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Does Personalized News Lead To Ignorance?
blackbearnh writes "As newspapers struggle to survive and local broadcasts try to find a way to compete with cable news, more and more news outlets are banking on what people want to hear about, rather than what they need to hear. Thoughtful analysis of problems is being pushed out of the way to make room for more celebrity gossip. Electronic news guru Chris Lee thinks that as people get news increasingly tailored to their tastes, the overall knowledge of important issues is plummeting. 'I think one of the observations about how consumers are behaving in the past five years that has surprised me the most is, again, this lack of feeling responsible for knowing the news of their country and their local government of that day. I don't think it's just a technology question. I think if you asked people now versus the same age group 20 years ago, I think they'd be stunningly less informed now about boring news, and tremendously more knowledgeable about bits of news that really interest them.'"
Or said another way, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Works for news, too.
Newspapers are out because no-one has the time to read them. Real life TL;DR.
The sheer amount of news that you can get makes it hard to actually pay attention to it. Ten years ago I was glued to the evening news at eight-o-clock. That was about the only news you could watch on TV. Nowadays the news is on for 25 hours a day, iterating and re-re-re-iterating the same shallow 'reports'. Who watches that? No-one I know does.
To much of a thing becomes annoying.
Besides, it used to be that local news was covered much more then international news. What do I care about someone on the other side of the planet that just bumped his big toe? That isn't news to me!
And, lastly, watching TV in general is a pain because of the commercial breaks that are longer than the normal programming. It isn't watchable anymore.
So if I substituted my news sources with, say, the Washington Post, would I be better informed about Darfur? A suppressed report on Ivory Coast toxic waste dumping? Policy laundering during the ACTA negotiations? Iranian protests? SCO v. IBM? Homeopathy? Anything involving science?
My ears are deaf to these arguments as long as the mainstream press continues to do such a terrible job of keeping the public informed.
I think I'll make another donation to Wikileaks
http://outcampaign.org/
So you're complaining about all the other media tailoring news to fit your silly beliefs except for Fox? Spare me.
People discuss the controversial news on sites with other people who agree with them. And they get depth of knowledge about "their side" and get attacks, misrepresentations, and lies about "the other side". Then they often "forget" which was news, facts, or opinions and treat most of what they read on a biased site as true. It would often be better if they were ignorant on the subject.
This coming from the same mainstream media that usually just regurgitates whatever the police and prosecutors allege in a criminal report? Case in point, what happened to Ryan Frederick. Absolutely questionable and "juicy" from the beginning. At the very least, the papers should have made a scandal about why the police would be so moronic as to raid a small-time pot user 3 nights after a man with a vendetta against him burgled his home. If that isn't a public interest scandal right up there with "sex offenders are in your neighborhood," then I don't know what is because when the news poured out about what really went down, it made a lot of his community deeply uncomfortable about what the police would do to "protect them" (BTW, it gets worse, like the police using men who are active burglars to get them evidence).
Excuse me, but if Google or someone can create an active intelligent search agent which will build me a comprehensive list of public corruption news, political news, civil liberties issues, etc., then I'll be a hell of a lot more informed and less "ignorant" than I would be if I had to read a paper or magazine that caters more toward the assumption that the only thing people want to read about is celebrity news and what pretty white girl got killed after hooking up with 3 strange men in a foreign country.
If you're a right-winger, then yes, you will consider Obama a leftist. If you're a leftist (not a Democrat, those guys are center-right at best), no, Obama is not a leftist.
In the end though, it doesn't matter, both "rightists" and "leftists" are in the pocket of the same corporations and will essentially pass the same corporation friendly and regular people hostile laws.
Politicians are like little children and are arguing and pestering eachother through the media and there's indeed the tendency to serve more news which seem to draw in more people, align with their soap-series, or magazine style "sex-facts", upskirts and what have you.
I've disconnected from "tv" because of that purpose, but now the crap is entering into my online experience and I choose to ignore it; for one it causes less frustration when "yet another important sounding headline" preaches nonsense. Or there's yet someone pushing some FUD through articles...
