If there's a thread already on this topic, I apologize. I figured it would be good to start one about problems with news and the media right now, but I figured I'd get the ball rolling with this:

nytimes.com

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty sick of Fox News and its blatant crusade against the Obama administration. It's bad enough the network picks nothing but ridiculous conservative political commentators, but I agree that Fox's newscasters have come dangerously close to being completely biased. Everything I have ever seen on the network is extremely unfair if not outright slander. But it's not just Fox news that's the problem. It's anyone who's pushing their stupid agenda. I was browsing today on Youtube and stumbled upon this, posted by a site called Media Matters for America:

Fox News' War on the White House

I thought "Great! A well organized online group that's trying to stand up against bad journalism!" so I visited their website. The first thing that I noticed was that the website is dedicated to fighting against "conservative misinformation". So they're fighting a conservative agenda but pushing a liberal agenda. Why can't they simply be about fighting misinformation on both sides? It's not like Republicans make the only biased, lying reporters. Does anyone care about responsible, unbiased journalism anymore, or only when it's journalism that disagrees with your side?

He died on my birthday, actually.

(And I'm sorry if this came off as more of a rant than a current events post. I just thought this would be the best place to share my opinion.)

Fox is a pile of shit, no denying that.

I also think that the problem with journalism goes deeper than just bias. And for a number of reasons. Mostly it just has to do with money. Theres a podcast called Common Sense you can get off iTunes by Dan Carlin and he talks about this often.

Its important to mention that unbias does not equal good journalism. Its a start, but I think a lot of reporting now is unbiased. Theres a lot of emphasis on "balanced" reporting. Balanced reporting doesnt take a side. So, using healthcare reform as an example, you get headlines about Sarah Palin saying Obama's plan creates death panels, and it may or may not discuss the validity of her statement. So hear you have an unbiased article, that doesnt take a side. But sometimes one side is wrong. What many of these news reports dont mention, is that Sarah Palin is a moron. But they dont have the balls to say it because that isolates their readers and leads to less revenue.

Chalkmaze posted:

The BBC News seems to do a better job than everyone else. [news.bbc.co.uk]

Al Jazeera English is supposed to be the best these days, but...well, you know, "OMFG Arabs".

Excellent article on why:
[www.buffalobeast.com]

jayetheartist posted:

reuber1 posted:

Chalkmaze posted:

The BBC News seems to do a better job than everyone else. [news.bbc.co.uk]

Al Jazeera English is supposed to be the best these days, but...well, you know, "OMFG Arabs".

Excellent article on why:
[www.buffalobeast.com]

Very interesting.

I know. Makes me want to watch it, if I actually could. I have no television at all, so it doesn't really matter.

I don't think unbiased journalism exists anymore, and my hopes for its return are dim.

But, if it's Fox News slamming you want, I'll refer you to this:

[www.youtube.com]

^^Indeed. Fox news scares me..and Glen Beck is a douche who goes off on delusional tangents far worse than most Schizos. The only thing that I will EVER give Bill O'reily credit is that he called out Beck for being an idiot about the immunizations conspiracies after Beck said he wouldn't tell if he is getting a shot or not.

IMO there is no such thing anymore as unbiased journalism....anywhere.

as always, John Stewart has an entertaining look at it. (For Fox Sake!)

The only time I use wikipedia is when I look up things entertainment related like albums from bands..stuff like that.
I have never and will never use wikipedia to get information on anything else because it isn't credible.

blen2r posted:

Hello,

I wanted to have your opinion on a project I've been designing in the dark for a couple of months now. What would you think of a free news-platform, developped in a kind of open way (think of wikipedia)?

Is that something that you would use? Is there any comment/suggestion that you could make to help me perfect the idea before launching it?

I am currently wondering if the stories should be provided by the users (in a digg-like fashion) or if they should be added automatically via web-crawlers. Opponents of the user-generated content say that it would take a long time to have enough users to be interesting and that the platform would die by itself.

On the other hand, an automatic addition of stories means a lot of programming with the chance that the project never gets released at all.

What do you guys think?

So, the news on this site would be submitted by just anybody, including (and probably mostly submitted by) people who don't actually have any connection to what's going on and are probably just passing on crap they pick up from elsewhere on the internet?

Um, no thanks.

ok thank you for the critics. And what about an aggregator that gathers articles from various sources and relates them on the same page (by ex.: A car accident on X street, you'd have a page "car accident on X street" with various links to different sources like CNN, Fox, etc...). That way you'd have various viewpoints on the same subject from "respectable" sources.

what's you view on this?

jayetheartist posted:

blen2r posted:

ok thank you for the critics. And what about an aggregator that gathers articles from various sources and relates them on the same page (by ex.: A car accident on X street, you'd have a page "car accident on X street" with various links to different sources like CNN, Fox, etc...). That way you'd have various viewpoints on the same subject from "respectable" sources.

what's you view on this?

I'm not trying to dump on your ideas or anything, but honestly, don't you get that already from Google?

Well the idea is that: if you take, for example, the g20 riot police vs. the students of Pittsburgh. As some of you may know, some innocent people were arrested/gassed... and mainstream media (well, the majority of them) told the general people that it was a violent protest and that the force used was necessary.

For the average Joe who visits cnn.com or fox.com, that's the end of the story, most people won't bother to look for alternate stories. If all of the articles were grouped around the same story on the same page, Mr Everybody won't have to search hard to get other viewpoints.

So the main idea behind this platform isn't about presenting unbiaised stories, those will always exist, but instead, the goal is to present different viewpoints on the same story, with a discussion module. The goal is to unite people and make a good discussion platform(as good as the users' maturity). It would show people that there's always another side to the coin.

If we look at the way it's working now, everybody stays in their corner bitching about "the other side" (left/right, liberals/conservative, ...) like old mad men, without trying to understand what the others are saying (that's the way I see it).

As you can see everyday, the world is getting more and more fucked up and most people bury themselves in their same old ideas. As Obama said during his campaign, time for change as come, but we, the people, must make our own efforts to take control of our lives, of our countries (I'm Canadian) and we must develop our own rules as to what information we should believe and what information was made up to make us buy/vote/whatever. Having mega corporated medias is not a good thing, in my opinion, because the news business is a powerful one, one that can easily pass up ideas to people. That's the whole idea behind the platform I'm suggesting. I see it as a good tool for a democratic country.

^^ indeed..I wish we could put Rush, Bill, Ann, Cheney, Bush and the rest of Fox news in a spaceship and blase them to the moon...seeing as we are bombing the moon it doesn't seem too far a stretch right?

Lately on the daily show jon stewart has done a good job at showcasing their stupidity



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2009 02:50PM by Calderon08.

heatherette333 posted:

^^omfg Rush Limbaugh is a fucking asshole.

i love the Daily Show! and Colbert report.

I don't have homicidal tendencies but godamn it he makes me think about it!

*shakes head*

Mods, could you change the title of this thread to nin.com takes YET ANOTHER opportunity to bash conservative points of view?

plskthx