Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Does Personalized News Lead To Ignorance?

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-care-what-I-care-about dept.

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.'"

48 of 396 comments (clear)

  1. Well duh! by spammeister · · Score: 5, Funny

    Boring news is called boring because it is indeed boring. If people were interested in boring news then it wouldn't be boring, it would be interesting. Technically anything that is newsworthy shouldn't be boring, because it would be interesting to someone.

    Ok now I'm boring myself with this.

    --
    I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
    1. Re:Well duh! by SailorSpork · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or said another way, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Works for news, too.

    2. Re:Well duh! by MistrX · · Score: 5, Funny

      I don't read boring news, I read slashdot!

      Oh wait... I think I just confirmed your post and the article.

    3. Re:Well duh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Well duh! by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Clearly it's true that if you're interested in sport you're going to watch that part of the news more than if you aren't. That's not the problem.

      The problem is that if you believe that socialized medicine == death panels, you're going to exclusively read news sources that tell you that[1]. Likewise the moon hoax brigade and the ones who see the illuminati everywhere. No matter how much of a nutter you are, there's other nutters out there you can link up with. Mutual bias confirmation. There's no balance. Nobody uis ever exposed to a different viewpoint.

      [1] I believe the name is "Fox News".

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    5. Re:Well duh! by Kelbear · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:Well duh! by LKM · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They may spend an hour each day being acquainted with world affairs, but 90% of that news will have absolutely no effect on their lives other than to let them feel smug about being well informed. (...) If anything, I see this as a positive trend.

      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.

    7. Re:Well duh! by svtdragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    8. Re:Well duh! by Danse · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you take the issue of 'death panels' with an open mind, for example, you will find that there is some substance to the fear that underlies it. In a given system with limited resources, someone has to decide who lives and who dies. In a capitalist system this decision is based on who can pay for the treatments and who cannot. In some other system it would be dealt with in some other way, but with limits on the resources it will have to be dealt with.

      Of course this is true that there is always rationing going on. Right now your coverage gets decided by insurance company bean counters and lawyers with profit in mind. In a government-run system it would be a bureaucrat with financial solvency in mind (assuming the system is required to pay for itself like it was proposed).

      However, that's not what the "death panels" term referred to when it was started by Palin. She was referring to the end-of-life counseling that was to be covered by Medicare. Betsy McCaughey took this idea of allowing patients to be covered for time spent discussing their wishes for end of life treatment and living wills with their doctors and turned it into some kind of government push for euthanization. It was completely baseless and had no evidence whatsoever to back it up. Palin was referring to this analysis when she first used the term "death panels". So the term is not about rationing, but about the coercion of old and sick folks to consent to euthanization.

      --
      It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
    9. Re:Well duh! by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're not going to win people over to your point of view by using labels such as 'nutter', 'moon hoax', and 'death panels'.

      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....

      If you take the issue of 'death panels' with an open mind, for example, you will find that there is some substance to the fear that underlies it.

      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?

      Unfortunately, in your world, if an issue is poorly worded, articulated by a soccer mom, and/or broadcast on Fox News, the concepts behind it may never reach your consciousness.

      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."
    10. Re:Well duh! by Stradivarius · · Score: 3, Informative

      A big part of the problem is being dependent upon a bureaucracy to begin with. If someone else controls the decision of whether you get treatment or not, you're screwed. Doesn't matter who cuts the bureaucrat's paycheck, they still will think they know better than you what *you* need.

      You'll still have all the horror stories about people denied care. So what will happen in the government insurance is the same thing that happened with the private insurance (HMOs). At first they try to hold the line on spending, which means they start denying you the ability to get the more expensive treatments. Which upsets everyone and creates all sort of political pressures and/or legislation about what must be covered. So then the insurers start denying less care, but have to charge people more to cover those added costs. So then you have less complaints about denied care, but more and more people who can't afford coverage at all.

      So then you have to extend government subsidies to more and more people so they can get covered. But you soon get to the point where you're subsidizing nearly everyone. Subsidizing everyone is the same as subsidizing nobody - the money's just flowing out through our taxes and back in via the subsidy.

