Comments (13) Jump to Comments Form

1. 

   bud.ward said, 7 months ago

   Just start a blog.

2. 

   LateToTheGame said, 7 months ago

   Ah yes, Stewzie. Cite a political blog as “fact” and run along your merry way. Of course, with all the papers closing down, that may end up being all we’re left with down the road.

3. 

   motivemagus said, 7 months ago

   And how about the series of stories the NYT ran to promote the war in Iraq? Yeah, their “reporter” who was getting her marching orders straight from Cheney and Rove without doing a lick of investigation?

4. 

   Corosive Frog said, 7 months ago

   If there is someone to beileve a point of view, it diserves a newspaper.

   We need newspapers both from the left and the right.

5. 

   deadheadzan said, 7 months ago

   Newspapers have always been known for their investigative reporting. However, there is a potential for propaganda even in the best of them. Now we have CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC,Fox News, all doing their thing. Some of their investigative reporters are top notch and some are pure propagandists. It’s up to the citizen to separate the wheat from the chaff.

6. 

   LLeRay said, 7 months ago

   As usual, StewieZ doesn’t know what he’s typing about. If he read history, or listened to anything but Fixed Noise, he’d see that yellow (and purple) journalism has been a proud tradition in this country. The colorful point-of-view has a place along with the gray (trying to be objective) type of news. Just give more credence to those trying to be objective, but don’t totally discount the prettier stuff.

7. 

   believecommonsense said, 7 months ago

   deadhead nailed it … it is up to the viewer/listener/reader to separate opinions from facts, smears from truth and bias from journalism. And it isn’t that hard to figure out if you take the time to do a little fact checking …

8. 

   WillBerry said, 7 months ago

   LLeRay - I don’t think that yellow journalism really needs to carry on, see Randolph Hearts, see the Spanish American War. The US Navy (after the fact, though) even realized that the Maine blew up because no one bothered to air out the coal bunkers. Manifest Destiny of the newspapers assisted in the extermination of Native Americans. It was our wonderfully isolationist scandal sheets that kept us out of WWII until Pearl Harbor, and covered up the Shoah (the Nazi “final solution”) even though we knew all about it by 1938!
   While I love to read, and even to hold my reading material in my hands, but I also know the dialog to Orson Well’s “Citizen Kane” almost by heart. The newspaper that used to say “All the news that is fit to print” now should have a motto “available to the highest bidder.”

9. 

   believecommonsense said, 7 months ago

   DredP wrote: Stop saying that if you want an honest fourth estate!

   Stop saying what? You mean the line you said I said that I didn’t actually say? Here’s what I said: And it isn’t that hard to figure out if you take the time to do a little fact checking …
   Virtually every ugly viral smear against Obama was debunked at snopes,com and it was there for anyone to check out before they sent it to their e-mail list.

   Factcheck.org is an independent site that chastises about everyone for less than stellar adherence to facts.

   Is there some bias in media? Of course, there’s bias in the decision of which stories to report and where to place them in a newspaper or in a news broadcast.
   But it’s fairly easy to differentiate between biased commentary and straight news reporting, if one is interested in the difference.
   And it was relatively easy to figure out the mutual backslapping going on between the Bush administration and the New York Times, when the Times was cheerleading for the Iraqi war by using the same now discredited sources, Chalabi, the guy who got less than one percent of the vote in the Iraqi election when it finally happened.
   Their scam worked like this: a high level white House official would leak something to Judith Miller on background, she’d confirm it with Chalabi, then run a front page story based on the White House tip. Then Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al would go on the news programs, citing the NYT story as the official word, often holding up the front page story.
   Wow … completely circular perception management, with no sourcing at all. Miller is no longer there, thank goodness.
   I don’t want to limit media, glad there’s more outlets to read/watch, but it does create some responsibility on the part of the citizenry to separate opinion from news. Many people don’t or won’t do that, preferring to remain willfully ignorant and myopic, but what’s the alternative?

10. 

    LateToTheGame said, 7 months ago

    BCS, I’d have to agree with DredPirateWesley here; I can’t imagine anyone in the past saying “Yeah, I saw what Cronkite reported last night, but I’m going to wait until I get down to the library before I believe it.” It’s up to the press to perform their own CYA (“cover your azz”) to protect themselves from lawsuits. As long as they can back it up, they can print it. Now, omissions are another story altogether, or lack thereof…

11. 

    believecommonsense said, 7 months ago

    DredP, I’m not sure what you’re advocating or what you seem to be disagreeing with.
    1) if people choose to remain willfully ignorant, no one can change that. You can present them 100 percent certified ‘the facts and nothing but” and if they prefer listening to Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Hairdo Hannity, well, we’re a free country and all that.
    There already is a market for straight news, honest journalism. But that hasn’t stopped CNN from becoming more like Fox with news talk shows and competing talking heads.
    So what are you suggesting, Dred, specifically?
    And don’t put words in my mouth that I didn’t say, it’s annoying.

    And Late to the Game, People tended to believe what Cronkite said without needing to verify it because the network broadcast news were pretty straightforward news, without the mix of comment and infotainment.

12. 

    LateToTheGame said, 7 months ago

    Dred, re-read my post. It says “I’d have to agree,” not “I’d hate to agree”.

13. 

    believecommonsense said, 7 months ago

    And here’s the question I asked, that you didn’t answer, DredP,:
    ”So what are you suggesting, Dred, specifically? “

    Read the posts again, you use quotes I didn’t say in every one of your posts. Here’s the first example:
    *”Especially when people like you say “Well all you have to do is just look for the information yourself and it’ll be ok!” *

    I never said that. Maybe you’re reading too fast, you misread Latetothegame’s post too.