Notes on the current state of being (ongoing thread, comments okay)

[The Johnny]

The problem is that American Society is conditioned to ONLY look at short-term goals. 

So for education that is churning out diplomas and getting kids into college.

America doesn't have the patience, nor the stomach, for looking at the medium and long term.

If it did, it would realize that the system has been conditioned to a point where it is manufacturing failure.  It is setting up false expectations.  It has woven this myth that, "if you just graduate high school, you'll make it"

And the pile of rudderless, unemployed 18-25 year olds continues to grow.

Here only middle school is "mandatory". After that the expectations from the government is to either get people to go to a trade school or a 1-2 year training course for a job... theres a huge lack of places at public university, there are no community colleges... theres some crazy figures like only 60% of people finish middle school...

And even if you make it thru to college, its no guarantee for a job; i mean, theres a reason why like 70% of our economy is informal, that is, the government cant tax it, but that also means that health is privately driven... and most formal jobs are one year contracts, where after you either get fired or contracted for another period of time, and this is done so the patron doesnt have to pay for health and services...

[Doktor Howl]

In other words, they are trying to create a jello-mold linked to a mythical 1950s (in America, anyway), in which everyone is "normal" and well-behaved.

Thing is, the actual product of that system was the highest rate of juvenile delinquency in US history, and the highest number of teen pregnancies.

I expect the results will be the same in Mexico, as the driving factors are primate politics, not local cultural norms.

I dont agree with juvenile delinquency and teen pregnancy being the result of the education system, id think it'd be other factors.

It is other factors.  Education was just one among many.

[Doktor Howl]

Turns out CNN doctored the audio of Zimmerman's 911 call.  The actual content went like this:

Operator:  What's he doing?

Zimmerman:  He looks suspicious.

Operator:  Can you give me a description?

Zimmerman:  He looks Black.  He has a hoodie on.

What you heard on CNN:

Operator:  What's he doing?

Zimmerman:  He looks suspicious.  He looks Black.

Now, this isn't The Doktor trying to stick up for Zimmerman.  From what I understand, he's a racist murderer who has now fled Florida, as the holes in his account of things begin to add up.  However, what you have here is CNN deliberately taking Zimmerman out of context, which used to be so rare as to be almost mythical (politicians like to claim they've been taken out of context when all that's really happened is their own big mouth bit them).

Fun fact:  There's no law against CNN doing that, due to a court decision in 2004, in which Fox News was successfully able to argue that they could just make shit up and call it news...So now you have to operate with the understanding that all news media is bad signal.  I mean, if you weren't already.

[LMNO]

This is probably a faulty perception, but it seems the news media, while sliding down a scummy slope, really collapsed after 9/11, when they simply repeated whatever they were told rather than make independent analyses of what was going on.

Then, they decided to pit established truths up against whackjob bullshit, and treat them with equal deference, in order to appear "fair".

For some reason, I can't remember if they were doing that crap in 1999/2000.

[Doktor Howl]

This is probably a faulty perception, but it seems the news media, while sliding down a scummy slope, really collapsed after 9/11, when they simply repeated whatever they were told rather than make independent analyses of what was going on.

Then, they decided to pit established truths up against whackjob bullshit, and treat them with equal deference, in order to appear "fair".

For some reason, I can't remember if they were doing that crap in 1999/2000.

In 1991, the media willingly and knowingly broadcast false information during Operation Desert Shield.  They did this at the request of the defense department, as they knew that Hussein watched CNN religiously.  Afterward, they announced what they had done, and apologized for the necessity.

This was, I believe, the tipping point.  While a worthy goal was accomplished, it set a precedent for allowing the news to be led..."Investigating" now means "reading the press releases" (Warren Ellis is, once again, proven to be a prophet).  Of course things had happened before that, but that was the first time the media openly lied and was lauded for it.

[AFK]

Things really got mucked up when news went to cable and discovered they had to fill 24 hours with something.  It was different when you had to distill stuff to nightly, half-hour chunks, or fill a tiny space on a piece of newsprint.  There was more motivation to vet information.  The space for reporting was scarce so you wanted to make sure you were getting your bang for your buck.

Now, there's tons of time web-pages to fill so you can throw out any old shit and call it news.  Add in of course that we are talking about operations that are business models....and it would be any wonder that The People are getting anything that remotely resembles hard news.  It's been info-tainment for quite a while now and that shit was going on before 9/11.  It just got louder and more in-your-face post 9/11. 

[Doktor Howl]

Things really got mucked up when news went to cable and discovered they had to fill 24 hours with something.  It was different when you had to distill stuff to nightly, half-hour chunks, or fill a tiny space on a piece of newsprint.  There was more motivation to vet information.  The space for reporting was scarce so you wanted to make sure you were getting your bang for your buck.

