In the 20/20 thread there is a lot of condemnation of the media. I’ve also seen this trend in many other threads. So what’s the problem? Why do so many criticize?
Personally, I watch and read with my common sense intact, “Reading between the lines”, so to speak. And I assume that others do also.
The media is our contact with the outside world, and I hate to think what life would be like without it. As far as content, they just give us what we want.
I’m sure there are other opinions, so fire away. Go ahead, get it off your chests. 
Peace,
mangeorge (Likes Dan Rather)
People criticize because they often deserve it.
I write a monthly newsletter column dealing with just one aspect of the media – how they treat science and fringe science topics. Unfortunately, I often have a lot more bad things to say than good. All too often, it’s based on what will sell, not what is true.
One local example for you:
The local news did a story a few years ago based on a flyer they’d found circulating warning parents that drug dealers were trying to hook kids with lick-and-stick tattoos laced with LSD. Any of you who are familiar with urban legends should be nodding your head right about now – it’s a famous one. Yet this channel was reporting it as real news, full of fear, etc.
After I saw it, I e-mailed them and enclosed a copy of an L.A. Times article debunking it as an urban legend. I received an e-mail back thanking me for the article. I responded and asked when they would be retracting the story and informing parents that it was fake. I received no further response and they didn’t mention it ever again.
Now, I’m not quite enough of a cyncic to think this is true all the time, but I do see too much of it.
Therein lies the problem. If people were in the habit of using a few critical thinking skills, there would be no market for aromatherapy, healing crystals, fortune tellers, or Fox “documentaries.” Unfortunately, much (but by no means all) of the media feeds the public crap, and much (but by no means all) of the public swallows it unquestioningly.
associating tv with reality is bad:)
You know, Ptahlis, you’re absolutely right. And if you get right down to it, it’s largely pretty harmless.
Such stuff keeps people off the street. It’s called “Entertainment”. And it gives us something to talk about, doesn’t it?
Peace,
mangeorge (Loves the whole world tonight :D)
The media is not the whipping boy of the new millennium, because the new millennium isn’t here yet!
The “media” has always had an agenda. In the 19th century the newspaper might even inform you that it was put together by a bunch of abolitionists, Whigs, Democrats or whatever.
We have met the media, and it is us.
Folks, this is the media. The internet. Message boards. Geddit? Crap is generated on a humongous scale! Check your e-mail. Do you trust your neighbor?
Why?
I recently read an excellent book on this topic, Don’t Shoot the Messenger: How Our Growing Hatred of the Media Threatens Free Speech for All of Us, by Bruce W. Sanford. It describes the history of news reporting, of public attitudes towards the media, and of the growing restrictive court decisions involving the media’s actions. It’s actually a pretty fair-handed book (the author is an attorney working in the media field), and is relevant to the topic, is anyone is interested.
You know, I requested that the publisher send that book to me for a review. They didn’t. I guess they didn’t trust me to review it well.
I think so, but the “agenda” is not what you’d assume. Having been both a conservative and a liberal, I can say with some authority that both like to accuse the media of colluding with the opposite side. The conservatives like to complain about the “liberal media” and the liberals like to complain about the “conservative media”. If anything, the media is biased toward sensationalism. They don’t give a damn about politics — they want to boost ratings.
It’s bad news if you want a complete picture of events, but it’s great if you want to be entertained between those commercial breaks!
- JB
Although we can speak of the “media” as having an agenda, not all elements of the media have the same agenda. We are confronted with so much media input, all of which has an unstated bias. And it is getting harder and harder to cut through the dross to get to original, unprocessed data which you need to form your own opinion. Lacking access to the basic info, you are simply reviewing other people’s prepackaged opinions, and deciding which you wish to adopt as your own. Much easier than thinking for yourself. And ease is what we value over everything, right? To paraphrase Barbie, “Thinking is hard!”
Some segments of the media have agendas so painfully obvious it’s sad. There’s a monthly ‘newspaper’ called The Patriot that is so incredibly pro-gun that it’s laughable. I’m not a gun control advocate, but picking up this rag is like a journey into a parallel world where an evil dictatorship plots to remove all guns from the populace so it can finally stamp out all freedom! Peppered with editorials that constantly toss out the phrase “unbiased media” (read: people who agree with us) and “liberal media” (read: everyone else), it is a hilarious example of paranoia mongering and hyperbole. It is so nakedly biased and artless that it has its own kind of charm: “Aw, look at what those cute gun nuts made!”
