Warning: This is yet another post about American politics and media. If you weary of talking about that country, then please feel free to ignore this thread cheerfully. * * * * Lately, I've been trying to post about politics in another forum but, unfortunately, have been spoiled by this one. Thus, I'm editing comments made there and am posting them here in hopes of initiating a more productive discussion. One caveat: When I speak of making the news free of opinion or spin, I realize that's impossible in the deepest sense. What I mean is that opinion and spin should be minimized if only in presentation and arrangement: News items should be alloted time based on relative importance, not entertainment value, and editorial commentary and clear bias should be kept at a minimum. The resulting news will of course remain tainted by hidden agendas and sotto voce bias, but at least it won't brandish flippancy like a badge of honor. ======================================= Recently, a friend asked: "Flamewars are what politicians engage in. We want to prove we're better than them, right?" How I wish the opposite were true: That politicians focused on giving us a shining example of conduct. Not dems and repubs separately, not individual politicians, but the entire system working together: politicians as a group. I'd like to see politicians' endless rehashing of issues of "character" disappear. In the first place, people's private lives are as irrelevant to actual policy as thread craps are here. If there isn't a conflict of interest, then leave it alone. In the second, public character is so synthetic, and so inaccurately reported, that we have no idea what our politicians' characters are really like. If the media were moderated like a web forum and edited out petty political acrimony, then intelligent public policy would be stalled far less, and public conversation would become far more useful. The subject would be the effect of a policy, not the evil or craziness of advocates on either side. * * * * Another friend asked, "Do you really want a 'moderated' media? Once you step over the line, it's probably too late to draw another line." The answer is yes, no and yes. Yes, I want to live in a society that understands pointless acrimony is unproductive. Yes, I want reporters and the media generally to be driven by pertinent events rather than petty arguments. I'm not famous, but I've been interviewed enough to tell you that reporters ask loaded questions and fish for any phrase that can sound pejorative if taken out of context. They'll take a worshipful reply about a fellow musician and winnow it down to a few words that can be spun as a put-down. I wish there were a meaningful way for the American public to convey to major networks that the tenor of mainstream news is too trivial and too unconstructive. No, I don't think that idealism can be legislated, since trying to do so is like asking a corrupt genie to grant your wish: The worst outcome is generally the most predictable. Hence the line you mention and why I'd be reluctant to cross it. My comment was meant to set a tone -- a call for civility in the real world -- not fill the courtroom. Yes, I do think it possible for public policy to place some constraints on high-profile character assassination in the name of special interests. However, I'm reluctant to discuss specifics here, as they might provoke partisan discussion. Some people regard the Fairness Doctrine as advantageous to democrats, but the point of it is to be advantageous to no particular party. My feeling about most things -- artistic and political -- is that imagining an alternative to what dissatisfies us can be incredibly constructive. Even if we hit a brick wall of limitation, the mere exercise of trying to think of solutions for ourselves is educational or, at the very least, satisfying creatively. That's why science fiction is often veiled social criticism: it's fun to construct alternative worlds. * * * * To be clear: I'm not talking about censoring politicians. I'm advocating returning to a more European approach: I want news organizations to be told -- ideally, by public vote -- to focus on hard reporting rather than expressing personal opinions. I for one don't want to see an evening news reporter wearing a button that comments on a presidential candidate -- that's my job as a private citizen. (I'm thinking of a real-life anchor who did that very thing; I'll omit their name to keep this discussion less partisan.) What you might not realize is this: The media are being told what to focus on already; they're constantly being led by the wrinkling nose. This is true not in the conspiracy-theory-validating sense, but as a matter of course: Various networks circulate memos about what personal aspects of politicians to focus on, what spin to apply and what to say about it. That seems completely unconstructive. Why not report what happens and let the specifics lead to viewers' own interpretation? Why shouldn't modern reporters strive to avoid taking partisan positions in their work? Isn't opinion the job of bloggers and editorial writers? We live in a country that is information-starved and opinion-saturated. The more bias is emphasized over fact, the greater the division between common citizens becomes. The opposite should be true. We need to be able to solve problems as a nation, not distract ourselves with Lilliputian wars. We need to be able to analyze our situation and work together, not peer at each new issue through isolating lenses, lose our tempers and bark at some perceived enemy -- one who might have been needed as an ally. One last thing: Opinion is not news, it's entertainment. The two were once considered mutually exclusive, which was to the American public's benefit. Talk radio is entertainment by definition and should be. The evening news isn't and shouldn't. If you hate your life and want to relieve the frustration by jeering at some random celebrity cast into the Roman arena, then sobeit: Read your scandal feed and gape at the Entertainment Channel. But if you need timely information on which to base decisions that affect your life and country, then you're out of luck. My point is, you shouldn't have to be.