Now, there's tons of time web-pages to fill so you can throw out any old shit and call it news.  Add in of course that we are talking about operations that are business models....and it would be any wonder that The People are getting anything that remotely resembles hard news.  It's been info-tainment for quite a while now and that shit was going on before 9/11.  It just got louder and more in-your-face post 9/11.

Interesting thing about it is that all the major news outlets hemmorage money.

[navkat]

This is why if anything, I get my news from foreign providers who are still required to tell the truth or they get lined up outside and shot like dogs.

So Al-Jazeera and RT.

[Cain]

This is why if anything, I get my news from foreign providers who are still required to tell the truth or they get lined up outside and shot like dogs.

So Al-Jazeera and RT.

You mean "the company whose Syria coverage is being edited by a brother of the leader of the uprising" and "Russian state news"?

 

[Don Coyote]

This is why if anything, I get my news from foreign providers who are still required to tell the truth or they get lined up outside and shot like dogs.

So Al-Jazeera and RT.

You mean "the company whose Syria coverage is being edited by a brother of the leader of the uprising" and "Russian state news"?

 

Isn't Al-Jazeera run by the Qatari government too?

[navkat]

This is why if anything, I get my news from foreign providers who are still required to tell the truth or they get lined up outside and shot like dogs.

So Al-Jazeera and RT.

You mean "the company whose Syria coverage is being edited by a brother of the leader of the uprising" and "Russian state news"?

 

SO WE'RE ALL FUCKED, THEN.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Pretty much. I used to rely on bbc until cain mentioned that they arent so good at british news.

The trick is multiple sources.

Cain and faust- how reliable is rte (raidio-teilifis eireann or radio-television of ireland) since its english language from a neutral country?

[Cain]

Isn't Al-Jazeera run by the Qatari government too?

Yes.  I pretty much expect all state-run institutions to be at least a little...vanilla when it comes to reporting on their home state, but when said state is a Middle Eastern Monarchy, you can virtually guarantee that there are going to be some serious omissions. 

Not to mention it's worth remembering the Qatari government's strong role in the Libya uprising, and how this may affect their subsequent "Arab Spring" reporting.

SO WE'RE ALL FUCKED, THEN.

Yes.

Cain and faust- how reliable is rte (raidio-teilifis eireann or radio-television of ireland) since its english language from a neutral country?

A quick look around the web suggests they are slightly biased towards the centre-left: Fianna Fail and Labour were named as getting preferntial treatment according to an internal investigation.  However, this could be unconscious bias, and certainly reads that way, despite the frothing of some on the Irish right - especially since the World Socialist Movement and assosciated Irish parties have criticized RTE for being too pro-coporate and pro-Guarda in their coverage.  It's likely the class and education level of the people it recruits lends itself to a vaugely left-neoliberal outlook, which is not the result so much of intention as not being able to seperate one's ideas about the world from observation of it.

[Cain]

What I have not seen in this discussion on the media is the role that the profit motive has come to the fore since the early 90s, despite, as Roger correctly noting, the media does not generally make money from reporting.

The problem is this: rolling, 24-hour news stations and websites mean you need to be able to collect, analyze and disseminate news faster than the competition.  You get it out first on TV and on the web, and people will be visiting your site, watching your channel, boosting your ratings, driving up the cost of advertising on your channel.

But to do so, you have to have exceptionally quick turnover times.  The BBC, for example, gives about 10 minutes from a story appearing on a newswire agency (who do not investigate their own stories - they either rely on government spokesmen, NGO public officers, or PR releases) to research all aspects of it, reconfigure it, spellcheck it and put it up on the news site.  Ten minutes.

The drive to making news a profitable industry has also involved getting rid of a lot of staff.  Researchers and investigative journalists typically took the heaviest blows from these measures.  So you have less people, doing more work than ever.

Given how government in the mid 90s tended to be dominated by media savvy types (Alistair Campbell, anyone?), it didn't take governments long to realise how to game the system and introduce misinformation into the news cycle.  Up to 70% of all stories on any given day in the UK come directly from wire agencies, meaning in probability at least 50% of news comes from government PR types.  Through the careful manipulating and leaking of information, governments can mislead the public and create popular support for measures people would otherwise be far more sceptical of - such as invading Iraq, for example.  Relying on a mixture of "official releases", ambiguously worded information from government ministers and orchestrated leaks from intelligence agencies and oversight committees, it became very simple to create a sense of unease through disinformation.

Nick Davies, the reporter who broke the phone hacking story, detailed this at great length in his book, Flat Earth News, which is well worth reading.