Important news will reach me one way or another, but I don't care about 90% in "news" these days and wont waste time being "in the loop" constantly... I would if the quality would be much much better.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I don't think it's just a matter of liking the flexibility, customization, individuality, etc. We live in a world where we're barraged with news sources; there's far more than any one person could keep up with, even if they spent most of their time worrying about it. People are overwhelmed, so they throw up their hands and stick to their little corner. It's a distinctly modern phenomenon.
I disagree with you. I think giving people the news they want is the only way this has worked. Because who else is there in the equation to please with the news? You have the newsmakers, the government and the newsreaders. And only the last one makes sense.
... even breaking the possibility in advance before the law is passed ... will generate higher ratings than their competitor.
Allow me to point out what is wrong with your simplified explanation. Sure, news has relied on "Mycountryian Idol" and movie reviews on slow news days or even on a site where they can present a dearth of information. However, once the jaywalking impalement law is passed, some people are going to experience a loved one being impaled for jaywalking. Now what do people want to hear news about? TV or the impalement of citizens for jaywalking? The reporters understand this and know that breaking this now
This sort of capitalistic scheme for news is not without faults but your example is down right disingenuous. A single news source breaking the story of someone passing laws to impale jaywalkers would bring down their site as people rushed to read more about where and how this is happening. Despite the lack of bad things happening resulting in crap news on TV and in print, you must understand that people (at least Americans) still are very concerned with themselves and their well being above anything or anybody else.
My work here is dung.
Thank you for so eloquently proving my point.
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Nope. They never had a chance anyway, as their audience doesn't need to be told what to think.
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Really, as soon as we got more than one TV channel with the news on it, we had the option of picking and choosing the news that causes us the least discomfort and appeals to our personal biases. The internet has of course taken this to the extreme, now we have news and information sites tailor-made to appeal to the cognitive biases of whatever demograph you fit into. You can spend your entire life on the internet as a young-earth creationist and never challenge your beliefs once. The problem of course is human nature. If you are a conspiracy theorist there is plenty of media available depending on your political spectrum, from the Obama Deception to Zeitgeist. Both examples take advantage of the ability our human brains have for associating things that may have no relation to each other at all. All you have to do is take little snippets of media, string them together into some kind of narrative complete with Scary Music (tm) and you can make up any kind of "facts" you want. I've actually heard some people on the net defend the absurdity that is Zeitgeist by claiming it is anti-propaganda, as if there is some kind of information war going on and we must fight 'bad' information with 'good' information. Nowadays I frequently run into people who believe in 2012, and they provide me with tons of videos full of 'proof' of their conjecture. I run into people who believe that Obama is not an American citizen, they likewise have tons of 'proof'. This is just the beginning of a phenomenon made possible by information customized to appeal to cognitive bias. The article above is really just the tip of the iceberg.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
And eBay.
yet most americans know who is winning on American Idol...
Sorry, but it's not personalized news that is making people dumb.....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If the written word is boring, it's the writer him or herself who is boring, not the news or other subject matter. A good writer can write an engaging story about watching paint dry.
The only thing boring about, say, Google getting out of China, or the results of your local elections, is the way this news is presented.
people only care about Paris Hilton because that's what the corporations that own the news outlets want to to care about. "I am the great and powerful wizard of Oz. Do not look at the man behind the curtain."
Free Martian Whores!
I really have to wonder what metric they use for deciding whether or not news is important. I stubbed my toe today, is that important?
The president of Monaco (.7 square miles) tried to push his/her agenda onto Canada, is that important?
Man, your education is showing. There is no president of Monaco. I know that little detail is unimportant to the argument at hand, but come *the fucking* on!
Anyways, taking your comic hypothetical scenario, it could be, depending on the agenda, which might affect, I dunno, banking or investors who own assets in your country, or what not. If you are in the habit of taking news superficially, in particular international news, with nothing more than country size, population or distance from your TiVo and super-sized McDonalds combo, of course you will be tempted to ask such a silly question (who decides what's important).