I think that the question that can be given to this is: do (most) people want to be entertained or informed? I think I know the answer... Here's the psychologist's take: The purpose of cognitive functions is to enable functioning and surviving in the world. This survival thing involves having an awareness of our physical survival needs --i.e. of how our body needs things to be-- and an awareness of reality --i.e. of how things actually are. The behaviours initiated and directed by the brain are fundamentally attempts at minimising this discrepancy: to make things as much as possible like our body needs them to be. Drives and instincts meeting the need for food/water, warmth, safety; you know the spiel. As organisms become more complex we go up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and belonging/companionship, reproduction and more extensive control over one's environment come into play. These needs are more socio-psychological, and cognitive functions need to become more complex to regulate the complex behaviours to meet(!) them. Again, we have an awareness of our socio-psychological needs and of socio-psychological reality, and our behaviours are aimed at minimising the discrepancy and maximising the match between the two. What does that mean? It means that the brain strives for coherence above all. Internal coherence as it has to keep all those different complex brain functions working together (a graphic example of when they don't is psychosis), and a coherence of external reality with internal needs. Note that accuracy doesn't come into it. It is all about getting a good match. Hence we will perceive and interpret new information to fit with our existing framework of beliefs of How The World Works. We are selective in our perception and interpretation, and be more likely to disregard information that doesn't fit. We have prejudices and biases. It generally takes a long time of repeated experiences of incongruous information before we reluctantly take it on board and change our framework. There is a logic to this: our internal simplified representation of the world is no match for the complexity of its real counterpart so we continually get our beliefs and expectations challenged. If we updated our worldview at every challenge we would be doing so, like, every five minutes, and live in cognitive chaos. So accuracy and sophistication of information are not nearly as important as how well it fits our internal framework, which is dictated by our perceived needs. People don't want information to know what is going on; they want information primarily to enable them to make the outside world fit their internal representation of how it should be. They want to hear, see and read stuff that will help them feel good about themselves and their world. News agencies and politicians know this --it is where their bread and butter lie. People don't want to know the truth; not really. They want reassurance. They want comfort. They want a sense of control. And we know that the real, true world isn't like that. I mean, why do you think that religion is still going strong in the face of all those scientific insights? It is still going strong because of those scientific insights. So the upshot is that news is like gossip: confirmation of your a priory beliefs that enhance your sense of safety, social bonding, control and coherence.
Nexxo: Your points are well taken, though I suspect I didn't make my object in posting clear. We've been busy for a week; I'll try to answer your reply shortly. In the whinemeal, another installment in the series: For me, the worst part is that the corruption isn't even spontaneous -- it's engineered. Many American reporters are threatened with unemployment when they push the wrong kind of story. I once read an article by an ex-reporter for the NYT whose position was jeopardized when he wrote a piece showing inconsistencies in presidential coverage. He opted to leave American censorship behind and now publishes in the slightly more lenient British press. One good source of information (in my view): F.A.I.R. (Fairness And Accuracy In Reporting), a site that manages to lay out the failings of corporate-driven news respectably. When bloggers and personalities try to pull this off, it almost always degenerates into ranting and character assassination. A less careful attempt: Project Censorship. I like this site's tenet (though I don't care for their unquoted qualifications of it): "On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional non-inclusion of a news story – or piece of a news story – based on anything other than a desire to tell the truth." Unfortunately, every site I visit veers into advocacy. I'd love to find a site dedicated to omitted or under-reported news -- one that tried not to have a political POV at all, but simply foraged for whatever content and coverage the normative media audience isn't supposed to see. Casual readers could find balance, activists at either end, fodder for positions: Properly presented, events can be read like tea leaves as well as cues to provocation. Here's an idea I've toyed with in the past: A televised independent summary, the object of which would be to offer balanced news without opinion or slant whether left, center or right. (Centrism is a moderate position, but it's still another position.) If I had any free time or were gainfully unemployed, I'd experiment with a cable news show on public access just to see if it could be done. I'd try use people who were uninterested in promoting any agenda whether by emphasis or omission -- people with the compulsion to be fair.