“The Media” - I take it we’re talking professional news sources here - aren’t whipping boys (BTW, I much prefer the original German term, “prügelknabe”) in the sense that they’re taking a beating for somebody else’s faults. Lots of news outlets are targets of well-deserved criticism for simple lack of professionalism. This goes especially for TV, where important events aren’t reported on if there’s no dramatic film clips. And I can’t be the only one having heard an anchorman deliver a completely nonsensical “explanation” of something that I happen to know about. Not just spin, but grave factual errors.
I would expect journalists to do research and provide me with at the very least factually correct information. It might be biased, but I hope to be able to see through that (another reason to read at least two different papers).
Unfortunately, the market forces appear to drive quality in reporting down for the time being. Sad.
I am not one to normally say things like “I remember when…”, but it seems to me that there was a time when journalists had more integrity than they seem to these days. It seems to me that in the “good old days” more journalists were interested in the truth. Perhaps the difference is that back then the truth equaled ratings and popularity because the people would flock to you because they could trust you to tell them the truth. Perhaps, we (the general public) no longer value the truth. It seems to me that many journalists are only interested in cranking out another story that their editor will approve because it captures viewers, sells adversting or sells more newspapers. This seems to come in two forms, pablum and sensationalism. Never say anything controversial, unless it is sensationalistic or unless it is controversial about an unpopular and powerless group.
sigh
“If anything, the media is biased toward sensationalism.”
-junebeetle
I’m with Junebeetle on this. The outright lies and misinformation of mainstream media, while outrageous, are fairly minor in the great scheme of things. Their habit of reporting only those senational items and leaving less entertaining but more important items sink into the background is a more damaging and less direct form of lying. By measuring the amount of media attention they got the OJ case was a more complex and important issue than the bombing of Serbia by the US.
Spiny Norman:
Well, sure–that’s what TV is. Numerous surveys, polls and studies have shown that TV viewers want good pictures and not a lot of copy. If they want copy, they’ll listen to the radio or read the newspaper. A TV image which consists solely of a news anchor reading written copy, with no images relating to the copy being read, is not terribly compelling and runs counter to the purposes of television. Even the old Pathe newsreels didn’t simply show someone reading the news.
If you don’t have some kind of accompanying image, there’s no sense even putting the story on television, and the more compelling video will beat “guys sitting around a table” any time.
Glitch:
Interstingly, back in the “good old days,” people then said the same thing. And it was no more or less true then. How interested was the Hearst newspaper group in the truth?
People have been making this criticism since day one as well.
Do you prefer that they crank out stories that will cause them to lose viewers/readers and advertisers, so that they go out of business?
I don’ know about more complex, but the OJ story was more than just sensationalism. Did it merit gavel-to-gavel live coverage? Maybe not; but there were definitely issues of race relations, science, and treatment of the famous which were part of this trial and that have a bearing on our society and how it operates. And, most importantly, it’s what viewers wanted to see. The ratings showed that. Don’t blame the media for giving their customers what they want.
Pthalis
Sometimes you can find very reliable info, or at least links to such info, in extremely biased sources. The folks pushing their agenda in The Patriot may be more likely than the more widely disseminated media to have delved deeply into original documents, searching for crumbs that support their viewpoint.
I had a friend who advocated getting 3 publications on matters he cared about - the most extreme examples on either end of the spectrum, and a more general source from somewhere in the middle. But who has that kind of time and dedication? Feed me your views, I’m lazy.
Phil: I hear ya, and I have no delusions that feelings are just that … my feelings. I get the impression of a lack of professionalism from journalists these days. I get the impression that too many journalist don’t bother to check their facts or their sources which, in my uninformed opinion, used to be a much more common practice (may I point out that nearly ALL articles I have ever seen on self defense related issues on are fundamentally flawed with misinformation?).
As for what I would rather see published:
I would like to see the unbiased truth published. And if there isn’t enough demand for THAT from the general public then, IMO, we don’t deserve free speech and the media should go out of business.