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The Internet's New Alternate Reality

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-true-i-read-it-on-the-interweb dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Tim Rutten writes in the LA Times that when President Obama released his long form birth certificate last week, one of the striking things about the reaction to the president's calm and — to reasonable minds — entirely persuasive appearance in the White House briefing room Wednesday was the rapidity and ease with which so many leading birthers rejected the evidence he presented. 'Until very recently, if every professional news organization in the nation examined a charge and found it baseless, it was — for all intents and purposes — dropped,' writes Rutten. 'Today, the growth of the Internet has drained the noun "news" of its former authority. If you don't like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations, you simply keep clicking until you find one whose "facts" accord with your beliefs.'"

9 of 869 comments (clear)

  1. kind of like the police by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You are supposed to trust the police, but then one of them treats you like shit. Then you end up not trusting any of them.

    It is easy to criticize people for not trusting the media, but who hasn't been intentionally lied to by the media? The blame belongs on a lot of people here. Don't just blame the birthers.

    1. Re:kind of like the police by Internetuser1248 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Damn right. The pundits screaming Obama is a socialist, communist, nazi, islamic, athiest who wasn't born in the US on the Faux news network, the idea that the media would then subsequently blame the internet for this is laughable and pathetic.

    2. Re:kind of like the police by MysteriousPreacher · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are supposed to trust the police, but then one of them treats you like shit. Then you end up not trusting any of them.

      It is easy to criticize people for not trusting the media, but who hasn't been intentionally lied to by the media? The blame belongs on a lot of people here. Don't just blame the birthers.

      It's not just about trust. It's a failure of critical and rational thinking, and people opting for news sources that'll tell them what they want to hear. Plenty of these wingnuts trust Fox News because the channel will give them exactly what they want to see. The Internet has blurred the lines somewhat, with people pointing to blogs and any random site as being authoritative - simply because it happens to agree with their own beliefs.

      It's a country in which the governor of Texas has repeatedly appealed to citizens to telepathically urge an omnipotent invisible deity to change the weather for the state. To borrow an analogy from Sam Harris, would Perry's appeal for divine intervention be any more insane if he asked that people communicate with God by talking in to a hairdryer? It shouldn't really be any more insane. The elephant in the room here is the idea that any kind of communication is possible with some invisible all-powerful being, yet people who believe they can talk to God would almost certainly consider Perry to be mad if he added the hairdryer to his request.

        So long as it's culturally acceptable to proudly hold irrational beliefs it's difficult to imagine how people like the birthers really can be sidelined and ignored? Birthers are just one symptom. We have the anti-vaxxers, 9/11 truthers and God knows how many other nutjobs who receive far too much consideration and acceptance. There's a real need here to school people in rational and critical thinking. That doesn't mean being anti-religious, but certainly one would hope that with critical thinking people would realise that such beliefs are best kept as a personal thing in much the same way that a man's fondness for dressing up as a schoolgirl and getting his arse paddled is certainly harmless fun, but probably not something he can demand respect for in the public square.

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      -- Using the preview button since 2005
  2. Irony? by Mjec · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't be the only one who sees the irony in the URL being /news/opinion/...

    --
    "But everyone should know everything." -markab
  3. The news establishment do not deserve our trust. by miffo.swe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Many revelations in later years have show us that the news establishment don't care for the truth at all. Many of the things reveled in the wikileaks cables was known but not reported. The war against Iraq was totally baseless but nobody seemed to care in the media. All they did was distributing what officials told them, without even bothering a simple fact check. All in all i think the problem described comes from the total lack of moral fiber in the media.

    When you know almost everybody is lying to you, its only human to be drawn to news you think sounds most plausible.

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    HTTP/1.1 400
  4. Blame where blame is due by Soulfader · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think the traditional mass media has done plenty to damage their own credibility. Why blame the internet?

  5. us news is unique by Jeek+Elemental · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I occasionally get a glimpse of US news shows (clips and some cnn), the contrast with bbc or al jazeera is pretty striking:

    The most important piece of information is always the name of the host, which is repeated every 5 seconds.
    The hosts seem to be picked up straight from plastic surgery, complemented by exaggerated facial expressions.
    Its roughly 5 minutes of program then 5 minutes of commercials.
    If there are 2 hosts they spend half the time demonstrating their "chemistry" for eachother, its painful to watch.
    The graphics remind me of old arcade cabinets, classy like las vegas.
    Interviews are rude and annoying, the object seems to be that noone should speak a complete sentence.

    I dont think its odd americans dont trust news, theres nothing trustworthy about it.

  6. Re:Shock, horror by garethjrowlands · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why does it not make sense to allow a person to own an item?

    Don't you need to draw a line somewhere? Which of the items below would you ban? Any of them?

    1. Three foot poles.
    2. Ten foot poles.
    3. Unroadworthy cars.
    4. Guns.
    5. Car bombs.
    6. Heavy weapons.
    7. Non-weapons grade nuclear material.
    8. Biological weapons.
    9. Nuclear weapons.

  7. Re:Where did the lost authority come from? by Fulminata · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The difference is that McCain's birth was questioned, the question was resolved, and people moved on. Since then the only questioning of McCain's birth has been as a counter-example to the questioning of Obama's birth. On the other hand, Obama's birth was questioned, the question was resolved, and people continued to question anyway.

    Simple disagreement with Obama is not racism, but continuing to question the circumstances of his birth long after any reasonable doubt on the issue has been removed (which happened long before the release of the long form birth certificate), indicates something far beyond simple disagreement.