      You hit the brick wall of reality that we don't have as much money in the whole system as we have health needs. The demand is effectively infinite and our funds are not.

      So we are faced with a choice: either we try to centrally plan who gets what care, or we give people the amount of money we can spare for their condition and let them decide how best to spend it. Either you decide what's the best care you can get for the available money, or the bureaucrat does. But one way or the other, we're not going to get all the care we want. And that's what no politician is willing to admit to us.

  2. New should not be tailored to consumers by jjoelc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As odd as it sounds, I think that news should not ever be tailored to the "consumer". Telling the people only what they want to hear is just as bad (if not worse) than only telling them the news YOU want them to hear... If I was planning on becoming a repressive regime leader, ruling my country with an iron fist... I would start by telling all of the people all the "news" they wanted to hear.... In-Depth reviews of the latest "Mycountryian Idol", all the sports news they wanted, how wonderful the newest movie blockbuster is (and who the stars are sleeping with!)

    Then the populace would be too busy thinking about those silly topics to even notice or care that I had just imposed mandatory impalement sentences for jaywalkers.

  3. Re:What they NEED to hear!? Goebbels quotation?? by Schraegstrichpunkt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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/
  4. Two Fine Examples by xzvf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Two Fine Examples by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yet the daily show on comedy central has higher ratings and is where MORE people turn to for unbiased news.....

      Frightening, that Jon Stewart is america's most honest newscaster in a lot of people's eyes. This says volumes about how worthless all the news outlets are.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:Two Fine Examples by 2obvious4u · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Two Fine Examples by Ephemeriis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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
  5. I Particularly Enjoyed by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I particularly enjoyed how they ripped apart so many aspects of 'news' over the past years and coming years. From "Do bikinis cause cancer? More at 11" to automated journalism. But then somehow claim that the newsreader is ignorant for seeking news that is personalized to him or her. Maybe, just maybe, if a wide reaching non-specific news source treated their readers with respect, produced quality and engaged in more investigative journalism than "look at this picture" or "Ten worst/best" lists then we would all be reading it.

    Until then, I guarantee you that people will prefer to seek specialized news sources because the editors and writers for that source are often experts and their biases are often exactly what we want. Just look at the blogs of Michael Geist and Bruce Schneier, way more preferable than any big name news site's 'computer security' division.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  6. Re:There's already a fine example by lena_10326 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Still smarting over Air America.. huh? :)

    --
    Camping on quad since 1996.
  7. it's worse than ignorance by a2wflc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. What they need to hear? by MikeRT · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:What they NEED to hear!? Goebbels quotation?? by Smegly · · Score: 3, Funny

    Repeat with me... Corporations and Governments losing power to people is gooooooood.

    Exactly. Todays youth have a much more balanced and informed opinion than any other time in history - now that the hierarchical control of information flow is breaking down. The ability to balance out corporate/government-MIC propaganda that has dominated News and print media almost since its inception with alternative points of view is a very good thing. From "New Media"

    it has been the contention of scholars such as Douglas Kellner, Callum Rymer and James Bohman that new media, and particularly the Internet, provide the potential for a democratic postmodern public sphere, in which citizens can participate in well informed, non-hierarchical debate pertaining to their social structures. Contradicting these positive appraisals of the potential social impacts of new media are scholars such as Ed Herman and Robert McChesney who have suggested that the transition to new media has seen a handful of powerful transnational telecommunications corporations who achieve a level of global influence which was hitherto unimaginable.

  10. Politicial labels are relative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  11. More pervasive than just news by Gothmolly · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the US at least, knowing a lot about ANYTHING makes you a nerd, a social outcast, the non-cool guy. Ask a coworker how their boiler works, or how to change their oil. Ask them how to chainsaw a tree. Ask them how to wire a switch, or pull a shot of espresso. Most will look at you like you showed them dirty pictures - "What? Me? Do actual labor?" Combine this with the steady erosion of the effects of causality (helicopter parents, welfare system), combined with the death of Civics as a school subject, and you have population of effete, spoiled sheep, ready to accept whatever shackles are imposed, in order that they be safe and comfortable.