All tv stations want to make money, so they are all going to want to take a side, not neccessarily because they might be on that side, but they want to target as large an audience as possible. More viewers = better ratings = more advertising dollars. TV is just advertising with shows as bait. And watching or listening to a fence sitter is going to comfort or satisfy people like listening to someone that is telling the story from a pov like yours. Sort of like going to the hairdresser, and they ask you a couple of questions, get a feel of what sort of interests you have, and then talk about & ask questions about topics that you might enjoy. They basically want to build a rapport with you, so new happy customer might become a friend/regular customer. The TV asks you questions aswell, with things like phone/sms/internet polls, even marketing campaigns/public events/etc It would be good to see a news program where the stories are unbiased, then people get to have thier say via sms & internet polls, and at the end of the news the results of the polls are shown. There could be an ad break just before the last couple of minutes of the news, where the results are shown. That last ad break would be worth mega mega bucks I should patent this instead of publishing my idea on the internets probably been done already... i'll shutup now
Save myself some time and txt with this post. I read the news from many different sources such as CNN, JPost, BBC, Syria Times, A-Sharq al-Awsat etc etc looking for reports from all media outlets (Bias/Non-bias) and I've come to the conclusion that they all have biases based on topics. America being the worst source of international news.
I wonder if one reason for that is the capitalist model of media (news media) we have in America versus a government subsidized model such as the BBC. In the capitalist model, the media outlet makes money through advertisements. In order to retain advertisers, the media outlet must be careful not to upset the customer (the advertiser, not the viewer) with news that would put the advertiser in a poor light. In other words, a magazine is unlikely to run a story about the negative effects of a particular medication if the pill's manufacturer routinely buys a lot of ad space. Bit-Tech, as an example, is careful to avoid that as much as possible by separating the two functions (advertising and reporting). I think that's an interesting idea, but it would be extremely difficult. As much as we like to consider ourselves open to all sides of a story, all of us have some inherent bias. Since you can't report on every single news item occurring everywhere, all the time, you would have to choose which ones you felt were important enough to report. Unless you draw topics from a hat or use a dartboard, you're already applying some bias from the very beginning. What's important to you may not be important to the single mother of three down the road. One of my professors always said that what the photographer chooses not to include in a photograph is just as important as what he captured on film. Why do we shoot the things we do, and why do we compose the subject the way we compose it? When I was in college, we touched on some of this in our Mass-Comm Theory course. We discussed the many roles that media, news media in particular, plays in society. Should news outlets exist to offer a buffet of facts, then let us pick and choose which ones to consume? Should media exist as a gate-keeper - inform the public which events are newsworthy, and then provide basic information about the event? In some ways, I think the natural progression of media in a capitalist model is to end up giving in to the entertainment value, at least to some degree. Like it or not, it's what people want, and people will seek whatever outlet will provide a sleek image (read: well-funded and highly produced) and enough sensationalism to make them feel better about their lives. You can see it in the streets. Any time there is a wreck, traffic skids to a halt as everyone slows down to get a better look. When they get home, they turn on the TV to see whatever celebrity is having his or her own train wreck that week. The more people tune in, the more advertisers an outlet can seduce, and the bigger the profit margins get. Consumers are happy. Advertisers are happy. Investors are happy. Prestidigitweeze is unhappy. If I had to make a point, I guess I would recall the adage: Common sense isn't so common. Considering half the population functions at or below average intelligence, it starts to make sense why legitimate, fact-based, un-biased reporting is hard to come by. People who want to be informed just can't compete with a populace willing to shell out gobs of money to be entertained. Your original post was great, by the way. It's exactly what this forum is about: serious discussion based on a well-written topic. Also, you've offered some very good discussion points in the first post. It's refreshing from the cut-and-paste article followed by a single sentence we see a lot. -monkey
Which was where my post was coming from. Basically, not only is it impossible to attain fair and indepenent news (to interpret is to filter, select and bias), there also will be relatively few takers.
