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Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

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Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#161

Post by specialist »

banned1 wrote: post #43
komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

Not really. CNN has gone the way of MSNBC (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). HN is the same way when it relates to political news (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). Fox News is, well, Fox News. NPR is, well, for the most part, the Fox News of the left. So on and so forth. In a world of two echo chambers (The Right-wingers and The Left-wingers), it's up to you to make up your mind.…

"In a world of two echo chambers... it's up to you to make up your mind."

Fox News: "We report, you decide."

aka gossip. Not to be confused with journalism.

If you think Koch funded NPR is liberal, Democracy Now! and Thom Hartmann will make your head explode.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#162

Post by avs733 »

In some sick way I am a little impressed with Fox News...the comments in this thread seem to indicate they have effectively won the battle they chose to fight by making everything seem biased. Nihilism isn't intended as a political strategy but it is an effective one.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#164

Post by [deleted] »

humanrebar wrote: post #101
penpapersw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait why is reddit a lost cause?

r/LateStageCapitalism is on the front page all the time. Its rules include "Support for capitalism--and the political parties which uphold it--is strictly prohibited". Counterbalanced views are not front paged on a regular basis. Reddit made sure idiotic pro-Trump subreddits were left off the front page. It didn't do the same for idiotic anti-Trump subreddits. r/TwoXChromosomes, also regularly appearing on the front…

[deleted]

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#165

Post by lordchalky »

komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

So far all I'm seeing are peasant suggestions. You have to go with Stratfor Worldview if you want to get into global affairs. It'll cost you $350 USD annually though.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#166

Post by pharrington »

mikeash wrote: post #148
humanrebar wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...the left in general couldn't understand why anyone would vote for this obvious shyster If it seems like I'm singling out NPR, I didn't mean to. All left wing outlets messed up or this wouldn't be an issue. I'm saying the audience should do a better job of understanding the people who voted for Trump. And the left-leaning media has to produce many, many pieces aimed in that direction. Why would Fox News produce p…

I'm saying that maybe left-wing outlets didn't mess up, maybe understanding a Trump voter really is just that difficult. I still can't, and I don't think better coverage would have changed that.

Just take what people say at face value. For example, if someone says they're frustrated with the political status quo, and and voted for Trump because they perceived him as not being the status quo, despite it being a very tunnel visioned viewpoint, it has a very low cognitive overhead. Understandability is extremely different from rationality, and rationality plays a minimal role in a popular vote.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#167

Post by systemvanilla »

mc32 wrote: post #158
losteric wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the liberal insane Sean Hannitys or O'reilly's? Not on NPR. Can I trust NPR will blindly support Democrats? No, they're friendly but still critical. NPR is a news station that leans left - and you're right, most people that seek the truth also lean left for some reason. But the left has nothing like "Fox News". There are no liberal infotainment channels that spread propaganda so blindly and unashamedly as F…

The way NPR does the lean is quite interesting in that it's not usually obvious. When they slant something what they will do is either pick someone on the opposite side of something who is off the rails or ineloquent. Or, when the opposition has an argument, they often will challenge the argument. When they have the side they agree with on, rather than challenge they tend to ask supporting questions. That said, Green…

> When they slant something what they will do is either pick someone on the opposite side of something who is off the rails or ineloquent. Or, when the opposition has an argument, they often will challenge the argument. When they have the side they agree with on, rather than challenge they tend to ask supporting questions.

This is the modus operandi of NPR and Fox News (and increasingly, every news source). These tactics allow them to masquerade as journalism and maintain a patina of credibility, because they can engage in it without ever exposing a compact-enough unit of dishonesty that people can point to and discredit them with.

People seem to understand that there's a difference between a news article and an opinion piece, but not enough people understand that the curation and editorial process itself is another opportunity for an opinion piece (and one that doesn't necessarily produce opinion pieces or factual inaccuracies as its output).

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#168

Post by justin66 »

banned1 wrote: post #116
refurb wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... nothing happens That because of expectations. Everyone knows Breitbart is hard right. Even conservatives will admit that. Even Breitbart will admit that. CNN like to position itself as the news . You know, the straight shit. When they go off the rails people get pissed because they don't expect CNN to do that.

I stopped watching CNN during election night when the table was full of people who at least once said "we" when they intended to say "the Democrats".

They hire political consultants to do the commentary for those election-night shows. They outnumber the journalists pretty overwhelmingly, that's just the way it works.

In defense of CNN, Democratic consultant James Carville was the first person on any of those shows - I was scanning pretty heavily - to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton was really hosed. Nobody else, even on Fox, seemed to believe it.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#169

Post by spamizbad »

FooHentai wrote: post #144
rndmize wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this perspective. When CNN gets a story wrong, the right creates a huge storm and people get fired. When the right gets a story wrong (Breitbart still pushing the hard anti-climate change line, Hannity with the Seth Rich conspiracy, the entire birther movement, Pizzagate, and on and on and on )... nothing happens. Nothing. It took Milo saying "maybe pedophelia isn't that bad" before there was enoug…

>It took Milo saying "maybe pedophelia isn't that bad" before there was enough of an outcry for him to be fired. Your example is nonsense and disproves your point. Read the transcript, that is not at all what was said: http://heavy.com/news/2017/02/milo-yiannopolous-pedophilia-t... An actual quote: "I do not support pedophilia. Period. It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst." You say you don't feel…

He was clearly paraphrasing and it doesn't refute what actually happened: Milo made a statement about underage relationships that caused him to get the boot from the conservative sphere.

As an aside, probably the most damning thing about the Milo affair is the fact that Milo has little conservative credentials beyond trolling liberals but was nevertheless wholly embraced as a conservative. It turns out all the gusto for free speech and logical arguments flies out the window if your topic of discussion shifts to pederasty.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#170

Post by justin66 »

specialist wrote: post #163
nradov wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Known by who based on what criteria?

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

I got the Colbert reference, but it reminded me of something interesting that everyone with basic cable should watch and experience, at least a few times.

Brian Lamb created the gold standard for balanced reporting on political topics and current affairs with Washington Journal on C-SPAN. Expert guests are chosen when feasible in preference to talking heads, the show uses separate call-in lines for guests of various political affiliations to ensure balance, and in the interest of maintaining a neutral point of view the journalists are frighteningly capable of maintaining poker-faces in the face of whatever idiocy comes their way from guests or - more likely - callers. Their production does not depend on advertisers or ratings. It's all just brilliant. Their viewership numbers in the dozens.

In spite of all that, callers will at times complain randomly, often hilariously, about perceived political bias in what they are watching - while the journalists maintain their sober, quiet poker faces and the experts talk about whatever is within their expertise. So often these complaints have literally nothing to do with bias in the presentation and everything to do with bias in the viewer.

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