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 stopped watching American news when I discovered BBC news.
I have a local station that plays news from all over the world, Russia, NHK (China or Korea - I forget which), Deutsche Welle, some French news show, and of course BBC. I don't see any difference between these shows and the 6:30 ABC, CBS, NBC broadcasts. They all follow pretty much the same format.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
No actually the content across all these world news shows is remarkably similar
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
They may not have started the Tea Bagger movement and they may not directly organize the Tea Bagger marches, but... Having your "correspondents" take part in the "protests," having your producers fire up the "protesters" for the cameras, and constantly vomiting drivel about taking back the country from the Socialists is exactly yellow journalism. Worse even since they are using it to shape public opinion, to effect a national agenda, and their "correspondents" and "journalists" are unapologetic about being entertainment under the banner of a news organization.
IANYL, IANAL, TINLA, IANAMD, IANAP,
Even the recent tea party marches don't qualify, as Fox wasn't the organization that started them, they just helped get the word out about what other people were doing (eg, reporting the news).
Uh, when it's the newscasters sponsoring them (aka, Glen Beck's 9/12 rally), then yea it's a bit more than "getting the word out about what other people were doing." You get your "opinion" guys to make the news so that your "news" guys can just re-iterate what your opinion guys said, but masked as news.
Any reputable news organization would have either not had people on their payroll repeatedly creating events for them to cover, or they would have mainly covered other organization's response (or used it is a starting point) to the activity in order to try and show neutrality in the news room.
Staging shots to make a protest look big for the camera is "acceptable" behaviour. Lying about the number of people who showed up, and using actual footage from protests from months ago is not.
In case you weren't aware, Fox News used footage from the "Tea Party" protests they sponsored, helped organize, and promoted in September to make the Health Care protest from last week look much larger than it was.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Getting rid of downmods on Slashdot sounds great in theory but it would just result in GNAA posts lingering at 1 (or 2 if the guy doing it has good karma). Which means I'd have to set my threshhold even higher to avoid seeing them, which would bury comments that are actually useful.
First of all the Greater Nashville Apartment Association has a right to their opinion like everyone else. ;)
But seriously, in case you haven't noticed there are a lot of legitimate posts buried by moderators who simply can't stand reading something they disagree with. Especially when the topic is political or similarly divisive topic. So that's already going on. Slashdot has never been particularly fair and balanced. Of course, neither is the news media these days.
The news isn't as unbalanced as Faux News tries to claim. They've long been shills for the extreme right wing zealots, and whine when they're not taken seriously. They do have some fairly honest news programs, but they live in the shadow of the loudmouth hatemongers, and end up tarred with the same brush as a result.
Their viewers may claim that it's not a fair association, but it's the presumption of everyone else who does not share their "values".
John