bclarkie wrote:
I was going to leave the comment about "journalism" alone, but you brought it up again, so I must ask:  Do you feel the same way about Fox News or is this just the journalists that you don't like?

FOX makes my skin crawl, but then....

I regard FOX news as a parody of the other news agencies.

They don't like FOX because they see themselves in the mirror.  It irritates them to be sent up with such dead-on mockery.

In a very real way, they created FOX...they demanded FOX to exist with their own behavior...they conjured FOX with power of the Demon of Arrogance.  Aye!  

I generally choose to watch the BBC and listen to whatever Dutch news agency is broadcasting on NPR.  Not that the BBC is without faults.

FormCritic wrote:
FOX makes my skin crawl, but then....

I regard FOX news as a parody of the other news agencies.

They don't like FOX because they see themselves in the mirror.  It irritates them to be sent up with such dead-on mockery.

In a very real way, they created FOX...they demanded FOX to exist with their own behavior...they conjured FOX with power of the Demon of Arrogance.  Aye!  

I generally choose to watch the BBC and listen to whatever Dutch news agency is broadcasting on NPR.  Not that the BBC is without faults.

Fox seems like some sort of elaborate in-joke. Almost like they are some kind of insider bet about "What would happen if we cranked it up to 11?".  And then it somehow succeeded  

Then again CNN isn't much better. I can often watch FOX for the entertainment value alone.  CNN is just mind-numbingly boring and silly. It's not often I listen to a newscast and find myself laughing uproriously at the obviously overly sincere yet impossibly biased newscaster trying to "make me feel the story" but CNN does it often. TV journalism is really in a bad place now.  

Mark's views on the state of American journalism are dead spot on. No greater indictment of the ridiculous depths journalism has fallen than the constant scandals at the New York Post, New Yorker, and other "respected" news agencies concerning faking stories and basically creating news instead of reporting it by some of the "best and brightest". And then the frauds attempt to cash in on their notoriety by writing books (Jason Blair) or movies (Stephen Glass)...about how much of a fraud they were.  Ridiculous!  In another age, both them and the rest of the news fakers would hide under rocks and never be heard from again, or at the very least be run out of town on a rail. Only now in time can they cash in on their untruthfulness as some sort of celebrity. Nice that we as a society are actually celebrating deception.

What's funny is if you have ever had a event you knew intimate details about, or a story involving a family member, make it to the news.  Remember how they got every single detail wrong? EVERY SINGLE DETAIL?  Now, just think about what they are doing every night with every single story they report on.  Frightening.

Mike B.

Here is some analysis on Fox News of the "fist bump" gesture.  You may lose IQ points by watching this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_vmQrTi3aM

I don't know if there ever was a golden age when journalism and news reporting was decent and investigative and searching.  But here in the UK we do have a tradition of high quality reporting - especially in the BBC and also in the main national papers.  

However, there was a piece of research done recently here in the UK ( by Cardiff University - no jokes )to look at editorial staffing levels in these national newspapers, compared to the amount of page-space they were filling. They discovered that the average national newspaper journalist now is filling three times as much space as he or she was in 1985. Put another way, they have only one-third of the time that they used to have to do their jobs. Which is one reason the quality of journalism has slipped in recent years.  Journos don't get their own stories, or check their facts, because they just don't have the time.

I was brought up on robust political discussion ( at the dinner table and elsewhere ) and I think we can handle it here on the OT thread -- but without decent reporting, serious professional journalism, you are really really lost.  For how else do you get the information you need to make political decisions, like erm... voting?

Grug Greyskin wrote:
This is interesting, but does it take into consideration technological changes that could make reporters' work easier?  Things like the internet, cell phones and even word processing technology have improved since 1985 and could make fact checking a less time intensive task.

Spot on statement.

They are simply lazy, or worse dont WANT to check the facts, since mosy often the facts would get in the way of the story and with facts the story would be dead.

jasonw1239 wrote:One last thing on yesterdays topic. There was a comment from Mark about not listening to the biased news media.The implication of that is that I am a gullible foreigner that buys into everything he watches on TV.

In fact I am a bit of a political junkie and information that I use comes from a variety of sources such as The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States more commonly referred to as the 9/11 Commission Report. (Whatever could be in the 28 redacted pages about Saudi Arabia and why were they blocked from the public?).

Just saying, don't generalize about where people get their information.

It's not where the information comes from but the subjective interpretation of the information.

red_bus wrote:I don't know if there ever was a golden age when journalism and news reporting was decent and investigative and searching.  But here in the UK we do have a tradition of high quality reporting - especially in the BBC and also in the main national papers.  

However, there was a piece of research done recently here in the UK ( by Cardiff University - no jokes )to look at editorial staffing levels in these national newspapers, compared to the amount of page-space they were filling. They discovered that the average national newspaper journalist now is filling three times as much space as he or she was in 1985. Put another way, they have only one-third of the time that they used to have to do their jobs. Which is one reason the quality of journalism has slipped in recent years.  Journos don't get their own stories, or check their facts, because they just don't have the time.

I was brought up on robust political discussion ( at the dinner table and elsewhere ) and I think we can handle it here on the OT thread -- but without decent reporting, serious professional journalism, you are really really lost.  For how else do you get the information you need to make political decisions, like erm... voting?

The BBC news has zero credibility. It is on par with the New York Times. While all journalism has its subjective bias the controlling interests of broadcast and print media have tigtened their control and have a more directed focus of their particular message.

As resources narrow so do the groups who possess those resources or possess the power to direct them. The power groups behind news media like FOX represent a group who's interests are based more in the USA than internationally, though their interests are also international. They are in a bad position if history is to be a judge, like Pompey and the coalition of republicans.

The USA is at the end of its democratic/republic phase, with power and political office consolidating among certain families, elected officials needing to be from or serve directly the interests of the established aristocratic class. The next stage is civil distress, military conquest to secure borders and resources, the disolution of individual freedoms for greater security and continued economic standards. The old guard republicans can never survive the strength of the internationalists who gather resources and allies from competing or subservant nations. In the end the internationalists remove the democratic/republican power block, disarm the population, recruit foreign troops with the promise of citzenship and, under whatever name they choose to call, establish an imperial government. The former allied and competing nations at this point no longer face a divided democratic USA but an imperial expansionist power in truth. As resources continue to dwindle the military aspect of this imperialism will increase, the more humanistic stoic moral philosophy will be fair but harsh etc. etc. etc. till an outside influence (barbaric technological innovation this time around I suspect) will end the imperialist phase... hopefully without the massive destruction that tends to end imperialist phases.

So, the BBC is playing its small role in historical inevitability, but one strongly colored by the self-interest of its controling power group. Persoanlly I like reading blogs and amateur news websites for tactical information and distrust inherently the grand strategical viewpoint of broadcast and print media.

er...... I like Dungeons & Dragons

(In local news, I saw Mr Bush's helicopter over Windsor when I was in teh park with the kids earlier )

totally off-topic for off-topic....

just seen that Thora Birch on Ghost World....damn nice figure