Or, speaking as a journalist and to quote Terry Pratchett (who was probably quoting someone else) people don't actually want news, they want olds.
Out of interest has any one had any direct access to a reuters or AP feed, perhaps that would have less spin?
The interesting thing about the press wire is that there is actually another layer of editorial bias that many people don't realize. First, the story goes through the reporter's filter (whether intentional or otherwise), then it goes through his or her editor, then it goes to the wire for other news outlets. The story then goes through another filter, as newspaper editors select the stories they think are most appropriate for their papers. But it doesn't end there. The editor decides in which section to place the story. Another filter - we associate stories buried on page D13 as less important than the headline on A1. Even on the front page, only the most important news is placed above the fold because this is the first thing people see. It still doesn't end there. When the editor decides where to place the story, the person responsible for that page's layout has to make space for the story. If there aren't enough column inches, an editor might pare down the story to make it fit, which filters the information even more. Which facts are vital to the story, and which facts can be deleted to make space? If you pay close attention, you can sometimes spot an article that ends mid-sentence when a sloppy page editor just cuts the bottom, rather than re-writing the article. It seems like something straight out of The Onion, but in my time working for a newspaper I've seen it happen more than once. The same thing holds true for television news. I also worked as a video editor for a network affiliate, and when the producers selected stories from the wire they made sure to pick news that would apply to our market. -monkey
Thought you might enjoy this. Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe - the most entertaining show on British TV - FACT!
Now I'm not going to read the whole thing because i don't have the time but I think I know where you're going with this. I agree, the media is out of control and so are the politicians in America. Neither political group (republicans/democrats) are innocent in this. The liberals control the televised media while the republicans plaster the radio. Examples that come to mind. Global Warming and the video by Al Gore...... The entire video is insane. Everything is taken out of proportion and is barely supported by scientists. Now I agree with the main goal of the video which is to minimize waste and pollution but the secondary goal of the pollution tax credit market (an Idea created by al gore) is just another way for him to get rich off of the economy. Of coarse nobody follows that because everyone is all so thrilled about the movie. Rush Limbaugh (not sure if that's the correct spelling) Is as bad if not worse than the Democrats. While I enjoy listening to him for entertainment purposes, most of his speeches are based on He said She said ********. He also criticizes the democrats for there "tricks" and wordplay all the while doing the same thing on his talk show. I honestly believe the President Bush was the greatest President of our time. I also believe that he was slandered unmercifully throughout his presidency and that he was the scapegoat for the entire Republican party. The fact that so many democrats completely flipped on what they actually felt when it became beneficial to do so is just awful. There was an almost unanimous vote to remove Sadam from power in the Clinton era and when Bush actually did something about it People got pissed and said it was for oil. But I'll stop now because as much as i wish I was right I know there are probably a million reasons why I'm wrong. So for the next four years I think I'm just going to stay clear of politics.
Taken from another thread that I don't want to derail with a reply better suited to this one: That's an indictment not of the article but of the entire history of post-Murdochian American journalism. American news no longer exists. There is now only American opinion, which is the towering McNugget of ethical and intellectual sustenance in the States. Our minds are choking on fat and empty carbs. The American right likes to take shots at the idea of the reinstatement of The Fairness Doctrine, but what you're talking about is precisely what we've lost with its defeat by Reagan. Look at newsreels of Walter Cronkite reporting in the 60s and 70s: No, you won't hear an unbiased version of world events in vintage American news, but at least you'll become aware that the world beyond the U.S. exists. At least you'll be exposed to the thinking part of journalism: The tracing of events prior to and apart from ostensible opinion (which ought to be the public's domain, not journalists', whose job is to shape events into stories, not tell the public what to think about said events). Americans are made passive by trumpeted broadcast opinion and kept reactionary by being deprived of a critical overview. British news is manipulated (and is therefore propaganda in part), but at least experts on BBC have to know the geography of a region and its neighboring countries before contemplating blowing it up or forcing democracy down its throat. They know they must provide multiple theories and analyses of an event even if certain windows will be dimmed and points of view muffled. The key is to present the world in its complexity rather than waving twenty triply underlined flashcards of zingers involving three politicians and twelve celebrities. (This post is also an excuse to resume explaining what I began to describe initially, which was taken by Nexxo and others to be an absolute method rather than a contrasting principle to which news could once again aspire.)
