice between a yugo and walking 40 miles to work, i'd choose the yugo too.
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Personally, I don't care what Steve Dahl has to say either. When I saw his name I remembered his days as the leader of the 'disc demolition army' and a fairly lousy radio personality. If I don't care to hear what some clown on twitter has to say about the news on CNN I sure as hell don't care what Steve Dahl has to say.
I am a little confused. Is it really more important to you to criticize commentators on Fox News for being active participants in the political process than it is to criticize the other media for abjectly ignoring important stories? Which do you think is worse?
Are you honestly subscribing to Anita Dunn's assertion that Fox News is an active architect of Republican policy? As an active member of the Republican party, I can assure you that Fox News VERY often ignores things that the party would like covered and relentlessly pursues things that we wish they would leave alone.
I am a little confused. Is it really more important to you to criticize commentators on Fox News for being active participants in the political process than it is to criticize the other media for abjectly ignoring important stories? Which do you think is worse?
I think fox is worse, but only marginally. While all the MSM fails miserably to inform our public and contribute to a healthy democracy, fox is the only one which actively disinforms the public.
Are you honestly subscribing to Anita Dunn's assertion that Fox News is an active architect of Republican policy? As an active member of the Republican party, I can assure you that Fox News VERY often ignores things that the party would like covered and relentlessly pursues things that we wish they would leave alone.
political campaigns have two discrete components: promotion of one's own agenda and the demonization of the opposition. Guess which function fox serves for the republican party.
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One of the other amusing things I have found about CNN's attempt to capitalize on 'bloggy' type technology is they have added (in two iterations so far) comments to their news story so now people can sit and discuss them.
At first it looks like any other 'read and discuss' setup, except they have people heavily prune the comments in order to get an artificial 'balance'. I am not sure what criteria they use, but it is not connected to number of reply, number of likes, or even the content.
My best guess is that they want to have a carefully manicured blog to match the strictly controlled story so as to present an editorially consistent package to the passive reader. Which is why I consider them pretend comments.
Great comment! If I had mod points today I would mod you up.
Don't worry, I just did.
Oh... :(
Yeah! That's Fox's job!
Who do you propose does this selection of news sources if not the individual consuming the news?
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
What's a "modem"? ;)
#!/Jerald
You can only call the events that Fox covers contrived if you go to one and it is different than how it is portrayed on Fox. So I would like for you to specify an instance of a contrived story.
Boneheads with computers belong on Slashdot, not CNN.
I want my boneheads kept in one place so I don't confuse them with real news.
Have gnu, will travel.
Modern news agencies are strapped to find unique 24/7 content so they air this crap to fill up space between real events. its just the new version of showing the same damn Iraq vase being looted on a 24 hour loop.
The news isn't news any more. its 100% biased opinionated crap with economic and political motives. By acting like the tweets are valid content, the media will be able to say , "See - we want a completely unqualified yahoo in office. This is progress."
Informative and unilateral news in print, television, and radio is dead. To get that content, Google-it form the source. VIVA Idiocracy!
Anyone who has good karma isn't going to post GNAA posts.
You may notice that your karma maxes out at "excellent." In ancient times, slashdot used to have a points system with no ceiling, so you could accumulate karma levels OVER NINE THOUSAND!!! Trolls would karma whore until they achieved insane karma levels, then skydive from karma heaven with an epic trolling spree. That's why the new system has a ceiling - if you tried something like that now, your karma would run out quickly.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That's what our local CBS calls it, and, yes, it's annoying as hell. I'd rather have another bear up a tree story or some corporate PR piece vaguely disguised as "news" than know what some other TV watching fool thinks.
No no, you're right. Bitching and moaning on slashdot is SO much more effective. Obviously.
Actually, considering that the problem is that CNN is getting their "news" from stupid internet forum faffery, then it might actually be more effective for once.
That aside, stopping watching AND complaining to encourage others to stop watching is more effective than just stopping watching. Neither one is really all that effective at all without a critical mass of people doing the same given the size of their customer base, and telling people to just shut up and stop watching pretty much ensures that their isolated decision to stop watching won't have any noticeable effect.
Advocacy matters when your actions would otherwise be lost in a crowd.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Plasmacutter, please come back. I really do want to know who you think should be deciding on the news people consume. If there's a better option than "let people decide themselves" I want to know what that is, and why it's a better option. I'm not trying to be flippant, because I think it's a very real and important difference of view and I would like to know the other side.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
NPR
You think mainstream news channels care about accurate, unbiased, factual news? Nope. That doesn't sell. People want drama and shock value. News today is more "entertainment" than "news".
Its rather obvious that random idiots posts are far more important and factual than any televised news.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
N P R
Plasmacutter, please come back. I really do want to know who you think should be deciding on the news people consume. If there's a better option than "let people decide themselves" I want to know what that is, and why it's a better option. I'm not trying to be flippant, because I think it's a very real and important difference of view and I would like to know the other side.
How about putting oreilly or beck in the same room with olbermann?
If you put people of diametrically opposed ideology in the same room they will be HEAVILY motivated to do proper research, and their exchanges would quickly mete out the truth.
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I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news
Really? You must have just woken up from a prolonged coma, because CNN hasn't done that with any kind of respectability for the past 8 years, 2 months, and 1 day.
