Showing posts with label television news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television news. Show all posts
Sunday, July 28, 2019
TV News Becoming a Fringe Source
It is time to revisit the Pew poll in 2016 that found that 57% of Americans get their news from television. Pew found an age-related trend, with 50% of those 18-29 relying on Internet sources but 85% of those 65 and over relying on television.
The recent Mueller testimony and the American media's embarrassing, deceitful performance with respect to the Russia collusion hoax have blown the lid open: Big media is a partisan, deceitful force. That was always true, but they have never before been so sloppy and so open about their pro-Democratic Party and pro-deep state lying and propaganda.
The Mueller investigation may be a watershed in Americans' recognition that their press is fraudulent, TV news is fraudulent, and leading Internet sites are fraudulent. We may be looking at a future in which TV news is so discredited that that it will become a fringe, crank source like the National Enquirer or left-wing tabloids sold at the gates of college campuses.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Why I Do Not Watch Television News or Read Newspapers
Mass mind is my reason for avoiding mass media. A large proportion of the public, including myself, is susceptible to psychological suggestion. How many times have you watched a news program and become emotionally upset at some story of crime or misconduct? Media has tremendous power. Even if such power were vested in a physician it would require review and oversight.
But those who produce the mass media have no professional standards. There is no professional oversight. How much that is presented to the viewer of television news or the reader of print news is subject to bias, slant or involves outright lies, and how much is true?
There is no reason to believe that television networks or print media are neutral actors. Ownership guarantees bias. Ownership is not spread across the various interest groups in the nation. Rather, it is concentrated in the hands of those linked to centers of financial power.
The claim of conservatives that media reflects "liberal bias" is itself a product of that bias. There is nothing liberal about the interests of the owners and employees of the American media. It has one goal, one objective, the interests of its proprietors.
I have no doubt that most of what appears on television news is true. Nor do I doubt that most of what the chairman of Goldman Sachs says is true. But I have no more reason to believe that the news is unbiased than I do to believe the Goldman Sachs chairman.
Moreover, the incredible power of television to manipulate emotion compounds the risk of deception. Print media is less emotional but the likelihood of manipulation is ever present. The likelihood of deception is confirmed by its history. The New York Times's history of incompetence and lies; the near criminality of its owners, the Ochs Sulzbergers; its participation in the cloaking of mass murder in the Soviet Union and America's loss in Vietnam; its role in Robert Moses's destruction of New York City and New York State; its vocal advocacy of Keynesian economics and transfers of much of America's wealth to the super-rich. Not only is the Times corrupt, it is the most influential newspaper.
Because of emotional manipulation; the ownership structure of the mass media; and its history of self serving lying the media is not a source of information. We do better by avoiding its immediacy and emotional content, and carefully evaluating and mostly rejecting its claims.
But those who produce the mass media have no professional standards. There is no professional oversight. How much that is presented to the viewer of television news or the reader of print news is subject to bias, slant or involves outright lies, and how much is true?
There is no reason to believe that television networks or print media are neutral actors. Ownership guarantees bias. Ownership is not spread across the various interest groups in the nation. Rather, it is concentrated in the hands of those linked to centers of financial power.
The claim of conservatives that media reflects "liberal bias" is itself a product of that bias. There is nothing liberal about the interests of the owners and employees of the American media. It has one goal, one objective, the interests of its proprietors.
I have no doubt that most of what appears on television news is true. Nor do I doubt that most of what the chairman of Goldman Sachs says is true. But I have no more reason to believe that the news is unbiased than I do to believe the Goldman Sachs chairman.
Moreover, the incredible power of television to manipulate emotion compounds the risk of deception. Print media is less emotional but the likelihood of manipulation is ever present. The likelihood of deception is confirmed by its history. The New York Times's history of incompetence and lies; the near criminality of its owners, the Ochs Sulzbergers; its participation in the cloaking of mass murder in the Soviet Union and America's loss in Vietnam; its role in Robert Moses's destruction of New York City and New York State; its vocal advocacy of Keynesian economics and transfers of much of America's wealth to the super-rich. Not only is the Times corrupt, it is the most influential newspaper.
Because of emotional manipulation; the ownership structure of the mass media; and its history of self serving lying the media is not a source of information. We do better by avoiding its immediacy and emotional content, and carefully evaluating and mostly rejecting its claims.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Why Do People Still Watch Television News?
My good friend Sharad Karkhanis e-mailed me about a news broadcast on one of the social democratic propaganda outlets. Likewise, blog impressario Larwyn has been up in arms about "media" bias.
If you haven't read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or read about the history of ancient Persia or studied advanced calculus, why on earth are you watching news on television? There are many productive ways to spend your time.
Television news is not news. The people who broadcast it are entertainers and lack the education to determine what's important enough to be called news. Not enough people watch it to use the explanation that "it's important to hear what people are thinking". Nor is watching it a good way to refute the Democrats. A better way is to carry petitions for the Republicans.