News is opinion really it shouldn't be there to entertain but sometimes it does. I mean the way the Daily Mail covers a news story will be different to the way in which the Guardian prints a story, the same as the way a story is portrayed in Britain will be different to the way its portrayed in say America, Zimbabwe or Iraq. Theres very few what I would call factual stories, after all news is just what you hear from other people, the same with science stories they arent fact and 100% proof positive or at least very rarely. After all science is about creating a thesis and proving it as much as modern science will allow, so at the moment we use the thesis of the origin of spieces to show that the way man evolved was via natural selection, in the future that might change as understanding changes. The LHC at CERN will be used to prove if Dark Matter exists, if it doesn't then it means physics doesn't know the way the universe works as much as people would like to think it does. imo news isn't factual at all and never will be its just a collection of opinions which make up a story or a tool to pass opinions and information which is avaliable. It's then the readers or listeners choice to choose which information they would like to listen to and from who.
Although it doesn't make for what I'd call "pure news," I like to read coverage from a variety of sources. One can begin to get a better sense of things by following the differences between each article. I'll admit to enjoying some intelligent news/opinions programs for the entertainment value. In addition, opposing views are welcome so that I'll think and consider my own position.
At long last, I'm going to try to return to this thread to answer the first detailed and thoughtful comment. If this post looks incomplete, it's because I've had to stop to do work in the midst of writing. Pity drafts can't be saved in a forum before they become active posts. The prioritization of want over need isn't a given even in a capitalist society. In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville makes a distinction between a comfortable society and a civilized one. For him, a "civil society" is not merely one in which the majority of citizens are assured residences, food and jobs. Civilization isn't simply a state in which humanity finds relief from the common fears of survival. A civil society must also afford its citizens a sense of meaning. By contrast, middle- and lower-class Americans must work constantly to afford some semblance of a standard of living; not for them (unfortunately), the Danish work week, which prioritizes friends before financial ambition. The result of those extra work hours for Americans: less time for reflection, social bonding and private studies. Similarly, according to Tocqueville, a poor person should be prevented not only from freezing or starving but from feeling disconnected. They should also be given some means to attend enriching public events -- political events, obviously, but also enriching cultural events such as might take place in a public theater or opera house. The idea is that human experience is predicated on depth and interchange, not survival, just as our higher form of shared sentience is what's supposed to separate us from apes. (Increasingly, we find that supposedly stupid animals possess some form of speech -- most surprisingly, birds -- but that's another topic). The idea of news that informs rather than strictly entertains -- that refrains from entertaining in ways that hinder providing citizens with information -- is one that presumes the necessity of addressing needs over wants. In order for democracy to work intelligently, the highest-saturation methods of distributing necessary information must be utilized. You see the remnants of that approach in televised public service commercials, but it used to inform nightly news programs as well. This is not to say that the BBC is something other than detestably biased (as in doctored vox populi segments that lead inexorably to the idea that the British government always knows what's best). But the approach itself is far more like what Tocqueville had in mind than, say, Fox News. The idea is not that news must be free of entertainment or that any form of news can be completely accurate and free of opinion. The idea is that news should be emphasized and entertainment minimalized, and that newscasters should be discouraged from expressing their own opinions concerning candidates, parties and the like. The result is to create a more passive public, since the one individual act afforded them -- to react -- has been usurped. They are spoon-fed reactions in place of information, and the result is that they become loudly passive reactionaries. Seminal philosopher (and apparent prophet) Theodore Adorno noticed a similar issue in post-WWII Germany: consumerism versus individuality. People want to consume, but they need to find more rewarding pursuits. As far back as the 40s, Adorno speaks of a time when consumers will no longer explore individuality but will instead choose branded products associated with