The rise of pseudo-journalism

[quade 4]

Interesting article about L.A. Times Editor giving ethics lecture.

http://www.dailyemerald.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/05/07/409bbfc0d5b00

It was maybe my paper route delivering "The Whale" (called so because of its size) that first got me interested in news.

BTW, the L.A. Times won more Pulitzers last year than any other paper -- 5.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Kennedy 0]

And here I thought he had something new to say, or was going to make a real statement. Sorry quade, I can't get excited about a big city paper editor bashing Fox and O'Reilly.

Quote

He said while much media has ended up "in the gutter," the L.A. Times has a different philosophy and was dedicated to taking the "high road."

Wow, he had another big city paper editor patting him on the back in the article. Who's surprised? I bet "all the right people" are at his cocktail parties, and as long as everyone there agrees on something, well then that's all there is to say about that.

I'm not claiming some vast left wing conspiracy, I'm just saying most of the people we call journalists are liberal. They don't actively try to leave things out, but when something doesn't fit their worldview, do you think we hear it?

When's the last time you heard that 2.5 milion crimes are prevented evry year by citizens with firearms? Or the last good thing you heard about the economy (which is, yet again, showing positive indicators)?


I'll take a reporter over a journalist any day of the week.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[quade 4]

Well, I certainly didn't expect everyone to agree with it.

I simply thought it was "interesting" and that news junkies (left or right) would like to read it.

As for the "big city paper" comments, well, they do have a tendancy to have more resources than the smaller papers so they can cover a wider range of topics themselves and don't have to rely so heavily on the wire services for foriegn coverage. "Big city papers" do have a place in the overall scheme of things and -are- worth reading.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Kennedy 0]

Oh, I would never say bigger papers don't have a place. They are useful. You just have to read them right. Example: when I lived in DC, I had a lot more time to read the paper and access to more papers. Usually I picked up the Washington Post. However, I never picked up the Post without also grabbing the Washington Times. Why? Well, it came from an experience in college.

I was sitting there reading both papers (they were free, I hadn't bought either). I read in the Post about police brutality on demonstrators in Detroit. A few minutes later, I read how police were forced to use tear gas and shields to break up riots that had burned one car, blown up another, attempted arson to an apartment building, and resulted in several assaults.

It took me a few minutes to realize I was reading about the same incident. Ever since then, I have read both papers at the same time, and you know what? Probably 90% of the articles in one were matched in the other. It completely amazes me how the Post had opinions in the articles while the Times seemed to report more and editorialize less.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[Gawain 0]

They're pretty kind to themselves. And this guy has a longer agenda than Hillary Clinton for crying-out-loud.

In his advice to students in guiding their careers: "Don't be a piano player in a whorehouse." --- He needs to clean his own house.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[rickjump1 0]

Fox News is kicking his ass, and there is nothing he can do.

Do your part for global warming: ban beans and hold all popcorn farts.

[gmanpilot 0]

What I have been looking for is a daily that is completely absent any opinion at all, and I have not been able to find it. The older I get, the more I seem to distain all news publications with any opinion at all. If I want opinions, I'll read a professional or field related journal. All I want is the data in a news pub, I'll decide for myself what it means. Fox ain't it, and The Times ain't it, it's all agenda driven. If anyone knows where to find it, please let me know.

_________________________________________
-There's always free cheese in a mouse trap.

[Kennedy 0]

That's why I get half my news right here in the Corner.

People come in and post stuff, sometimes with opinions, sometimes without, but either way everybody who cares has to go check it out for themselves. And since you're out there looking already, it's easy to just keep looking and check out what different sources are saying.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[billvon 3,114]

>When's the last time you heard that 2.5 milion crimes are prevented
>evry year by citizens with firearms?

About as often as you hear about natural gas powered buses that don't blow up. News about things that didn't happen isn't often published. It's not a conspiracy; just the nature of news.

>Or the last good thing you heard about the economy (which is, yet
> again, showing positive indicators)?

From CNN:
5/9 - story about strong US jobs report may lead to interest rate hike
5/7 - "European shares closed mixed on Friday as investors bet that U.S. interest rates will rise next month, after American job creation continued to surge . . "

Pretty much every newspaper and website out there covers the economy.

