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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

#261

Post by privateprofile »

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…

"The Intercept" is a journalistic project started by people with proven interest in civil liberties and a demonstrated adherence to ethics and fact-based journalism, such as Glenn Greenwald: https://theintercept.com/

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

#262

Post by YCode »

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…

> reddit is a lost cause

I'd agree only with the default front page/subreddits. There are still a plethora of smaller community subs in Reddit that are thriving and useful.

Unfortunately it takes a lot of informed curating to know which subs to ditch.

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

#263

Post by debaserab2 »

humanrebar wrote: post #234
ew6082 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to distinguish between NPR the human interest/artsy radio station and NPR News. NPR TV news hour is legitimately the most moderate and unbiased TV news left standing, at least when i watched it last (admittedly been a while).

The tone may be unbiased, but the implied narratives and selection of stories is not.

I don't really see the problem with that, though, as long as you're aware of it as you listen to it.

There's just no right wing counter to NPR, and to compare it to Fox News or Breitbart is complete nonesense.

I'd love to find a media outlet with real journalistic integrity that draws the narrative from a right wing perspective but it just doesn't seem to exist. They seem to either go the route of tabloid style news coverage or indulge way too many conspiracy theories to even take serious.

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

#264

Post by mantas »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #224
slice_of_life wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you are unreasonable, you're most likely on the right. Most reasonable people are clustered with the left. I hope you realize there's nothing reasonable about this statement. IMO, most times when the right has been considered to be unreasonable, so to speak, it has been a response to the left taking things too far. And yes, this includes WWII; there is no Hitler without communism. This is not to validate nor jus…

Bringing this back to the topic at hand, it doesn't really matter if the left is going "too far", but rather whether the consumers of right-wing media think they are going too far based on the lies they are being fed. And at that point they'll "correct" with a new holocaust or civil war or whatever the very, very rich people who have the most to lose will support to protect their wealth.

When left goes "too far", we have Mao's China or USSR. Or it OK as long as left thinks it's not "too far"?

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

#265

Post by mrkrabo »

YCode wrote: post #262
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…

> reddit is a lost cause I'd agree only with the default front page/subreddits. There are still a plethora of smaller community subs in Reddit that are thriving and useful. Unfortunately it takes a lot of informed curating to know which subs to ditch.

The "smaller community subs are great" meme doesn't work here. All subs about politics are rubbish.

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

#266

Post by Kroniker »

bobbygoodlatte wrote: post #194
tertius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The No Agenda show analyses (twice weekly) exactly what you're talking about and compares many sources. They deconstruct the media. They frequently also use European (France 24 and Deutsche Welle) and Asian (like CCTV) to contrast the news in the U.S. They also include RT and compare. http://www.noagendashow.com/

While entertaining, No Agenda is far too conspiracy-theory laden to be taken seriously. They frequently talk about "chemtrails" and mock scientists who believe in climate change. Not too far off from Alex Jones.

I can see how a new listener might be thrown off, but they really aren't conspiracy nuts.

Yes, they frequently joke about chemtrails, but it is within a context of a joke, or as a punchline.

Yes, they mock scientists that advocate for global climate change- not because of the actual phenomena, but because of the low quality of the papers that promote it, the corrupt method by which grants are only given to those that agree with the hypothesis, and the near fanatical following that people have created around it.

Is climate change real? Of course, they aren't doubting that. Is there a lot of hokum surrounding it? Absolutely. People become fear mongers to turn a quick buck.

No Agenda is, as many fans of the show put it "a twice weekly dose of sanity". When people were freaking out about "Russia hacking the DNC", they scoured the news and put all the evidence on the table, which turns out there wasn't much. Other news just took the headline and ran. Same deal on the other side of the conspiracy-isle with pizzagate: they scoured and put all the evidence on the table. Turns out there wasn't much. They are fantastic for calming you down when the news winds you up about something.

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

#268

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #244
supremesaboteur wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at that point they'll "correct" with a new holocaust Seriously ?

Your question is a bit cryptic. But yes, I believe tragedies on the scale of the the holocaust and the american civil war are a regular occurrence in human history and we've not seen the last of them yet. I think conservative estimates of climate change related deaths are already in that ballpark. The death toll for the Iraq war was about a million dead for example, and likely only happened due to the influences desc…

> Fox News viewers were more likely to believe Iraq perpetrated 9/11 than people who watched no news at all

They can be forgiven that considering that W perpetuated that lie as readily as the news outlets.

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

#269

Post by [deleted] »

rbehrends wrote: post #243
[deleted] wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

> All I can do is look at Singapore from the outside and be in awe (look at their neigbhours.. then look at Poland's or USA's neighbours and compare the amount of fear). I look at Singapore on the Press Freedom Index (rank 155 out of 180) and am not in awe at all. It scares me that people who grew up in liberal democracies find something to admire about its model. Perhaps it's just that our life experiences are diffe…

[deleted]

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

#270

Post by ivanhoe »

To be honest I think this was pretty obvious to anyone living outside the US, especially after 9/11. And unfortunately for the rest of the world, it's nothing US exclusive, scaring people into obedience is the oldest trick in the book. Fear has been always one of the main selling point for politicians, ever since the beginning of time. When faced with a common threat (real or not) people tend to unite under a leader who they hope will protect them, and it's any totalitarian ruler's wet dream. Frightened people are easier to control and far more likely too look the other way on whatever irregularity or injustice, as it will always seem unimportant compared to the threat and fear they feel.
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