But that's a function of you, not the news. The importance of a piece of news is not a function of your perception, or anyone. It is important or it is not.
You can't measure the importance of news by their (apparent) immediate impact on your life or your impression of how important and impervious your country is to external events originating from a seemingly unimportant (and perhaps backward-looking) place in the world... like Afghanistan in 1991.
Remember that time, when no one gave a shit, when many retarded animals used to say Afgha-what-how-the-fuck-you-call that shit? That "Arab (or whatever)" place where people where towels on their heads and ride camels. Whatever, I'm so like whatever! Why should I care? Fucking SuperBowl, that's important, lemme watch Chuck Norris kick some ass, we are awesome!!!!. Remember that time?
Turn the clock to 1994 for another example... being aware of the Rwandan Genocide over following the O.J. Simpson shitfest would seem to have been a very important news to watch and be aware off, even for someone living in a little cow town in the middle of nowhere. Not because it might have a direct impact, but at least showing you have something resembling a moral compass.
But that's just me... plus the media is incredibly guilty at that:
http://www.journalismethics.ca/interviews/media_failure_in_Rwanda.htm
All in all, a piece of news does not have to have an immediate, tangible and direct impact in your life, your town or your country. Gross violation of human rights, international news, science news, global and regional politics, global/regional/even local historic events, those are important news. The mark of the uneducated is that he will find those boring and "non-important" compare to watching "American Idol", some dude dancing on his head on MTV or "Real Shallow Stupid Whores of Orange County."
The idea that you need to have someone decide which news are important or not is stupid. There are important news, and there are non-important news.
The perception of their importance is a function of the audience's intelligence, education, and to a degree, their moral ability to give a shit about things. Important news are important news, independently of whether people can understand their importance.
One trouble is that news sources are no longer monolithic, and therefore folks don't know how to quantify objectivity and quality. Name any news source, and you're likely to find some sort of bent, depending upon who you are and where you come from... It has been noted that Slashdot is a specialized/personal technical news source (for geeks!). It is a great place to get a smattering of all sorts of news going on out there, but if one considers the sorts of stories as being objective, well, they'd have to be daft. Slashdot is full of opinion pieces, entertainment pieces, news rumors, leaks and actual news stories, and then there's the political leanings of this place, and the way the stories are summarized, and the tendency to favor certain software rights models... etc... I guess the question arises, exactly who decides what is a decent news source? Is it based upon popularity? Is there some sort of objectivity sensor that I'm unaware of? And what criteria would that broader, less specialized news content be based upon? Locality? Topicality? Banality? Frivolity? There will always be an expectation for a more objective newssource, and more than enough nonobjective news sources claiming they're filling that gap, but as the audience and news provider communicate, the profit model and the desire to please one another for profit corrupts the whole.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
My ears are deaf to these arguments as long as the mainstream press continues to do such a terrible job of keeping the public informed.
That's the entire point.
The mainstream press is delivering what people want to see, rather than what they need to see. Namely, lots of celebrity gossip and very little of substance.
People like fluffy stories... They like to hear about who is sleeping with who... They're interested in shiny bits of tinsel and sparkly rocks...
Businesses, including those who print newspapers, like money.
So the businesses print stories that appeal to people, so the people will buy their newspapers, and the businesses will make money.
And the depressing, complicated, truly important stories that people don't really want to read about... But really should... Get dropped in favor of popular fluff.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
That is because he cuts through all sides bull shit and calls it like it is under the guise of satire; when in fact all he is doing is telling the truth that the other sources are afraid to tell because it might offend someone.
Good God, folks, he graded out as the most leftist Senator, by far.
Why the hell is anyone surprised that he's governed from the hard left?
As a republican who voted for McCain, I gotta tell you, stop that stupid shit. Who graded him out, creationists? I don't like some of his policies (fuck I didn't even voted for him), but he's far from being a leftist.