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
    1. Re:More pervasive than just news by Kelbear · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except sports, the more sports you know, the better off you'll be.

  12. I must say by ZeroExistenZ · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Alot of the news in my country is a joke. Really, it's a big joke.

    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
  13. Why do people choose personalized news? by wjc_25 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  14. I Disagree, That's the Only Model That Works by eldavojohn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    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 ... even breaking the possibility in advance before the law is passed ... will generate higher ratings than their competitor.

    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.
    1. Re:I Disagree, That's the Only Model That Works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem lies in that the GP was talking in what we call "hyperbole".

      There is no data in the news.

      The story about the impalement would certainly get a story about the poor old person that got killed for jaywalking. There would also be a story about the poor old person that was killed by an evil jaywalker (assuming there was a market for it-- even if there isn't they may run it just to start controversy which they can then tell you about on the news...).

      In a complex issue the facts can be twisted to make up anything you like, and the news does just that to fit the news to the demographic.

      Imagine instead that the law in question is a quagmire of boring politics rolled into a massive 1900 page essay of law that even intelligent people admit is a pain to read. Let's say it's about, oh I don't know, health care reform.

      What intelligent information has the news brought you about the reform bill?

      So far I've heard that it's socialist, will save millions of lives, will lower the quality of service costing millions of lives, will cost us a hojillion dollars, will cost less than it does now, will cost more than it does now, will go the way of social security and dissappear, will be forced on the country, can't be forced because of Brown, that Brown is Bush and therefore is evil, that Obama can't keep campaign promises, that he hasn't because of evil republican's blocking healthcare, that evil democrats want to control my freedom of choice, that people in Canada can't get higher level services because of their system, that people in Canada have worse healthcare than the US, that people in Canada have better healthcare than in the US, that England healthcare is better than Canada, that England healthcare is worse than ours, that some states have their own systems, that Nebraska won't have to pay for it...

      ad infinitum.

      There is no data in the news. Why should their be? The news is stereotypically "boring" and why is that? Because real news means sitting and listening to facts and weighing them in your mind. But this requires news organizations to collect a LOT of data only to appeal to a shrinking group of people who'd rather get their news from the most reliable of sources... the internet.

      The news makes money by presenting facts. The more they can present using less facts, the more profitable. Better to make hours of cheap news out of a few facts than one good hour dedicated to hundreds of facts. No one seems to be able to tell the difference, and when they can, they call it "boring".

  15. Re:Why Single Out Fox by Mononoke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sounds like your just angry and pick out Fox because Fox News is the undisputed leader in news today

    Thank you for so eloquently proving my point.

    --
    NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
  16. Re:Who decides what's important? by elnyka · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  17. Re:What they NEED to hear!? Goebbels quotation?? by happy_place · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  18. stop that nonsense by elnyka · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:stop that nonsense by elnyka · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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 know the countries you speak of, and if you look at policies passed / proposed in the past year, you'll find that Obama has emulated them wonderfully. Just because Obama knows he can't change the entire government overnight doesn't mean he doesn't WANT to.

      Having lived (and suffered) myself at one point in my life under a real hard leftist yoke, I gotta say this: Nope. Not even closed.

      All the policies he's been trying to push are remarkably mild (more of a pragmatic mid-center social-democrat nature) compared to an actual "hard left" which is what the anonymous OP I replied to attempted to imply.

      I have issues with his "spread the wealth" speeches (specially when they are not coupled with a "and by the way, we also have to share responsibilities" part.) I have a problem with trying to increase taxes to the wealth-and-work-generating people, corporations and enterprenaurs, a sector of the population whose tax contributions to the public coffers are disproportionately larger than their usage of public infrastructure or their size % relative to the population of the entire country.

      That kind of thing is not necessarily conductive to the promotion of entities capable of producing jobs and generate wealth.

      But that hardly qualifies as a leftist policy, and it's more of a different take of the role of government and tax distribution in a capitalist system. You might need to brush up on what leftism and socialism actually entails.