[billvon 3,114]

>Fox News is kicking his ass, and there is nothing he can do.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland conducted a study a while back on misconceptions of the general public concerning the war on terror. They wanted to see who actually believed things like we had actually found Saddam's WMD stockpiles, or that Saddam had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. One of the results:

"The extent of Americans' misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR or PBS are less likely to have misperceptions. These variations cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographic characteristics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the demographic subgroups of each audience."

As an example, 11% of people who cited local newspapers as their primary source of information believed we had discovered WMD stockpiles, while 33% of people who relied on FOX believed that falsehood.

So they may be "kicking ass," but take what they say with a grain of salt. Ratings do not indicate veracity.

[Gravitymaster 0]

Quote

>Fox News is kicking his ass, and there is nothing he can do.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland conducted a study a while back on misconceptions of the general public concerning the war on terror. They wanted to see who actually believed things like we had actually found Saddam's WMD stockpiles, or that Saddam had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. One of the results:

"The extent of Americans' misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR or PBS are less likely to have misperceptions. These variations cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographic characteristics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the demographic subgroups of each audience."

As an example, 11% of people who cited local newspapers as their primary source of information believed we had discovered WMD stockpiles, while 33% of people who relied on FOX believed that falsehood.

So they may be "kicking ass," but take what they say with a grain of salt. Ratings do not indicate veracity.

Baloney!
Post one article Fox News has run which states stockpiles of WMDs have been found or that SH was involved in 9/11. If these people really believe this, how do you conclude they got the info from Fox?

[billvon 3,114]

>Post one article Fox News has run which states stockpiles of WMDs
>have been found or that SH was involved in 9/11.

FOX News, December 2003:

Saddam Hussein (search) had weapons of mass destruction and his army was capable of firing them off in less than 45 minutes, according to statements from an Iraqi colonel.

FOX News, John Gibson, October 2003:

"Cohen says that me and the president and the vice president insisted on asserting the unsupportable — that Saddam was linked to terrorism and had WMD. He says there's no truth to that... none.

Cohen is wrong, and it doesn't matter how often Howard Dean says he's right. They're both wrong."

Note that the above does not _claim_ that Saddam had WMD's, just that the people who claim he had none were wrong. Hence the reason that 33% of the people who listened "read between the lines" - and came to the wrong conclusion.

>If these people really believe this, how do you conclude they got the
>info from Fox?

The study did not claim that. It simply stated that people who claimed to get most of their news from FOX had the greatest misconceptions about the war on terror. Draw your own conclusions from that.

[Gravitymaster 0]

And your point is what? I can find the same type of stories on MSNBC, PBS etc..

http://www.aim.org/aim_report/1478_0_4_0_C/

Heres an article which claims that most people who use drugs support Kerry.

However, the new book, “Marijuana and Madness,” scheduled for release this May and published by Cambridge University Press, could put Kerry’s campaign for “the marijuana vote” on the defensive. One of the editors, Prof. Robin Murray of Britain’s Institute of Psychiatry, cites studies and evidence from around the world, some of it going back 40 years, linking the use of marijuana—supposedly a “soft” drug—to mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and psychosis.

By your standard, we should conclude people who are mentally ill support Kerry.

[billvon 3,114]

>And your point is what?

No point. You said "Post one article Fox News has run which states stockpiles of WMDs have been found . . ." so I did. I might ask you what your point was in asking it if you don't care about the answer.

>By your standard, we should conclude people who are mentally ill
> support Kerry.

You are no doubt correct. People who are mentally ill support Bush as well - I am sure I could dig up someone who voted for Bush who is under the care of a psychiatrist for serious mental-health problems. But that's not much of a relevation; in any voting population you will see such examples. I'm sure there will be diehard republicans who will vote for Kerry just as there will be liberals who will vote for Bush. That's not any sort of headline news - it's just the outside edges of the bell curve.

[Gravitymaster 0]

Quote

>And your point is what?

No point. You said "Post one article Fox News has run which states stockpiles of WMDs have been found . . ." so I did. I might ask you what your point was in asking it if you don't care about the answer.

I didn't say I didn't care. I said I could post similar stories on MSNBC, ABC, PBS etc. The fact FOX also ran similar stories proves nothing.

>By your standard, we should conclude people who are mentally ill
> support Kerry.