individuality. It's one thing to buy an iPod because you like to listen to music. It's another to associate your iPod with the idea that you are a maverick. It's even more tragic to buy a geekier PMP or smartphone and associate that with being a maverick: Yes, the non-Apple product might have better specs or a better feature set, but you're still mistaking a product for an expression of individuality. Here is what Adorno says about it: Similarly, according to Adorno, pursuing entertainment at the expense of understanding proves an exhausting hobby: Ideas of the pursuit of luxury which end in emptiness, fatigue and paucity of thought. Europeans often lament Americans' unfamiliarity with art and culture (which leads to the imbalance of entertainment (opinion) over (news) information). Having been born (by chance) into a house full of scores by great composers and important volumes of fiction, poetry, verse, criticism and history, I, too, couldn't understand why most Americans remain alienated from culture and the arts -- the arts, which are a plangent criticism of society simply because they offer an alternative world. But as I grew older, I felt inclined to take normal full-time editing jobs to test my sense of discipline. I soon learned that such jobs leave one in a state of exhaustion that makes listening to Eugene O'Neill or Alban Berg too full, complex and demanding for most after-work evenings; instead, the weary survivor web-surfs or watches Law and Order reruns to detox from the office. The majority of Americans aren't alienated from culture because they decided to be anti-intellectual snobs. Most have had no choice but to opt for careers and schedules that left them without time to think, and grew up in places in which culture wasn't offered or chosen. They simply don't know what to make of the arts -- work seems phony or empty to them because they weren't given the tools to understand it or the familiarity to think of it as natural. Without early familiarity, culture begins to seem alien, and that is the fault of elected leaders as well as parents. People need culture to afford their lives meaning, but they are trained not to want or accept it, and that training is confused for free choice. * * * * * It's easy to try to suggest the problem is either insurmountable or too entrenched to be corrected, but consider this analogous situation: You are a student at public university attempting to get a degree in science. All around you -- in the cafeteria and the library -- debates continue as to whether universities help or hinder the individual's quest for knowledge. Many such discussions hinge, ultimately, upon whether a bachelors in sociology or history is something other than a degree in rumor, or on whether anything truly important (such as talent) can be taught. Being concerned with your degree in science, you do your best to ignore these debates. Only, over time, a certain loud element begins to overtake your teachers. A group of intolerant individuals forms around the lectern. They begin questioning the motives of your teacher and calling her an elitist. They assert that your curriculum is meaningless and that students are being insulted by not being able to choose their own requirements. It becomes impossible to hear the teacher. The following week, your finals are replaced by a questionnaire that asks you to rate the taste, attractiveness, disposition and background of Prince William's last three girfriends. Instead of a scheduled lecture on physics, you're forced to hear a motivational speaker reiterate his opinion that science is no better than religion. This is contrasted by a moment of rebuttal, in which a timid man in plaid argues that science might be useful in some way. Students attempt to discuss the posited trajectory of objects in space, but this compels the motivational speaker to ask his imaginary TV audience which objects feel fresh and velvety to the touch. Your last class of the day, a survey of linguistics and geography, is stopped dead by back-of-the-pew diatribes against dipthongs and Zoroastrians. Eventually your idea of a university becomes an anachronism. The only schools available to you now teach nothing but the idea that no one can. Loudly, you insist that school used to be serious, important and vital, and that learning was once beneficial to students and society. At which point, posters on bit-tech begin disagreeing with you in droves, insisting that teaching has always been about opinions and elitism. According to one particularly convincing fellow, choosing not to be instructed is an inevitable part of human nature and it is useless to expect anything else from people. Sheepishly, you apologize for your plaid Oxfords. You insist you'll return to answer posters' objections on Easter weekends, pausing to add that you use iRiver and Coolermaster products because you're a maverick. And here I must stop, as someone's article about diversity has arrived on my desk: The iced tea cometh. A placeholder for Nexxo's comments appears below, as I still have to answer. ====================================
