Inaccurate reporting from the media

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxdvwZQmu8Y[/youtube]


Apparently a number of political figures today come from families involved in this group and refer to the group fondly. The piece more focuses on the failure of the media to cover instances honestly.

At college, we were all but FORCED to use newspapers as accurate primary sources for information on any given historical event. Even back then it seemed dubious, but as time has gone on it becomes more and more obvious that newspapers are some of the LEAST accurate sources for information, and the most biased. The same is broadly true of other information media. These days I like to read a variety of Opinion-papers, and form my own News.

That's the history of America.

At one point in the late 1800's/early 1900's the major metropolitan areas had SEVERAL newspapers of which to choose as they served your interest. Think of that in terms of the various cable news outlets, and you basically have CNN and Fox. In my opinion, CNN certainly has a leftist "spin" while at least presenting the appearance of opposing viewpoints. Fox favors the opposite viewpoints while at least presenting the facts. I find Fox amusing because you always get to see the liberals getting shouted down and made to look like idiots. They also report a number of relevant facts that other news channels seem to ignore.

And then you have "public" radio, which is a joke! If you want to know where all the leftist ULTRA-liberals hang out, you have to turn on your nearest public radio station. It clearly doesn't represent a good cross-section of the nation, and I would think a "publicly-supported" format would be MORE open to debate and devoted to "equal time." But as it is, "public radio" is devoted to it's OWN viewpoint and is less often concerned with the interests of the "public."

And that is, of course, the great thing about the internet. You have access to all the information all in one place and can make up your OWN mind. You actually have the power to MAKE the news if you so desire. If you want fair and balanced reporting, you have to do all the work because the media outlets certainly aren't going to do it for you!

A) CNN represents centrist (for the USA, anyways) viewpoints mostly and has actually been criticized and their centrism has been blamed for their loss of viewership.

B) Fox News almost never presents facts. They basically invented the modern free pass to get around facts with their "some people say" qualifiers that allow for opinions to be expressed as if it were fact and opinions to be included in what should be factual programming. In fact, some people say that when Fox News uses "some people say", they're actually just referring to internal executives looking to help spread propaganda and lies.

C) NPR is true centrist news reporting from a worldview standpoint. Calling them ultra-liberal is like calling a union member a communist: it's an absurd hyperbole that only stands to change the conversation and the context of the conversation. If you had a bit more of a scope on political opinions and ideology, you'd realize that America's ruling parties are essentially centrist-right and ultra-right with no real leftist leadership and only leftist rhetoric with right-leaning action. It doesn't represent a cross-section of people more because it's such a divergence from the center-right, and ultra-right leaning television programming that it's a shock to many people who find out what they thought they knew, they might be wrong on.

I'm not going to make a comment about A or B because I think everyone is entitled to their opinions and I honestly don't see it worth quibbling over.

But on C--ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? NPR is CENTRIST???????? Since when???????????? Surely you are joking.

I used to listen to NPR all the time for the news stories and will still flip over to it on occasion. But the pro-liberal rhetoric is absolutely disgusting. I've not listened to NPR significantly since the waning years of the Bush administration. It was all the Obama-talk that turned me off. It's not so much that I was a Bush-supporter and Republican voter. It's not even that I have any strong dislike for Obama. It was just the hours on end about how "the Messiah was coming" and I just couldn't listen anymore. I even took to listening to Limbaugh and Hannity for a while and was enraged when the AM station changed format and dropped their talk programming (although my outlook on life DID generally improve after that). My listening habits have shifted since then as I've found myself deeply involved in contemporary Christian music and find AFR to be a much better place to find variety and follow current trends than K-LOVE.

But at least with THOSE guys you know what to expect. Being a publicly supported organization, I'd expect better from NPR, and they just don't deliver. If you ask me, I say NPR is just a bunch of old hippies who haven't had a legit reason to complain against anything since 'nam and the Civil Rights era. And yet they somehow maintain that whole "the sky is falling," tree-hugger rhetoric that I just find boring. But "centrist"? I don't think so.

You must live under a rock to be that clueless about what goes on in this country.

And you must be thoroughly brainwashed to think that NPR is Centrist!

Not really. Maybe out of touch if they're doing that much Obama praising. Admittedly, I haven't listened to NPR in a couple years now but when I used to listen to them, they were pretty fair to the Bush administration and almost generous in some points. Anyways this isn't a tit-for-tat kind of ad hominem. There's plenty of horrific things going on with this country and to imply that there's nothing wrong going on here implies a distinct ignorance of pretty much everything on in the outside world from ignorance of our policies with torture, rendition (aka, kidnapping), and the suspension of habeas corpus to the continued promotion of the police state and enforcement of ineffective laws that only serve to lower our quality of living and increase crime in the lower income areas. And to say that none of this is a legit reason to complain just shows that you're very out of touch with what goes on in this country.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, yes. But we are not entitled to our own facts, and it is a fact that Fox News is less a legitimate news organization than a right-wing propaganda outlet which is quite often severely misleading or outright wrong on their factual coverage, and always biased. CNN is pretty centrist. I follow their coverage occasionally, and what I've seen from them is just basic factual reporting, and they present Republican views at least as much as they do Democratic ones.


Yeah, I haven't heard that from anywhere, but then I don't listen to NPR very often. I will say that none of the news sources I follow (including both left-wing and right-wing ideologies) are all that supportive of Obama. The liberals think he's an appeaser or a traitor to the cause or something along those lines, while the right think he's a Muslim Kenyan Communist Nazi baby eater.


That explains so much.


Sky is falling? I haven't heard that from NPR, and I've heard a fair deal of them in the past week or so (been traveling, and it was the only thing on). If anything, NPR is just dull more than overtly partisan.

Don't forget antichrist. I've even heard supposed atheists who were right wing say things along the lines of "isn't it weird how all the signs with Obama line up with the antichrist?" To which I normally respond "that'd require there were a god or a christ for there to be an antichrist".

It's sad that I know you're not exaggerating. It is impossible to create any parody of the right wing that is more ridiculous than the right wingers themselves.

Life is becoming more and more a cartoon. Either that or it always has been a cartoon but now it's becoming more and more obvious thanks to technology. It's something I've been thinking about lately...mostly while stoned*...it's amazing the level of realization you get about another's viewpoint when you're stoned and you actually care to focus on that sort of thing. To actually understand that when people say something, that they might actually mean it literally and that many people are much more literal than we give them credit for.


*It's a good thing. “I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity** for everyone, but they've always worked for me."

**Just a reminder: sanity isn't logical but rather a condition determined by consensus. Being insane is, in some ways, better once you realize just how absurd the "sane" are.

Part of a free press is the freedom of the press to be wrong, or to be wrong headed. That is why a free press, in the hands of as many different owners as possible, is one of the essential pillars of a democratic society.

In my school the teacher said we should read the newspaper but should do so critically. He said "Well the person who writes the newspaper is a guy of flesh and bone and so he has his own position about the subject matter he is writing about." He said that that the media should explicitly state its own positions. When I got into college I realized that was the same opinion Gunnar Myrdal had in his book The "Political Element in the Development of Economic Theory". But it doesn´t work that way.

If NPR isn't centrist, then I'm Prince Charles.


And I'm not.

Case in point that Fox News is not a acurate source of informations.