Based on what Gorsnak said:
An interesting show about media problems is Outfoxed…
If that documentary is accurate, it means that even if you do watch the news every single day (the fox news channel) it doesn’t mean you’d be educated about many realities about the political world since it has a very strong Republic bias.
Based on what Gorsnak said:
An interesting show about media problems is Outfoxed…
If that documentary is accurate, it means that even if you do watch the news every single day (the fox news channel) it doesn’t mean you’d be educated about many realities about the political world since the “fair and balanced” Fox news has a very strong Republic bias.
I don’t think the problem is bias, per se, and it’s not Fox News, either. It’s that “balance” means providing equally misleading sound bites from both sides, instead of just one.
The problem is that insightful, accurating reporting doesn’t sell as well as misleading soundbites, which has led to the sort of ridiculousness that Jon Stewart makes a living parodying. Truthfully, he was dead right when he went on Crossfire and told them they were “hurting America”. This isn’t a result of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, or the impact of Ted Turner’s political views on the news editing at CNN (yeah, I know he doesn’t have own it anymore). This is a fairly straightforward market failure. Glurge sells. Truth is tedious, complicated, and boring, and therefore can’t compete. But how do you do anything about that? Something like the Beeb is one response, but it’s not without its own problems, and people are free to ignore it in any event. So what to do? I sure as hell don’t know, but I do think it’s a serious problem, and a tremendous contributor to the problem of uninformed voters.
Friend Bricker, are you proprosing that we ignore our commonsense logic and ASSUME intelligence on the part of Bush voters which they clearly do not possess, or are you asking us to lie about it? I am all agog as I await your reply!
Gorsnak:
I think bias is more of a problem than soundbites. If reporters are talented and fair, then soundbites don’t have to be misleading… And if politicians are aware of soundbites they could put a very short summary at the start or end of their speech which accurately sums up what they said.
In Outfoxed they said they devoted a lot of time to showing Bush’s live speeches about any old stuff - i.e. they didn’t only use sound bites (at least for Bush). And they do have guests that they interview which can give somewhat long answers… (at least until they’re told to “shut up”… and if they are too much of a liberal trouble maker they aren’t invited back.)
Neither.
But if you don’t have a better solution, your commentary on the foolishness of Bush voters becomes an empty business, like complaining about the weather - you can’t change it, so why complain? In fact, it’s even WORSE: with the weather, at least you could say, “I know what I WISH the weather were.” You can’t even articulate what you want.
Oh, THAT’S all you want? Fine: I WISH the president were Kerry. Happy ;).
[change last period (.) to question mark (?)]
I don’t get it.
First off in friend Bricker’s proposal only 5 of the 20 questions would come from ‘conservatives’.
Second off assuming that the questions relate to issues in the current election and it happens that blacks and hispanics do worse on this test compared to whites so what? If the goal is to only let informed voters vote what difference does their skin color make?
Jane Means Appleton, wife of Franklin Pierce, born 12 March 1806.
God, but I love Google!
How about running a candidate that doesn’t suck? “Not Bush” just wasn’t a strong enough platform to run on.
What the democrats need is another Clinton. Someone who appears to be enough of a hillbilly to appear to the rural votors but who is actually pretty sharp.
The thing is though, when the democrat masses are choosing their Presidential candidate they’d probably be mainly thinking about which one matches them on the issues the best rather than thinking much about which one would appeal to the rural voters.
No. Presumably the non-partisan group selected by the Republicans would have a conservative bent.
True, indeed.
A genuinely independent press would be a nice start.
Like I said… how?
Come now, I complain about the weather whenever I feel like it. I do not expect my complaints to have any effect on the weather, but I see no reason why I shouldn’t report that the weather sucks when in fact it sucks.
If my commentary on politics were limited to observations that Bush voters are fools, for the most part, you might have a point. If you check around you will find threads where I advocate things like the Dems stopping their advocacy of gun control and backing off from any public support of gay marriage or even civil unions as concrete responses to the 2004 elections.