      On a side note: I do agree, whoever with his health care plans, or at least with a need for reform. What we have now is not workable.

      I know what policies he's passing, but let's play devil's advocate. Please pray tell which policies he's passing that are emulating left policies in those countries very well.

    2. Re:stop that nonsense by elnyka · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Once the government starts taking from one person to give to another, that is socialist, even if it doesn't run any part of the economy.

      In that case, pretty much all forms of government in human history (including tribal ones) are of a socialist nature... even absolute monarchies (specially absolute monarchies.)

      It is also ridiculous to that a government is socialist even (as you put it) it doesn't run any part of the economy considering that the essence of socialist is of being a class of economic theories of human organization (with Marxism being the bitter extreme case for attempting to explain all human aspects, even psychological and behavioral ones, in economic terms.)

      Your statement is a generalization on the nature of governments, a generalization based on absolutes. You are simply making up a new definition of what a socialist government is just to give credence to your opinion. It is not a valid logical argument.

      A government, by its most basic functions, will take something from someone and give it to someone else. Taxes, they take your taxes and give it to someone else in many ways, in infrastructure, in support for people under the poverty line, in the form of subsidized student loans and federal grants, etc, etc, etc.

      If that's what a socialist government is, then hell, the US has been ruled a socialist government for a very long time.

  19. I disagree... by bjk002 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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);
  20. All the News You Want to See by GTarrant · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The reason people are less informed, IMO, is not because there's not enough news out there, it's that there are far too many.

    That doesn't necessarily mean that there should be less. However, the pervasiveness of "news sites" and aggregators means that people can make sure that the news they are exposed to is stuff they know they will likely agree with, and furthermore, omits any details that might make that news less positive or shed any negative light at all on the causes and groups they favor. People can ensure, today, that they are only going to receive the kinds of news they want to hear and that reinforces their already-held beliefs.

    My mother would keep Fox News on every television in the house so when walking from one room to another, she wouldn't miss a thing. She'd turn it off only to listen to Rush or the like on the radio, and she got her online news and opinions from Fox, Townhall, etc. This meant that everything she was exposed to not only was something she was likely to agree with, but it reinforced her beliefs, leading to her implicitly trusting everything they said - even if it was demonstrably untrue.

    My aunt is the opposite, reading DailyKos daily and Rachel Maddow. It doesn't matter whether it's the left or the right - what matters is that with so many news sources today, you can make sure that the news you see, read, and hear, is news that the source knows you'll agree with, and they can take advantage of that.

    A great example is getting on the Metro to go to work this morning, I was handed both the Express (slanted left) and the Examiner (slanted right). The Express cover story was on the State of the Union address. The Examiner cover headline was "GOP Governor Challenges Obama on National TV", with a big picture of said governor, and you'd never even know that the reason was the State of the Union address and they were highlighting primarily the Republican response.

    The problem with this is that it leads to severe polarization - my mother trusted Fox News and Rush Limbaugh to the point that even when it could be proved beyond all doubt that something they said was 100% false (or even contradictory), it instead led to her shouting at the person because she agrees with so much of what they said on other topics that they can't possibly be wrong. The fact that almost anything positive done by the "other side" would be ignored, never reported on, twisted into having "her side" take credit for it, or the like.

    If someone dislikes gay people, they can be sure to find a news organization that will only post negative stories, ignoring all else, even if a gay person cured cancer or saved a thousand children from a fire. And they go on happy that their opinion is being reinforced because hey, look at all these nasty people, and don't have to feel uncomfortable by being exposed to stories that potentially might challenge that worldview. If they dislike organized religion, there's sites out that that will make sure to only point out the negatives thereof.

    The polarization this leads to is tearing not just this, but many countries apart, with sides that, day after day, are hearing nothing but awful things being said about the "other side", and nothing but good things said to them about "their own side", daily reinforcement of something they're already predisposed to believe. This ends any possibility of compromise, of discussion, of reasonable governance, because the other side is not just wrong, but evil, and compromise with evil is abhorrent. The left can't just be to the left, they must be Communist and Socialist, and the right can't just be to the right, they are Fascist and Authoritarian. No wonder we can't get anything done.

