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Obama Calls Today's Ubiquitous Gadgets and Information "a Distraction"
zaphod was one of several readers unhappy with the sentiment expressed in President Obama's graduation address to the students of Virginia's Hampton University, writing: "According to Obama, 'information becomes a distraction' when it comes to iPads, the Xbox, etc. (All items he admits not knowing how to use.) He's basically saying we are getting too much information too quickly, and from 'unreliable sources.' Of course, he's referring to talk radio, blogs and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views."
CNET has a slightly different, less critical reaction, focusing on the differences among the actual devices named; they note that the Xbox is not an iPad.
is here, and here is the paragraph that people are taking issue with:
What I find interesting is not the assertion about the devices, and information becoming entertainment — that's been true since at least the beginnings of edutainment and of news as entertainment almost twenty years ago. For me, the interesting part is the first sentence: "And meanwhile, you're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter." It seems to me that throughout history, the times when truth has been the major component of the information we are given have been few and far between. For example, the news media in the US, despite their pretensions to objectivity, haven't been particularly honest at any time in their history. Even in WWII, the war correspondents left out more than they said, and that was probably the height of objectivity in the news. Heck, the news media was in great part responsible for fomenting the Spanish-American War (google "yellow journalism"), reported the propaganda of Saddam Hussein as news in order to maintain access, and spent years trying to talk us into a recession (note the tone of economic reporting under Bush vs. that under Obama, and compare that to the actual statistics).
In other words, the real requirement we have is not to shut off the flows of information, or even to tilt at the windmill of trying to ensure that all the information we have access to is truthful, but to armor ourselves with scepticism, basic statistical knowledge, and deep historical knowledge so that we, individually, can sort out the truth from the lies, distortions and agenda-driven propaganda we are faced with.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Well, the immigration law specifically PROHIBITS stopping anyone based on skin color.
Yes, and no one has ever been stopped for Driving While Black either.
In short, I think the President should have that knee-jerking problem looked at by a doctor-- I hear he has a great health plan.
Yeah, because it's not like any of these conspiracy theories are being touted by "mainstream" Republicans:
(Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, Rush Limbaugh (now he said "environmental wackos)
Seriously. Why should anyone think of these people as legitimate? Furthermore, since these are leaders in party, why should the party be considered legitimate?
It's only recently that we have opposing views in media that expose the bias.
Really? Most major cities in the U.S. (and elsewhere) have had competing newspapers for centuries, some of which tend to be associated with liberal biases, some with conservative, some with other views. About a century ago, huge syndicates started growing that created a system where many papers nationwide were owned by the same person or corporation. It's not surprising that such mass media markets all got similar news when they were owned by the same company. Smaller independent papers couldn't compete, so we lost the diversity of news sources somewhat in the early 1900s.
Nevertheless, most major cities maintained at least two newspapers that had contrasting political viewpoints.
Since we now have differing views on different channels, we can compare them and the bias becomes obvious.
I think what you're referring to is the Fairness Doctrine, large sections of which were repealed in the 1980s. This only applied to broadcast media, and it actually required opposing viewpoints to be considered on the same channel. Of course, one of the major impacts of this rule was that extremist views tended to be avoided in broadcast media, since it was too hard to be "fair" to all extremist positions. Repeal of some provisions of this resulted in a more fragmented broadcast media with more extreme positions.
Nevertheless, the point is that this only ever applied to broadcast media. You could always have alternative newspapers with different perspectives, for example, and these have always existed.
When all the media is saying the same thing, bias is harder to spot. It gets accepted as truth by default. [...] Getting the same story from different views is a good thing.
While I agree with the basic principle here (since I too like reading the same story from different views), the majority of people seem to gravitate toward news sources that agree with their own personal biases. So, rather than educating the public in terms of a reasoned debate (which is what the "Fairness Doctrine" was supposed to do), we have a system that allows people to get their news from sources that already agree with them. People end up reinforcing their own biases, and those biases can grow stronger and more extreme.
I'm not saying we should go back to the older system, but the current system doesn't completely solve the problem you bring up -- and arguably, it tends to make the news media more fragmented and more extremist, which obviously trickles down to listeners/viewers.