[Hebdomad]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

This really wasn't that long, your overzealous paragraphing just made it look like it was.

The word you were looking for was, "beautiful."

Originally Posted by Alessio

Articles are usually not untruthfull, but you'll have to be able to seperate fact from opinion, the authors personal bias.

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.

I've found most journalists I know go out of their way to omit conflicting evidence from their articles if they can possibly help it. These articles then form part of the discussions you have with others. These discussions only arrive somewhere positive when 1) those partaking purposely take up opposing positions; and 2) they can back their claims up with evidence which they contrast to opposing evidence. Needless to say this rarely happens and the mass media does not help it happen.

Originally Posted by All Systems Go

I've largely given up thinking about the stories of the day, partly because as you said, they are largely not worth considering. Secondly, I'm not actually going to do anything about it. I spent a lot of time reading papers, getting angry at the world and not donig anything about it. Now, I stay calmer and focus my energies on the development of my mind through reading books.

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.

It's worth point out that sometimes merely awareness raising, in the case of Burma for example, helps. Nevertheless, I somewhat agree. I wouldn't, however, abandon current affairs because they are publicised in such a largely unhelpful way. I'd criticise the way newspapers operate rather than what they report.

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.

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.

I don't favour journals because I believe some kind of apolitical human beings write the articles within, but because of the peer review process. Basically, I have more trust in academics than I have in journalists.