In fact, you have no idea of what a "hard left" is. People like you whorify what it means to be to left or to the right, to the point that those labels become meaningless. They become more and more like elementary school taunting name tagging than actual classifications of ideology and policy. I got a couple of countries I can advise you to visit if you really want to take a look at what the "hard left" is really like.
I think you prove the point that people only hear what they want. MSNBC is just as biased as Fox News. CNN is trying to stay in the middle, but they are getting the same pressures to target an audience. The most popular cable news shows draw 1-3 million people daily (1% of the US population), they don't have an incentive to be balanced and general. I suspect newspapers, online and paper, magazines, etc. all have the same issues. DON'T piss off the target audience.
I don't know if I could call MSNBC biased the same way that Fox News is...
Certainly most of the "reporters" on MSNBC are biased... But not all in the same direction. Compare Morning Joe to Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Quite the difference of bias there.
Fox News, on the other hand, seems to have a very fixed message they're trying to deliver 24/7.
CNN, in my opinion, ceased to actually be a news network years ago. The reason it seems more neutral is because it doesn't deliver anything of substance. It's hard to work up much of a bias when all you talk about is kids floating away in balloons and which celebrity is sleeping with which.
But you are certainly right. These days people can see what they want to see. If all they want to hear about is food, or pets, or reality TV... There's probably a network out there dedicated to their tastes.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
If anything, I see this as a positive trend. People have a fixed amount of time that they can devote to exploring the news, via any medium, and it's more productive if they spend most of that time on things that are personally relevant to them. Most people know more about what their national government is doing than their city council, even though the latter has far more direct impact on their lives and it would be nice to see this reversed a little bit.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
60 years ago most people did not even own a television, let alone even know about the existence of the internet. Many had a newspaper and perhaps a radio. Neither of which offered the volume of content available to individuals today.
I think the OP missed the point. It's not the availability of news that is the problem, nor is it the filtering to tastes, it's a combination of apathy, time, and format.
Voters just do not feel connected to their government anymore, and many politicians have a hard time connecting with voters. Reporters have a 30 second spot on which to discuss a topic - plenty of time I'm sure to explore anything complex. The Internet offers the ability to more closely follow a given subject, but time pushes back as to what extent the individual can digest information in volume.
What you see now are a bunch of semi-informed folks jumping from one site to another, posting witty comments based on their narrow view of a subject, without ever really appreciating the depth/breadth of the subject.
I would attribute this in part to the culture shift underway in our society, where discussion among individuals has been relegated to trite comments on /. and bulletin boards, as opposed to attending meetings and engaging in real dialogue with other individuals in a face to face fashion. People are not invested in the dialogue, therefore their knowledge suffers as does the content of the conversation.
Something is being lost when we are not held accountable for our words, and not expecting our words to count. Have you ever watched a politician attend / speak at a town hall meeting? They struggle through with their sound bites, because the format forces a more thorough dialogue of the subject matter.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
MSNBC is just as biased as Fox News. CNN is trying to stay in the middle
For the sake of the endless discussion on biases from the mainstream media, it's important to clarify that news outlets have leaned towards different sides of the political spectrum for centuries, in all parts of the world. We have always had editorials after all. Whether or not this constitutes bias, the criticism Fox receives is not due to some ideological inclination, but due to frequent and intentional misrepresentation of facts in name of that ideology. The best compilations of Fox biases on the net tend to focus on their factual errors, rather than their choice of subject or tone.
I have the same feeling on that point. I even stopped watching tv news 18 months ago as all I had to look at was :
1 - Israel/Palestine
2 - Terrorism/War
3 - Wall Street collapsing
4 - shit I didn't care enough about to keep interested
As usual.
And for most points I had the "news" some time before on a webfeed.
