"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:31:02 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
. ..
On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:14:02 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:

snip


I have high hopes for the Internet in the long run, as a medium that
will
give us a lot more inside news. I'm losing faith in the mainstream media
at
the same time we have all these new resources. If it wasn't just so
damned
full of phony and misleading crap, it would be great as it is.

Full of crap? Y'mean, like the TV, newspapers, magazines, and movies?

No, like the Internet as it is. Like the stories we see pasted here from
the
partisan "news" sites. If a commercial news organization tried those
stunts
they'd be crucified and probably would be run out of business. On a
website,
they just ignore it and then do it again. You've seen it; we've all seen
it.

They do pull -exactly- those same stunts, only they're a bit more
subtle about it.

No, they don't. Not without being excoriated, like Dan Rather and some staff
at CBS.



The trouble I have with the mainstream media is that they duck subjects,
believe the government sources, and pile on to each others' stories.
The days of tough investigative journalism seem to be gone, mostly because
they're trying to run the newsrooms too lean.

Yeah, likely. I read an article about the media -causing- events, too.
IIRC, it was from Cialdini's _Persuasion_. Once a national TV station
broadcasts the crash of an airplane, two more related incidents happen
within the coming week. It's things like this which make me believe
more in the Indian philosophy that we're making all of this up,
creating our physical selves from thought vibrations, affecting
reality by our beliefs, etc.

I'm still clapping with one hand. But it's true that news is what the
newspapers say it is, and they have a limited field of attention and a mob
mentality about it.



Is the Internet any different, other than our being able to actually
find all that crap so quickly?

Yeah, it's a lot different, and a lot worse. It's so consistently bad, in
fact, that we're becoming numb to it. It seems to be a new standard to
expect bull****, and to be surprised when you see something that isn't.

Whaddya mean "new"? I've felt that way so long it seems normal to me.
sigh

That's you. I don't know how much direct experience with the media and news
people, but remember that I used to have lunch and go on PR junkets with
guys from TIME and the NYT when I worked as an editor in midtown Manhatten.
They have plenty of faults but making stuff up out of thin air is very rare.
On the Internet, they seem to see it as their primary challenge, to do it
without getting caught. And that's pretty easy.

--
Ed Huntress