Mass media [long]

[Hebdomad]

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?