The only advantage of newspaper is that the journalist is conveying an OPINION on what he reports. TV is giving the same slanted view, but no arguments carefuuly constructed, just a "here is what we think you should think about it in 90 seconds"
I now use google news and tailored it according to my points of interest, and I get the luxury of actually ignoring the rest as I DON'T CARE. I also get to make my own opinion.
"A specialist is someone who knows more and more things on less and less subjects"
So I am now a specialist news consumer.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
I think the opposite is true: people who are using the internet as their main source of information are entrenching their views, not challenging them, and personalization is certainly playing a large role in that. I remember a graph I saw a while ago (would need to try find it again) which showed the political leanings of blogs in the US, and their breakdown according to left, right, or balanced (in the middle). The vast majority were at the two extremes, hardly anyone in the middle, and I would also suspect that an analysis of the links between them would show interlinking between left and right is nowhere near as strong as those linking amongst themselves.
The irony for me is that we have at our fingertips such an incredible range of information, but at the same time, we restrict ourselves to the information we're most comfortable with.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
In the case of Ryan Frederick, when the public caught wind of what went down, the public outrage was so high that the prosecution desperately tried to move the trial to another region of Virginia because the public was so incensed that they seriously feared that they would get a nullification.
The media is brilliant at manufacturing controversy in cases like Natallee Holloway. Now, if only they'd turn that power to good instead of evil, they'd be able to do a two-fer: a public service and bring in the viewers/readers. In any given community, there's always something rotten going on with which they could whip up the public like they do with stories of pretty white girls going missing.
For God's sake, the media in Maryland could have had a field day when the Mayor of Brewyn Heights was thrown to the ground and forced to lay handcuffed, in his boxers, in the blood of his two dead dogs by Prince George County police after they raided his house over a monumentally stupid, obvious drug bust screw up. If that can happen to a mayor, that can happen to any white or asian middle class family.
I now use google news and tailored it according to my points of interest, and I get the luxury of actually ignoring the rest as I DON'T CARE. I also get to make my own opinion.
I think this answers the question with a solid "YES!" By putting blinders on you at best lose any concept of the broad effect that some events have on the rest of the world (even influencing those news events you may care about). At worst, you're missing out on half the argument because you don't care to acknowledge anything other than what you care to see.
"A specialist is someone who knows more and more things on less and less subjects" So I am now a specialist news consumer.
No, you're quite possibly an idiot, because if you're only reading opinions that you care to read, you're only getting a partial story. That's not an expert, that's someone who thinks they know a lot more than they do. Pull your head out of the sand.
Is it news companies job to keep you informed or is it your job to seek news sources that are informative? Put the blame where it is due and quite whining about how they don't inform you.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
My observation is that Jon Stewart is very good at pointing out Republicans who behave like jackasses. However, if you want to see the same level of pointed criticism/humor directed at Democrats, look elsewhere. He plays softball with them.
As a side note, Wikipedia has this about Jon Stewart: "In 2000, he described his political affiliation as socialist or independent." Granted, that's ten years ago, but from the sound of it he felt Democrat socioeconomic policies weren't (aren't?) liberal enough. No wonder he appeals to a certain demographic (young liberal idealists).
Jon Stewart is funny. Real funny. But to suggest anyone is getting balanced reporting from his show needs to tune into right-wing radio in order to even things out. Democrats have their share of jackasses, too.
Generally speaking, News in America is not really a product or a service and consumers of news are not really customers. The primary product of the news business is advertising and the real customers are the corporations that purchase that advertising.
The news we get to see is filtered in a big way by the system we've set up. "Keeping the public informed" is almost entirely incidental these days.
There was a time when we thought we could rely on ethics to keep things in check.... how has that worked out for us?
Except sports, the more sports you know, the better off you'll be.
Interesting list.
I know about most of those issues except Homeopathy.
The thing is that the current news system leads to extreme polarization. You do not just get to see the news subjects that you are interested in you get to see them covered the way that you want them. These days everybody gets to have their view point reinforced.
I feel this leads to extreme intolerance. Every one is so sure they are right that they think that anybody that doesn't agree with them is an idiot.