The country is full of lazy bones who sit around listening to Rush Limbaugh, cuss at their radio and accomplish absolute zero. Sharad isn't one of those people, and he's devoted a huge amount of his resources to uncovering fraud in the reactionary CUNY faculty union and sending around tens of thousands of copies of his newsletter "Patriot Returns" at his own expense.
Sitting around cussing at some bozo on one of the cable news channels accomplishes nothing. Stop watching them. Carry petitions. Call your friends. Go to a tea party like the courageous Phil Orenstein.
TV news is an anachronism, a thing of the past. It is almost as antediluvian as print newspapers. If you want to see what people are thinking do this:
1. Play "Mafia Wars" on Facebook
2. Read "The Star"
3. Watch Oprah
If you haven't read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or read about the history of ancient Persia or studied advanced calculus, why on earth are you watching news on television? There are many productive ways to spend your time.
Television news is not news. The people who broadcast it are entertainers and lack the education to determine what's important enough to be called news. Not enough people watch it to use the explanation that "it's important to hear what people are thinking". Nor is watching it a good way to refute the Democrats. A better way is to carry petitions for the Republicans.
The country is full of lazy bones who sit around listening to Rush Limbaugh, cuss at their radio and accomplish absolute zero. Sharad isn't one of those people, and he's devoted a huge amount of his resources to uncovering fraud in the reactionary CUNY faculty union and sending around tens of thousands of copies of his newsletter "Patriot Returns" at his own expense.
Sitting around cussing at some bozo on one of the cable news channels accomplishes nothing. Stop watching them. Carry petitions. Call your friends. Go to a tea party like the courageous Phil Orenstein.
TV news is an anachronism, a thing of the past. It is almost as antediluvian as print newspapers. If you want to see what people are thinking do this:
1. Play "Mafia Wars" on Facebook
2. Read "The Star"
3. Watch Oprah
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
A Resolution Declaring Independence of National Television News
WHEREAS: National television news has failed to tell the truth or perform the function of providing truthful and valid information to the American public;
WHEREAS: National television news has failed to inform the American public about vital facts concerning the presidential election and the candidacy of President Barack Hussein Obama;
WHEREAS: National television has failed to inform the American public about vital public policy and political questions, specifically, the activities of the Federal Reserve Bank; monetary inflation; national economic policy; and subsidies to corporations and banks;
WHEREAS: National television has lied to the American public about the Iraqi War:
I hereby urge all Americans to discontinue viewing network or national cable television or any television station that carries nationally distributed news and to hereby join me in declaring:
"I desist from watching or turning on any television station that carries or broadcasts network- or cable- based news in any form."
WHEREAS: National television news has failed to inform the American public about vital facts concerning the presidential election and the candidacy of President Barack Hussein Obama;
WHEREAS: National television has failed to inform the American public about vital public policy and political questions, specifically, the activities of the Federal Reserve Bank; monetary inflation; national economic policy; and subsidies to corporations and banks;
WHEREAS: National television has lied to the American public about the Iraqi War:
I hereby urge all Americans to discontinue viewing network or national cable television or any television station that carries nationally distributed news and to hereby join me in declaring:
"I desist from watching or turning on any television station that carries or broadcasts network- or cable- based news in any form."
Monday, May 26, 2008
Read Books
I watch the nightly television news primarily for entertainment. Since the entertainment on television these days is bad and Hollywood's offerings are worse, television news is probably the best entertainment available. The trouble is that in watching it I fear I might start to uncosciously believe the fiction, much like some viewers in the late 1990s believed that the X-Files was a news show.
This afternoon, as I was pumping gas at the Sunoco station on NY Route 28 in Boiceville, NY, I conversed with a gentleman from New Jersey on a Memorial Weekend trip. As we were pumping gas, I commented on the high prices (nearing $5 per gallon for super). He said to me that he doesn't believe the claim that oil and food prices are high because of "traders" or speculators. I gave him an earful about the Fed and inflation. But as I thought about it, I realized that this guy, probably above average in some ways but very much a guy you might meet in a gas station, had heard some media lies and rejected them. Instead, I gave him the news. He will have done better by thinking about what I told him in this chance meeting in the Boiceville gas station than the propaganda on conventional news shows.
This afternoon, as I was pumping gas at the Sunoco station on NY Route 28 in Boiceville, NY, I conversed with a gentleman from New Jersey on a Memorial Weekend trip. As we were pumping gas, I commented on the high prices (nearing $5 per gallon for super). He said to me that he doesn't believe the claim that oil and food prices are high because of "traders" or speculators. I gave him an earful about the Fed and inflation. But as I thought about it, I realized that this guy, probably above average in some ways but very much a guy you might meet in a gas station, had heard some media lies and rejected them. Instead, I gave him the news. He will have done better by thinking about what I told him in this chance meeting in the Boiceville gas station than the propaganda on conventional news shows.
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