These positions were arrived at directly as a result of my observation that a lot of fools voted for Bush, ad the Dems need to snag some of those fools if they want to get elected.
In the case of gun control, I figure the Dems may be able to get a fair amount of single-issue gun advocate voters if they drop that single issue. I do not think ending gun controls will be a good thing, but I also don’t think it would be an awful thing, especially considering that pro-gun types pretty much have their way as things are. Let’s get those gun nut fools if we can.
I think same sex marriage is a fair and reasonable thing, but the overwhelming success of anti SSM measures in the last election, across both Dem and Repub lines, is troubling. I do believe the Dems stepped in a pretty big cow pie in this instance.
I consider the people who voted against SSM to be bigots and fools, but there are so fricking many of them, apparently, that the Dems can’t afford to ignore them and still hope to regain power anytime soon. The Dems need to figure out what’s going on wrt SSM before they can make any progress on the issue.
I have also proposed that the Dems build up a network of Dem-friendly media just as the Pubbies have. The idjits don’t debate on the internet, for the most part (which is why I’m comfortable calling them morons on the Web) they get theri news from radio and TV.
I have reached these conclusions based on the knowledge that there are a lot of demonstrable fools out there. We may be able to educate them over time, but with the cynical attitude that the Pubbies have taken about the democratic process of late, I have my doubts about our having that much time. I think the Dems should move sooner rather than later on these projects if they don’t want to become effectively a third party in a two-part system (with the other two parties being Pubbie Right and Pubbie Center).
People aren’t necessarily fools. Tehy don’t understand the details of many of the issues becaue most issues are pretty complex and people don’t have the time or inclination to study them.
Disenfranchisement is not the answer.
Keeping people better informed is an option, but i can’t think of any good ways to do it.
Another option could be to make some changes so that politicians couldn’t play on the electorate’s ignorance. For instance, how about a balanced budget amendment? How many people people would still support Bush if their federal taxes had to be practically doubled due to Bush’s wild spending policy? How many people would support the Iraq war if they knew that it would cost them about $20 a week in federal taxes for as long as the war went on?
But then the question becomes: How do you get politicians into office that will make sound changes when the electorate votes so foolishly?
Unfortunately, this is a tough problem to crack. But just because you can’t find a good solution to a problem, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t point and say “Hey, we got a problem here”. The first step to solving a problem is realising that there is a problem and making other peole aware that there is a problem.
I’ve run across this sort of thing before:
“We need to educate the voters so that they will support our position!” – whether the position in question is a school bond issue, an initiative, a political campaign, whatever .
“OK, so you are going to run a public education campaign. Fine. You have the money, the media contacts, etc. What happens if, when all that is done, the public still doesn’t go along?”
“Oh, but if they just have enough information, of course they’ll agree with us! And if they don’t we’ll just keep educating them until they do!”
“What happens, if, after your education campaign is completely successful, and everyone has all of the relevant information, but they still disagree with you?”
“If they have enough information, of course they’ll agree with us!” – again and again.
Some people just can’t quite get their heads around the concept that it is possible for people in possession of the same facts to come to different conclusions.
Unfortunately, that seems to include quite a few on this board, at least with respect to GWB…
Okay, I’ll be the one to say it: I think it’s a good idea. We have other forms of voter qualification; why not intelligence and awareness of the issues being voted over?
As a practical matter, I’d foresee great difficulty in arriving at non-partisan neutral questions. Suppose, to give a liberal-biased example, one side submitted “Who is the greatest president in the 20th century?” and insisted the correct answer was “Franklin Roosevelt”. Obviously this is an extreme example of a subjective question, but it would be difficult to enforce a standard of only “objective” questions.
I think having even just a little knowledge about what you are voting for would be good. Simple questions like, who are the candidates for President and Vice President for both major parties.
I bet that question alone would eliminate 10 - 20% of the voters, and lets face it. If you can’t answer that question, you shouldn’t be voting.