Republicans think the Democrats are idiots and the Democrats think the Republicans are idiots. I consider myself an extreme moderate...
Some of the news you mentioned you can do nothing to really influence. SCO vs IBM? That is a court case and frankly public opinion should have nothing to do with court cases. The public should be informed so they can protect the process and change unjust laws only.
The Iranian protests where all over the news.
Wikileaks I have to say I am not a fan of. Some of their leaks have the same level of journalistic integrity as the National Enquirer. I feel their publishing of the unedited pager messages from 911 to been a disgusting case of Yellow Journalism.
Had they just published some of the Governmental pages and sanitized some of the personal pages they would have been able to show just how bad the security of pagers really is and accomplished what arguably needed to be done.
I have to say at this time I have seen nothing of real value come out of wikileaks.
That is of course just my opinion.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
There's a problem for those who aren't interested in sports, because unlike national healthcare, I can't ignore it.
I know all the top headlines, I can't bring myself to set aside time to study sports. It's so painfully boring to read about sets of people reperforming the same actions every week, every year. They even attach numbers to the repetition and find amazement and wonder in it. All I see is that somebody put a ball through the hoop...AGAIN, what makes it different this time? They do it all the time!
Nobody wants to talk to me about the news, and nobody wants to hear me talk to them about it. But sports? It's /everywhere/, and I have to either study it, or sit there numbly while everybody else bonds and networks around me.
I don't, and I can't see how you could possibly say that. I think the problem here is your idea that people who know stuff are just smug know-it-alls. This anti-intellectual concept is misguided, as can be plainly seen in American politics, where the minority party is currently capable of pretty much stopping one branch of government from working, without anyone caring much about it. Why don't people care about it? Probably because the specific rules of who gets to filibuster, how exactly that works and what can be done about it is boring. It's much more interesting to read about the latest sex scandal.
The simple fact is that most of these things you think have no effect on people's lives actually do have an effect on their lives. And they are important things to know when you decide, say, who to vote for. These people are not smug, they are simply doing their part in the political system. They are informing themselves so they can make informed decisions when they're asked to.
I do realize my statement was an oversimplification.. Exaggeration is a valid way to illustrate an opinion.
Maybe I should clarify a bit... I think news (in general) in the US is so concerned about the ratings (and thus the $$$) that they jump at any press release they feel will be sensational enough to entice the advertisers to their show. American Idol and movie tie-ins are not news. Celebrity scandals in general are not news. They are ratings grabs. Even the legitimate news items tend to be sensationalized for as long as it takes us to get sick of hearing about them, and start watching American Idol just to escape from the constant barrage. That is about the point the news starts running items about American Idol again.
The press is always very quick to tout their necessity to a free society, to speak of the lofty ideals and point out what happens to places without a free press. But they are very willing to set those ideals aside and choose the most money over the greater good they just got done talking about in the last segment.
I work at a TV station, and we had a (failed) news show for a while with the stated goal of "Informing people who don't want to be informed" (seriously.. Don't you wonder why it failed?) Sounds great, but just like everyone else, the stories they ran were entertainment, they just had vegas showgirls and strippers reading the weather... (yes, it was that bad...)
Let me ask it another way... If the "mainstream" news media was doing its' job, would the blogging news sites still be around in anything but niche capacity?
Correction: What we don't know can't hurt us until it's too late to do anything about it.
a graph I saw a while ago... which showed the political leanings of blogs in the US, and their breakdown according to left, right, or balanced (in the middle). The vast majority were at the two extremes, hardly anyone in the middle
The US political scene (in terms of Dem OR Rep choice that Americans can choose between) is an excellent example of framing. When you take these two United states political "extremes" out of the US political frame, you find they are both very far into the Authoritarian Right compared to politics worldwide One ref of many available summed up in a nice graph of the 2008 presidential elections: http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008
Due to the global nature of the internet and the trend towards non hierarchical news sources I would wage that any normal young person growing up with internet news is much more likely to be exposed to this idea/reality at some time, than any previous generation who's only news source was corporate media.