You can only call the events that Fox covers contrived if you go to one and it is different than how it is portrayed on Fox. So I would like for you to specify an instance of a contrived story.
You seem to have ignored every example i've provided.
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The ultimate test of viewer opinion at CNN is CNN's viewership, and CNN's viewership is dead last. Clearly, they're doing something wrong.
you can voice your opinion here without anybody threatening to fire you because you spoke out against the status quo.
Speak for yourself! Some of us are paid to voice specific opinions here, and stand a good chance of getting fired if we don't toe our master's line and promote the status quo.
Oh, and by the way, Vista always worked fine for me, and Win7 is even better, and the Zune is the greatest portable device ever made! :)
CNN (MSNBC, et al) already were boneheads with computers, cable modems and a half-baked opinions long before the discovered twits that tweet and audience participation in their ambulance chasing.
The BBC is at it here in Blighty as well, this sums it up for me That Mitchell and Webb Look - BBC News
-- For evil to triumph it is enough that good men do nothing.
You're absolutely right that blogging is not a substitute for actual reporting. My problem is that too little good reporting is being done these days, and when a "professional journalist" does get called out by a blogger for some egregious foolishness, the response isn't to try to improve one's reporting, it's to bemoan the fact that the damn bloggers are ruining everything.
But they're already both in my living room, or would be if I subscribed to a cable service. I have the option of listening to both and making judgements already. I hope you're not suggesting that we should force the commentators to be on the same station, or that we should force people to watch all stations equally.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
Our opinions are of very little value, when it comes to most subjects we're somewhere between uninformed and stupid. I watch the news because I want them to ask someone who actually has expertise on the subject, people who have knowledge about these subjects. I know an awful about a very few things, and damn little about almost every thing else. I can come to /. and find out what other geeks think about any and everything, but for the 14 minutes I'm watching TV news at one time I too would like them to trot out an actual expert, not the tweeted opinion of some moron from Delaware. (I have nothing against morons from Delaware. In fact, as I noted earlier when it comes to the vast majority of subjects I'm a moron, as are most of us.)
You have provided general allegations with no specific cases.
I agree. Who needs those pesky internet people giving their opinions. We need to shut down those blogs too, after all, they haven't been qualified as experts. While we're at it lets eliminate any and all websites except those by the "experts". Who wants to see Billy Jo Bob's website anyhow? We can also eliminate any form of chatting unless there's an professional moderating the chat to tell us how to speak to each other. I think maybe we shouldn't even leave our houses unless there is an expert to hold our hand and tell us when it's safe to cross the street.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
But they're already both in my living room, or would be if I subscribed to a cable service. I have the option of listening to both and making judgements already. I hope you're not suggesting that we should force the commentators to be on the same station, or that we should force people to watch all stations equally.
not the same station, the same room
right now there is no motivation to fact check. This has resulted in half the nation STILL believing iraq was the source of alqueda instead of afghanistan.
Repeat a lie long enough and people will start to believe it.
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You have provided general allegations with no specific cases.
how about you google "fox lies" or "jon stewart fox" or "daily show fox" or "media matters"
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I appreciate that you'd admit your belief that people should be forced to associate together. We all should respect this sort of clarity, particularly when it concerns such a heinous idea advanced for our supposed good. I would like to know whom you belive should decide where we spend our days and the company we keep, or is it only your assersion that reporters should loose their right to associate freely?
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
'I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news, not act as a clearinghouse for any bonehead with a computer, a cable modem and a half-baked opinion.'"
--yeah! That's what Slashdot is for! :)
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Though first attempt at expressing a point of view more often than not reeks in the cesspool of ignorance or inarticulance, how many solutions never reach fruition lacking the credentials within ones social environment? Democratic communication requires a forum to cut through the divergence of thought. Poor arguments should not clutter the public sphere. On the other hand an individual requires a forum to receive feedback needed to express a more articulate argument deserving higher visibility. The technology can be developed for a convergent process providing solutions representing a wider point of view. Though stinky in its current revision, the Do Good Gauge is an attempt to describe a more democratic forum for developing intelligent arguments.
I appreciate that you'd admit your belief that people should be forced to associate together. We all should respect this sort of clarity, particularly when it concerns such a heinous idea advanced for our supposed good. I would like to know whom you belive should decide where we spend our days and the company we keep, or is it only your assersion that reporters should loose their right to associate freely?
They have a public responsibility to inform our democracy. They should be required to do proper fact checking, and the best and most entertaining way to do that is to force the partisan hacks on both sides into the same room, thus compelling them to back up their arguments with more than fallacy and invective lest they be shot down by their counterpart.
When you go on the air and tell your audience it's "news" it better damn well center around the facts. Reporters should be constrained in this manner. If they want to toss out the opposition rather than face them fairly, they should be stripped of the "news" certification in the same way a meat packing plant would if they dispensed with the USDA inspectors.
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So you propose the government have the ability to strip a news reporters of their ability to speak publicly on notewothy topics if they do not meet a standard of truth decided by the government. Further, you belive that any public personality that takes a position should be forced to associate with those in opposition to his position. Failure to conform to these standards would result in the public personality not being able to speak in public forums. Additionally, you propose that private media outlets should have their programming dictated according to standards set by the government. Is that a fair sumation of the actions you'd take to make sure we all had good facts?
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