You are no doubt correct. People who are mentally ill support Bush as well - I am sure I could dig up someone who voted for Bush who is under the care of a psychiatrist for serious mental-health problems. But that's not much of a relevation; in any voting population you will see such examples. I'm sure there will be diehard republicans who will vote for Kerry just as there will be liberals who will vote for Bush. That's not any sort of headline news - it's just the outside edges of the bell curve.

The difference is Bush isn't actively seeking the votes of the mentally ill. Kerry is. He is also accepting the assistance and financial support of George Soros who is an advocate of illegal drug usage.

[billvon 3,114]

>The difference is Bush isn't actively seeking the votes of the
> mentally ill. Kerry is.

Bush passed an executive order benefiting mental patients, especially patients with "serious mental illness and children with serious emotional disturbances." Looks like he's interested in that mentally-ill vote as well.

[Gravitymaster 0]

[rickjump1 0]

> So they may be "kicking ass", but take what they say with a grain of salt. Ratings do not indicate veracity.

I agree, and I check out other websites like the BBC News. You must pick and choose what you want to believe. Not everything on Fox News is 100% reliable, but they have brought up news that the other networks would not touch.

Do your part for global warming: ban beans and hold all popcorn farts.

[RoadRash 0]

Quote

> So they may be "kicking ass", but take what they say with a grain of salt. Ratings do not indicate veracity.

I agree, and I check out other websites like the BBC News. You must pick and choose what you want to believe. Not everything on Fox News is 100% reliable, but they have brought up news that the other networks would not touch.

And that is why I watch Fox as well, they bring up stories and such that other networks didn't bother to or didn't deem newsworthy at the time. I also watch other networks, but lately I have been ultra busy and its hard to even find time to sit down......


~R+R

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Fly the friendly skies...^_^...})ii({...^_~...

[Kennedy 0]

OK, maybe I didn't make myself clear. My fault. There is no way to gauge how many potential crimes were prevented by guns.

The 2.5 million number I bring up is actual crimes that were stopped by citizens with firearms. Most of the time this means drawing a firearm and pointing it at a perpetrator. Sometimes it includes shots fired and rarely someone is hit. This is not some la-la land "could've happened if only" scenario. These are real crimes that were stopped because citizens were armed.

So this is not something that didn't happen. This is 2.5 million people who stopped crimes that were happening because they had a firearm. So it's not that something didn't happen, it's that two somethings happened.

To make your analogy accurate, we would first have to have a high rate of natural gas homes going up, then someone introduces a new tool that prevents all these explosions, and the news doesn't cover it.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[quade 4]

Quote

The 2.5 million number I bring up is actual crimes that were stopped by citizens with firearms.

Source?

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[billvon 3,114]

>To make your analogy accurate, we would first have to have a high
>rate of natural gas homes going up, then someone introduces a new
>tool that prevents all these explosions, and the news doesn't cover it.

Uh, that's exactly what DID happen. Do you remember all the 'what to do if you smell gas' warnings 20 years back or so? That was because natural gas appliances were leaky and poorly designed, and often blew up. From 1954-1979 there were 48 deaths and 89 serious burns from one type of gas-fired water heater alone. Modern appliances are many times better and do not blow up very often. Advances such as thermistor interlocks and whole-house flow limiters (that shut off gas if a pipe ruptures) greatly reduce the incidence of house fires.

Yet you don't read about "a car plowed into a house and ruptured the house's main gas line; there was no explosion and massive fireball, and six people were not killed." A car hitting a house, with no deaths, is barely news for a local newspaper, never mind CNN or FOX.

[Kennedy 0]

Quote

Quote

The 2.5 million number I bring up is actual crimes that were stopped by citizens with firearms.

Source?

1993 Study by Gary Kleck
http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/ccjfaculty/kleck.htm

It was in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.

He wrote Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, which won the 1993 Michael J. Hindelang Award of the American Society of Criminology. This award is presented for the book of the previous several years which "made the most outstanding contribution to criminology."

edit: I was mistaken, the DGU study is cited as

Quote

Gary Kleck and Mark Gertz. Fall 1995. “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[quade 4]

You cite the Gary Kleck bio, but not the actual study.

Do you have a link to it on-line somewhere? I'd like to read it.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Kennedy 0]

Right now I can't find the real study either.

It's cited as >Gary Kleck and Mark Gertz. Fall 1995. “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology<

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*