  21. A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by KTheorem · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This was rather explicitly covered in Neal Stephenson's book The Diamond Age. In the Neo Victorian phyle, the higher social ranking a member has the less personalized their newspaper is due to the thought that there are certain things higher ups need to know and it's best if they were all on the same page.

    Then again, the Vickies are also depicted as un-curious and possessing of a stagnant society, so take from that what you will.

  22. Re:What they NEED to hear!? Goebbels quotation?? by SQLGuru · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I like Slashdot as a geek news source because of the unfiltered comments (I run at -1 and I like it). The summaries (of dubious accuracy) and the comments give you an unbiased feel for public sentiment on a subject. Sometimes I read TFA, sometimes not. Either way, I'm more informed about a topic even if I just read the comments and the slant comes from both sides. Were there a similar site for "real" news, I'd probably use it as my main source; unfortunately, the Internet has bred so many Trolls and Spammers that any general news site with a similar comment system would attract way more of those types than Slashdot ever will. So, for now, I'll just scan headlines and summaries at various "real" news sites and read the few articles of relevance to me.

  23. Re:What they NEED to hear!? Goebbels quotation?? by krou · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Todays youth have a much more balanced and informed opinion than any other time in history

    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
  24. Oh please, stop making excuses for them by MikeRT · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  25. Re:What do I care about someone on the other side by theIsovist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  26. Re:What they NEED to hear!? Goebbels quotation?? by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  27. Considering "duh!" as a state of mind by Gary+W.+Longsine · · Score: 5, Interesting
    A set of recent experiences has me wondering if perhaps The Fine Summary and Article have a point. Within the past few days, I've "overheard" (in discussion forums online) several people express something along these lines:

    "I don't see why we're having this telethon and sending all this money to Haiti. Did other countries help the U.S. after 9/11, or Hurricane Katrina?!! No!!!"
    -- Random People (Not Me, Not You)

    Mostly, the folk expressing this sentiment don't know each other, and only a couple know me (e.g. friends, friends of friends, strangers to each other).

    This isn't merely based on blatant falsehood, it's a very peculiar notion, one that stands out from the daily din. I've seen it raised, independently, three or four times this week. Where did this notion come from? Why do they uniformly cite both of those examples, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina? Coincidence, or did they get this from the same source? Perhaps it's merely because these are the two largest disasters to strike the U.S. in the past ten years, but why cite both, and not merely one, or the other, particularly when one is a man-made "disaster", not really parallel to the hurricane and the earthquake. I wonder if maybe they are parroting the same original source. Did someone like Sarah Palin tweet or MyBookFaceSpace it, as with the "death panels" thing?

    Uniformly, these folk have chosen to ignore simple evidence that the claims, that other countries didn't offer assistance to the U.S. after 9/11 nor after Katrina, are false. (In fact, many nations assisted the U.S. following both incidents, offering even the lives of their sons and daughters in the case of those allies fighting in Afghanistan, and serious assistance of various kinds during the International Response to Hurricane Katrina).

    This is just one example, but it's a curious one, based not only on ignorance of a few specific facts, which ought to be common knowledge, but apparently on a militant desire to remain ignorant. (Offering the link above leads them to resort immediately to changing the subject, occasionally to what they consider to be my own personal failings, particularly in people I've never met. The sudden and fairly extreme hostility offered up by both acquaintances and strangers when simple evidence is presented reminded me of the term "splitting.)

    I wonder if the insulating bubble effect of modern segmented news and opinion delivery is building a society which is incapable of or at least resistant to the synthesis of new ideas, which itself is a rational response to the cognitive dissonance which results from inconvenient facts.

    I still think facts matter, but if they only matter to a handful of people, can democracy survive?

    --
    If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
  28. Re:What they NEED to hear!? Goebbels quotation?? by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's called a confirmation bias. People tend to pursue information that agrees with their opinions.

    Now, in the past, news sources were forced to be balanced, to reach the largest possible audience. Only one newspaper in town, so it can't be too far to one side or the other unless the whole coverage area also leans that way.

