Has anyone lost faith in the media?

[Wifezilla]

I remember back when CNN was young (but after Tiennamen Square) I was up late one night feeding one of the boys when a story came on. I thought it was interesting and I was going to talk about it with hubby when he got up in the morning. Morning came and I was telling him about the story waiting for it to come on the news rotation again. When it ran, half of the story had been left out. It was enough to totally change the meaning of the story.

We began watching and comparing what aired at night vs what the story was after the morning crew got a hold of it. After about the 4th time it happened, we stopped watching CNN.

Now there is the advantage of having the interwebs. I can climb through the tubes and check out any story that airs for myself....but I still wont watch CNN.

 

[so lucky]

It just really bugs me that the news shows think we care enough to listen to them prattle on about "The Royal Wedding" and all the spoiled brat "stars" who get in trouble with the law. Is this news?

 

[Rebbetzin]

It just really bugs me that the news shows think we care enough to listen to them prattle on about "The Royal Wedding" and all the spoiled brat "stars" who get in trouble with the law. Is this news?

Well, it is all part of the "Bread and Circuses."


Keep the people fed and entertained and they won't riot in the streets. They will hopefully be "comfortably numb" and won't pay attention to what is going on around them.

 

[FarmerChick]

to some the royal wedding is news


media has to cater to ALL people's tastes, not just one person.


media though is great when a big storm is in your area etc.

Media, like anything else, use it wisely

 

[miss_thenorth]

Have I lost faith in the media? Tha would assume I had faith in it in the first place. I love living int he bubble that I call my world. If something pokes my bubble, I will research it.

 

[meriruka]

I realized how deep in my bubble I was when I went to the country store & everyone was talking about Dick Cheney shooting someone. I had to go home & find out who Cheney was. Oops.
I should probably know who's in office!
But people shoot each other around here all the time (not always accidentally). :/
It's just getting harder to pull the grains from the chaff.......

 

[Marianne]

Have I lost faith in the media? Tha would assume I had faith in it in the first place. I love living int he bubble that I call my world. If something pokes my bubble, I will research it.

I agree. Responsible journalism went *poof* years and years ago.

 

[patandchickens]

I am not convinced that this mythic Golden Age of Responsible Journalism thing ever actually existed.

And, you know, guys...

It is impossible to "report only facts". If nothing else, there will always be personal choice in what SUBJECTS to report on in the first place, and WHICH facts are important enough to report vs which ones are not. And then of course in real life it is often a matter of personal opinion what's a fact and what's not (Seriously. Legitimately. Inescapably).

Do I think the media often have a different agenda than what I personally think they should? Yeah. Do I think that these days they are often influenced strongly by what will sell papers or draw website hits? Yeah. Do I trust everything the media reports? You gotta be kidding.

But the same is true to some degree or another of ANY era's reporting, and is really UNAVOIDABLE, and I do not see that it is necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

You just have to take responsibility for ferreting out additional information, and learning about things, and thinking, and forming your own evaluations and opinions of things.

I am pretty sure that most media professionals would agree with this, too.

It's just that somehow it seems to have become fashionable for people to feel they ought'nt be required to do that sort of messy manual labor themselves; so THE PUBLIC (well, I guess what i really mean is "some people" ) have CHOSEN to abdicate their responsibility for independant thought and just swallow whatever's being hyped at the moment.

<shrug>

Pat

 

[FarmerChick]

yes facts can easily be reported.

10 dead, tornado in X city....it was category 4 etc. power outage for X days at least and so on.




not a person on this earth (and people are networks) that doesn't have their view.

 

[patandchickens]

yes facts can easily be reported.
10 dead, tornado in X city....it was category 4 etc. power outage for X days at least and so on.

No, it is not usually that simple FC.

Even in the examples you gave (which are chosen from the most cut-and-dried possible and you would be REAL UNHAPPY I think if the media stuck ONLY to those bare bones):

"10 dead".... according to whom? As of when? Based on how complete a search yet? Until an event is well over, the only reasonably undebatable fact one could report about that is that "<suchandsuch> police department (or wherever) has announced at <particular time> that there have been 10 deaths". As you know, these numbers often change until everything has been sorted out and we are looking at past rather than current events.

"tornado in X city"... notice that they don't usually report it that way at first, FC, they are much more circumspect -- first "tornado sighted", then "it has been confirmed that the damage was due to a tornado", and tornado magnitudes (the Fujita scale) sometimes change from initial announcements, as it's basically just inference based on type of damage.

"power outage for X days at least"... again, if it's events currently occurring, the fact isn't the outage length, the fact is that the power company (or whomever) HAS ANNOUNCED that they expect the power outages to be of that magnitude. These power-outage numbers are often really misleading (in both directions) anyhow, because restoration of service is patchwork and it can take a whole big lot longer for the *last* customers to get service restored than the *first*.

Plus which, even if one limits one news story to "A tornado last night at 8 pm EST was confirmed in Anyplace USA. The Anyplace police department reports 10 dead. The electric company estimates it will take up to 36 hours to restore power to the 5,000 customers currently without." -- there are still human biases in WHAT gets reported (hey, no mention of demography of victims? Animal casualties? Estimated insured losses? human interest stories like 'bride and groom spared in honeymoon suite as tornado rips through'?) and in fact whether the whole tornado story hits the national airwaves AT ALL.

(IMHO some of the most serious and terrible biases in today's media activities involve what it DOES NOT report at a featured level -- to take a random example from today's headlines, the West's decision to sit back on their thumbs while Qaddafi exterminates the Libyan rebels is something people should be screaming their heads off about, not something deserving of barely-page-3 type coverage)

So what "facts" are available to be reported in the situation in Japan right now? (Even RIGHT NOW THIS MOMENT, let alone almost a week ago when the earthquake and tsunami first hit). Darn few. How many have died? No idea for sure, all you can report is what the authorities list as official at any given moment, which everyone knows is changing and will probably never be 100% correct. What the radioactivity levels are at locations near the plant? The information is not available. What is happening at the plant? Information is at best incomplete and often contradictory depending on whether you listen to japanese gov't or the power company operating the plants; even the Japanese gov't has complained of not being properly informed of what's going on.

Why do people think there are so many "true facts" in the world? There are really darn few (and I say that as a scientist). You gotta learn to live with it.

Pat