Media Rot

[Mephistopheles]

Originally Posted by Admiral Donutz

Exactly. They report to what attracts attention, what sells well. And people are inclined to tune in to the media outlets that tell them what they want to hear. If one outlet thinkgs that their "balanced" coverage sells that's good for them (and their viewers).

Now with publically funded media (news reporters) it matters a whole lot less what they report. They could set a goal (report as objectively and balanced as possible) and tell their story whether people would tune in or not. Though even here there would be the danger of them losing funds if they would lose the trust of the public and thus might end up losing their financial income...

SO the medias goal is to report what they see as important in accordance with their goal (which ideally would be to report neutrally and not giving a shit about what sells well) and it's your job to tune in to those media that you believe you can trust to a reasonably degree (checking other media to compare stories and making up your mind about who you believe and what the truth is).

This sounds like one big conspiracy, but if the public does reasonibly well at filtering out those who try to report objectively and such then you can get your fair and objective news coverage.

In my opinion, the best TV documentaries are also produced by public broadcasting stations (especially by the BBC).

[Nemmerle]

Originally Posted by Buddy Jesus

It's not the media's job to make a presidency work, it's their job to do at least relitively un biased reporting on the facts, something that's definatly hasn't happened in the last 8 years and most likely in the next 4.

Really, you can point to it in the contract somewhere then? The media gets paid to show you whatever brings in the most viewers. If you want to put restrictions on that, well then we're moving towards socialism... Which isn't a bad way of doing things in a limited sense I suppose but if you're prepared to accept it in small ways it becomes somewhat more difficult to opose in larger ones.

[Warborg]

In the dream world...or pre-80's, they did simply report the real news and that was it

Originally Posted by Buddy Jesus

To many Americans still watch shit like this expecting relitively middle of the road news repoting and they're getting this crap.

The sad part is that there still are people out there thinking everything they hear is fact.