The Media

[Adios]

An unknown preacher in Florida decides to burn some religious books. His church is a tin building and has 50 members.

A church in Memphis has had a sign up for over a year welcoming the new mosque.



Who gets the coverage? One is filled with hate in spite of what words come out of his mouth. The other practices christianity by welcoming people.

Well, you know the story. The media has turned the Qur'an burning into an international incident. Without this kind of irresponsible reporting no one would have ever heard of this guy. Why did the media do this? Because hate, sex and death sells.

Love and acceptance doesn't.

I am all for freedom of speech. I am also for responsibility and common sense. Take as an example a Westboro Church protest. How much do we hear about the person being buried? What do we hear? What do we see? Just fools shouting and carrying signs about how god hates fags.

In all of the shouting about ground zero has anyone in the media ever talked to the imam from the other mosque that is close?

Journalists, at least these kind of journalists, have just joined pedophiles as the people I most hate.

[Payne]

Yeah, but it's the Good Kind^TM of Hate, and the Bad Kind^TM of Sex they cover. That's the real problem.

[bds]

The public gets what the public wants. 

[Adios]

Yeah, but it's the Good Kind^TM of Hate, and the Bad Kind^TM of Sex they cover. That's the real problem.

This is so true.

[Adios]

The public gets what the public wants. 

I don't want this shit.

[LMNO]

Then obviously, you are not a Target Demographic, and can be safely ignored.

[Payne]

I think we'd all of us be surprised by how few people really do want it.

It wouldn't change anything though.

As long as the media outlets keep that mantra waving, while giving us the illusion of "choice", we're boned.

[Adios]

Then obviously, you are not a Target Demographic, and can be safely ignored.

You are correct. I prefer to be safely ignored.

[Adios]

I think we'd all of us be surprised by how few people really do want it.

It wouldn't change anything though.

As long as the media outlets keep that mantra waving, while giving us the illusion of "choice", we're boned.

I scan news sites pretty much every day. The trend is, if no one died, then celebs and nutjobs are made news. Job justification?

[Payne]

I think we'd all of us be surprised by how few people really do want it.

It wouldn't change anything though.

As long as the media outlets keep that mantra waving, while giving us the illusion of "choice", we're boned.

I scan news sites pretty much every day. The trend is, if no one died, then celebs and nutjobs are made news. Job justification?

Of course it is.

Huge chunks of society are doing make-work now, didn't you know?

There's big money in it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Journalism in the mainstream is dead. Long dead. There are still people practicing it in indie media, but they are largely ignored.

[Richter]

We turn on the news, and we get to see villians.  OK, that was easy.  There's bad guys out there, burning pillaging raping hating and jihading.  The viewership, a larger percentage of it, AREN'T the asshats depicted, and can go away feeling good that the bottom of the barrel is still a ways out of sight.  They're not just selling sex and violence, they're selling self jsutifying peace of mind.  The sins of the majorty are politely overlooked.     

[The Wizard]

It's a funny thing Charley. The history books talk about yellow journalism as if it was something that existed entirely in the past. But turn on your television, pull up your favorite news site, and you'll be faced with reporting so yellow its liver might as well have failed. Because journalism is a business, and businesses are about making money, not finding the Truth, if there is any to be found. The media doesn't care about unbiased, honest journalism, because that doesn't turn much of a profit.

No, what does draw in the moola is selective bias and sensationalism. The people don't want to be told the truth, because the truth is scary. They want to be told what they want to hear, for the news to reinforce their beliefs and assure them that they are the good people. Fox News pumps out the conservative bias because they know that can net them the conservative demographic. Sell them their own reality tunnels back to them, and they'll raise you up as a Guardian of Truth.  In the end, like so many other things, the problem comes down to not what the Bastards^tm do, but what the people let them do.

Or at least that's what I'm told.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

I think we'd be hard pressed to find members here that disagree, Charley.

At the same time, I find myself getting sucked into the extremely contagious, fear-meme, sensationalist pander-chaff now and then.

Do you think it would be worth it to pull a coordinated prank on the media that is most complicit? Something would force them to come forward and say, "We were wrong about this particular piece of fear mongering. Charley Brown, a spokesman for Discordia International, claimed responsibility. And tonight at 11, do gays  buy caucasian human baby hides on the black market and use them in necrophilic bestiality rituals? You decide."

I'd imagine it serving as a symbolic inspiration that we could point to for everyone else who is fed up, not that it would make anything more than a temporary chip in the facade of course. But it could be good for lulz and meeting like-minded people.

[P3nT4gR4m]

The public gets what the public wants. 

Not exactly. The public is incapable of knowing what it wants. It lacks the imagination. The media tells the public what it wants and then the public laps it up like an idiot puppy cos it must have wanted that, right? The public is not sentient. It is driven by base emotions. The harder you stimulate these base emotions the more they'll buy. It's a very simple formula that used to be limited, to a greater degree, by the charade they call civilisation, by the illusions of taste and decency but not so much anymore. Just tell them they want to see people fucking or being killed and then sell them a bunch of snuff-porn, along with condoms, lube and assorted self defence paraphernalia.