For further information on this theme, see "Too polemical or too critical? - study of the news media and US foreign policy". Ref google scholar.
from the research article:
"While the US news media are adversarial towards the US government on foreign policy, institutional filters operate to ensure that the criticisms made generally stay within narrow bounds set by the US political elite... The institutional tendency to filter out anti-elite perspectives applies not only to the news media but also to academia."
propaganda model: "It explains why the agenda and framing of news reports on US foreign policy rarely deviate from those set by US corporate and political elites. Five filters function to shape news media output, which we label in turn the corporate, advertising, sourcing, flak and ideological filter. First, the ‘size, ownership and profit orientation of mass media’ and their shared ‘common interests with other major corporations, banks, and government’ creates a clash of interest between the media’s supposed role as a watchdog of the elite and the interests of that elite. Consequently news stories that run contrary to those vested interests are, on balance, less likely to surface than those consistent with the world view of major corporate conglomerates. Second, media reliance on advertising revenue introduces a further constraining link between the news media and the interests of commerce. This reliance shapes media output in order to appeal to affluent audiences, in whom the advertisers are most interested. It also limits the amount of critical and controversial programming because advertisers generally want ‘to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the “buying mood”’. Hence, money does not only talk: it also silences. Third, journalists rely overwhelmingly on elite sources when constructing the news. The need to supply a steady and rapid flow of ‘important’ news stories combined with the vast public relations apparatus of government and powerful interests more broadly means that journalists tend to become heavily reliant on public officials and corporate representatives when defining and framing the news agenda. Fourth, whenever controversial material is actually aired it generates a disproportionate degree of ‘flak’ from individuals connected with powerful interests including ‘corporate community sponsored institutions’s such as the Center for Media and Public Affairs, and Accuracy in Media (AIM) and government ‘spin doctors’. Such criticism serves to caution editors and journalists against putting out news stories that
The trouble is that most journalists (particularly political and business journalists) are largely dependent on their sources' willingness to talk. Their sources know this, they know this, and the journalists know that if they press their sources too hard their sources are going to shut up, and then the value of the journalist to the news organization drops dramatically.
One of Jon's advantages over other journalists is that his sources aren't so much people in his interviews, but other journalist's reporting. So he can make fun of those other journalist's sources all he likes, because he's not ruining his career by doing so.
I am officially gone from
A better chance than just being kicked off my private insurance (if I could get covered in the first place).
Seriously, I don't understand the logic against it. Government provided health care isn't suddenly going to supplant private. It will be no less corrupt than private, and may even help people that normally wouldn't be "insurable". I'm still waiting for someone to make a rational argument against it. All I've heard so far is paraphrasing of sound bites.
Broaden your News. Sometimes it helps to read that boring crap.
to be honest, when I'm logged in, I'm at -1. I find it annoying to read some of the comments I see, but at least when i'm moderating I try to be impartial. I hate the moments when I see that I'm actually wrong about something (because I hate being wrong), but if it's a valid point, i'll mod it up.
You know what the difference is between socialized medicine and the system we have today?
In a socialized system, you have a group of government bureaucrats who decide if you qualify for lifesaving procedures based upon your potential contributions to society versus the rationed care available.
In our system, you have a group of insurance company bureaucrats who decide if you qualify for lifesaving procedures based upon your potential contributions to their next paycheck. (Of course, when it turns out that their salary depends on denying you an expensive procedure, what exactly do you think their inclination will be?)
I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the one that's accountable to the public at large.
the comments give you an unbiased feel for public sentiment on a subject
No, there is an inherent bias in that the site attracts and caters for a specific type of audience - the majority of people commenting here are techies of one sort or another.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
More to the point, a specialist knows MORE about the ENTIRE subject.
If people are choosing only to read what reinforces their current opinion then they are indeed idiots.
