Mass media [long]
I no longer purchase physical newspapers. I usually glance at the headlines of the ones that fit my bias in the morning before work and scan their websites later on to look for anything interesting, which I rarely find.
I often leaf through newspapers in coffee shops, though. Even then I only take a vague interest in the major stories. They generally seem vacuous despite their apparent importance. When I do read newspapers I sometimes find the reports deep within the papers more interesting. With those there seems to be at least an attempt to take a dialectic position, perhaps because these stories are less politically sensitive. Other than that, I enjoy bbc radio's political commentary. This has made my digital radio worthwhile. This is mainly because these shows generally invite experts to articulate both sides of a particular story. Other than the traditional forms of media, I enjoy reading boingboing.net. I'm not claiming that the site takes up my preferred dialectic position; it's certainly biased. I agree with it though, so that doesn't bother me too much. In brief, the newspapers, the internet (and to a lesser extent) radio, to me, seem to fall in the category of a carefully selected bag politically slanted proffered claims, positioned to try to convert me into supporting, and thus giving legitimacy to, a particular strategy. I could, of course, persist; read books, newspapers, websites which take up opposing positions and then, with that evidence, challenge an existing precept/decide for myself. The idea, here, is improve my ability to reason and overcome bias and selectivity to reach something I'm sure I believe in, relatively speaking. The problem is, this takes time and help, and equals academia. I'm not against academia as such, and if someone wanted to pay me to research part-time and do something with more immediate results the rest of the time, then I'd take it. Of course, this isn't going to happen soon, or maybe ever, because of my personal economics. I could work towards this, but at the moment I'm more concerned with my ability to do the aforementioned without academia. Ages ago Nodrog suggested that someone subscribe to journals. I claimed that someone probably wouldn't want to do that because they're relatively quite hard work. Now though, thinking about it, I'm tempted to take nodrog's advice myself. Journal are obviously peer reviewed which abates political slant, and thus their appeal. I see journals as the only way out of my predicament, do something about the aphorism "don't believe everything you read." Am I the only one with this predicament? I assume most people are not even mostly happy with the state of mass media. Do you actually do anything about it? |
Re: Mass media [long]
This really wasn't that long, your overzealous paragraphing just made it look like it was.
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Re: Mass media [long]
The media tends to be pretty colored in general. It used to bother me, but after a while i came to realise that if one want to write an interesting article, then it's almost inevitably that the political color of the author will shine through. Articles are usually not untruthfull, but you'll have to be able to seperate fact from opinion, the authors personal bias. As i'm fond of political discussions myself and actually discuss politics on a daily basis, I tend to enjoy reading (insightful) colored articles, depending on the quality of the content.
My brother also often complains about the media not being purely objective. But knowing that he enjoys a lot of right-wing newssites, it seems to me that he's more bothered about hearing opposite opinions from reporters and columnists that don't share his color. I wouldn't want to limit myself to reading my own opinion, only written by others, again and again though. If you want to 'improve your ability to reason and overcome bias and selectivity to reach something you're sure you believe in', then I would suggest to discuss your opinion with others. You could, for example, start posting on a news discussion forum to hear some all-round opinions and become more critical about what you read. A forum where it's a sport to debate and where people actually back their statements up with facts and/or research. As of yet, GD isn't really suitable for this purpose as this doesn't appear to be a place of (intelligent) debate. |
Re: Mass media [long]
I don't see any dilema.
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Re: Mass media [long]
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I'm trying to keep completely out of news in every way but I inevitably find myself creeping back in (looking at headlines, reading the BBC news webstie,watching Sky News on the giant screen in the train station etc) before I realsie what I'm doing and control myself again. I have a problem. :crymeariver: Quote:
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I saw a poster tosday about Jeremy Clarkson's new book and underneath it said: 'He's right. About everything.' But he isn't. About anything. And now I'm thinking that Brooker is the left-wing version of Clarkson, but I have dismissed this idea. Although it seems very clear to me that all spokesmen with a right-wing slant tend to be a bunch of ****s. Not because I disagree with everything they say (because I pretty much do), but because as human beings and as personalities, they are simply a bunch of ****s. Anyway, back to the news. Quote:
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So, it really dpends on what you want to get out of journals and what topics you want to read up upon. To be honest, I'm not sure it's really worth reading the whole article unless it's for a specific reason. The Abstract at the beginning would probably be good enough for most things. As for journals abating political slant, well that clearly is impossible. Yes, it can cut down overt political overtones, but they still exist within the work, in certain assumptions, interpretation and selection of data etc... So journals are fine if you use them well, but they are the magic answer to enlightenment. Quote:
One argument could be that it's important to know that political people are donig shit things. I would agree, but I already know this so the specifics don't really concern me too much. To be honest, what really annoys me most is people getting upset when the government (any government) do something shit or pass some shitty legislation and people complain about it and get really angry. It's as if this is the first time something like this has happened. The media are especially bad at continuing this false sense of shock when this happens, because it's happened every day for thousands of years. The need to sensationalise completely blocks the clear image which says 'this is always happenign, why are you shocked?' It's not that I think people shouldn't be angry at such things or that these things should go unmentioned, the problem is that people get so worked up about something and do... nothing. If complaining was the beginning of some kind of action to stop the baqd things from happening then I would support it wholeheartedly, but at the moment all it seems to do is to keep everybody angry, missing the bigger picture of objective shitness. |
Re: Mass media [long]
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Newspapers entice their readers and gain their profits through sensationalism, as you said. So, If they were to actually help solve a problem by marshalling conflicting evidence and undertaking far more research than they do currently, they'd have to spend less time on the more profitable activity of spewing out a constant stream of sensationalist headlines which back up existing biases. Quote:
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Re: Mass media [long]
I'd hope most people see bias when they read, but if most of what you read doesn't include robust evidence, and omits counter evidence if possible, even a variety of these media outlets fail to advance understanding.
It's this failure to include robust evidence and explore counter evidence, because of an overt political agenda, that gets on my tits. Despite its problems, I'd value someone's opinion higher if they read a fairly well-balanced wikipedia article on a subject, than someone who'd read her or his favourite selection of newspapers. Worringly, I actually prefer wikipedia's ethos to most newspaper's. |
Re: Mass media [long]
By the way, I saw a small advert advertising "manufacturing dissent" yesterday. It's a film that criticises michael moore. I obviously know little about it, but it sounds great if it's trying to argue chomsky's point, but in the inverse.
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Re: Mass media [long]
Basically it criticiss Moore and his editing methods as well as using the same techniques as those on the right.
They were interviewed on Fox news i believe and they were just brought on to criticise moose however they also criticised the right wing media so its not about an both left scot s anything like that. |
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