    Now, the market is so diverse that there is plenty of room for specialized news sources, and people can tune in to whichever one makes them feel best about their own opinions, and when all the information they receive conforms to their bias, they become more biased, and you end up with the sort of crap polarized political situation we're in right now.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  29. a few valid objections off the top of my head. by conspirator57 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have several solid reasons for objecting to government run healthcare in general and the instant legislation in particular. The problem is that true believers in government run healthcare are deaf to them, succumbing to the same malady as you and others here lament regarding opponents who may or may not be opposed on solid merits, namely only subscribing to media outlets that tell you what you want to hear.

    1. I'm a fan of civil liberties, so any system that gives the people with the guns and cages (government) more information to use against me (or you). Or Eliot Spitzer who in fact was hoisted by legislation he championed as being necessary to combat terror. Problem is... scope creep. It was such a "useful tool" that its use was expanded to fraud investigations when it was previously promised to us civil liberties "nuts" that such would "nevar happen". So, yes you could still make universal government-funded healthcare that collects no information about the consumers, but no one would ever do it on grounds of thwarting fraud and hypochondriacs. And in order to make the calls about whether a given citizen is worthy of continued medical care. Oh, and because our new J. Edgars want more complete dossiers on everyone so they can use the fact that you (potentially a legislator) have AIDS and your family doesn't know it to keep you from voting against certain expenditures, or to ensure you confirm certain nominees. Not that any of this could evar happen here in the land of the free. Oh, wait. Hoover would drool over the current "toolbox" much less what he'd have with the current and politically possible plans for government funded healthcare.

    2. efficiency and % of GDP. proponents direct us to look at other socialized systems that consume less % of GDP, and this is good, but do you really think congress are going to pass anything that increases efficiency in the "booming healthcare industry"? That would necessarily mean decreasing the number of jobs in that industry, and healthcare is the only industry that has consistently grown through the current depression. Thus, anything that congress is politically able to do will impoverish us with people doing make work, like medical data entry and such, one of the chief drivers of unnecessary expense in the current system which makes it unaffordable for average people now.

    3. all that really needs to be done is to remove industry protectionist measures like state restrictions on competition from out of state insurers and barriers to market entry for new insurance companies. shortly, as mentioned above, too many people are eating off the healthcare industry in a parasitic manner. Maybe trying something like this guy has for non-emergency care should be on the table...
    http://jayparkinsonmd.com/

    --
    "If still these truths be held to be
    Self evident."
    -Edna St. Vincent Millay
    1. Re:a few valid objections off the top of my head. by polar+red · · Score: 3, Interesting

      (1):'more information to use against me (or you).'
      That information is now with your insurance company, how is that ANY better ? in fact, that is WORSE, because there are NO restrictions and checks on validity, sale of data, ...
      (2): that has nothing to do with private public health care, but with your broken 'democracy'
      (3) i don't think that's enough. the private firms need to be regulated. a few examples of regulations could be : a flat rate for everybody + everybody can go and come when he pleases, and no company should be able to kick you out.

      the following 2 statistics provide the results of private health care:
      1/ http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2005/anderson_healthspending.html
          'U.S. Still Spends More on Health Care than Any Other Country'
      2/ http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
          Usa ranks 37th.

      --
      Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
  30. Nes hasn't changed. by Belial6 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    60 years ago, people got narrow biased news reports that were chosen by someone else. Today, people get narrow biased news reports that are chosen by them. I wold say that the situation has improved when it comes to exposure to different views. 60 years ago, if the town newspaper decided that they didn't like the mayor of the city two cities over, you were unlikely to meet a single person that didn't 'know' that he was a wife beating child molester, irrelevant of the facts. Today, you would have some people who 'know' this, some people who 'know' it isn't true, and a lot of people that just don't care about he mayor two cities over. When your standing around the water cooler at work, which time period is more likely to give you dissenting opinions?

    The problem doesn't seem to be that people are getting biased inaccurate news. The 'problem' seems to be that people are now becoming aware that the news they get is biased, and are struggling with the idea of choosing the bias themselves instead of having it chosen for them.