Think about how "educated" an average person would be if they were allowed that choice at age 8 instead of being taught subjects that they had no interest in at that age.
Growth requires that you leave your comfort zone.
You left out the part where you can sue your insurance company. What do you do when a bureaucrat who was appointed by another guy you didn't elect refuses treatment? You die before anything is done.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
On the flip side, if all you read is news sources that think socialized medicine is a wonderful panacea you're going to be just as ignorant.
People pick news sources whose bias matches theirs. Unless you get out of your comfort zone on a regular basis your knowledge will be limited and your opinions stilted. If you read lefty news (i.e. most news) you need to check out the conservative viewpoint at least once a week. If you read conservative news, you need to read the lefty media at least once a week.
People who get all their news from The New York Times and NPR as every bit as ignorant as those who get all their news from Fox and The Wall Street Journal.
And vice versa.
And the insurance company will claim you didn't exhaust all of your options w/their internal processes first, and if you did, you'd die before you got treated anyhow.
That aside, I thought the whole process of suing usually takes, after all (court) appeals are said and done, long enough for you to die before anything is done.
Our judicial system is many things, but speedy is not one of them.
Your family may be able to sue for wrongful death or something of the like, but that really doesn't help during life.
Like I care. I'm not trying to win them over - it's a pretty pointless exercise. These kind of crackpots - and there are many more kinds - have already made up what passes for their minds. Any evidence to the contrary is fake. The lack of evidence supporting their rantings just proves that there's a cover up....
It's not a question of having an open mind. I've lived in the UK for thirty years, and I've never heard of them. There are people out there who think it's lucky for Stephen Hawking that he isn't English or he'd have been put to sleep years ago. Am I closed minded if I think my personal first-hand experience somehow trumps the hysterical ramblings of someone who's never been there and couldn't even point to it on a map?
If they never reach my consciousness then how and why did I mention them? Lucky guess?
It's quite possible to be aware of a point of view without having to agree with it or even taking it seriously. It's an entirely different thing to be completely unaware that a different point of view even exists. Fragmentation of news causes the latter, not the former.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Newspapers are out because no-one has the time to read them.
Which is why The Economist folded. Oh wait, I guess not - the densest newsmagazine on the planet continues to thrive. Hey look, bookstores are still open. Turns out people do have time to read! Who knew!?!?
Advice: on VPS providers
It's a sign of the fall of civilization. Either dance and let Rome burn, or start packing your stuff and move to the forest.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
What slant does the BBC have? I have never noticed any particularly strong slant in general. Wikipedia says that some people (mainly right wing) accuse the BBC of being left wing whereas others (mainly left wing) accuse BBC of being too right wing. It has no obvious external force biasing it.
You've hit it on the head. In a universal system, care is rationed based on need. In our current system, it's still rationed, only it's more transparent because so many of the sick will never bother to see the inside of a hospital. Right now, we ration based on ability to pay.
What's important to me, from a moral perspective (and these are my own, and I don't claim to speak for anyone else), is providing a minimum standard of care for those in need so that we aren't leaving people to die on the streets. Above that system we'll always have the capitalist system wherein those who are better off can go elsewhere to get more care. But I see it as important, morally, culturally, and economically, to raise the bottom and limit how far people can fall.
I don't think anybody ought to go broke because they get sick.
Oh really? I hear this claim a lot, but its been my observation that if the Democrats do something stupid, Jon will certainly take the opportunity to nail them to the wall. I recall that when the Democrats got control of the Senate, that he played video of them discussing an effing sports game rather than fixing the country, like they claimed they were going to. Or showing clips of similarities between Bush and Obama speeches. Or comparing Obama's exit strategy with Bush's. Or calling out Democrats on hyperbole.
Jon does clearly lean left, but I don't see him as playing softball with the Democrats. They just tend to give him less ammunition. Yes, the Democrats do have their fuck-ups, but the Republicans have taken the whole dishonest-fuck-up game to a whole new level.