Politics The 4th Estate - Media....is it truth or fiction? TFP pundits will examine.

rogue49 · Nov 5, 2012

I know constantly we are complaining about the media.
Well, here's the place to note it and bitch about it.

Especially after this LONG election cycle...emphasizing CONSTANT news cycles.

One headline after another...just to get your attention.
If it bleeds, it leads.

Say what you want about it...it's a necessary evil.
The informed person, has to use it.
But what do you filter out?
What is biased?
What is truth?

What is simply just spit and vomit?
What is changing about it...bad or good?
Is it useful?

You tell me what you think?
Me?...It's like crack. Unheathy, but I can't stop it...I need it.

The new 'no comment': F--- off
By: Dylan Byers and John F. Harris - November 5, 2012

The reporter’s e-mail was insistent, his questions obviously skeptical. The State Department official’s response was defensive, his mood obviously annoyed.

Then the missiles started flying.

“Why do you bother to ask questions you already know the answer to,” Philippe Reines, a communications adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asked the reporter.

“Why don’t you give answers that aren’t bullshit for a change?” responded Michael Hastings, a reporter for the BuzzFeed website.

Reines then called Hastings an “unmitigated asshole” and suggested that he “[expletive] off.” Hastings responded with a sneering remark about Reines’s personal life. Reines closed by telling Hastings that he was now designated as “junk mail” on his computer and telling him to “have a good life.”

This exchange gave Washington reporters and political operatives alike a prurient thrill when BuzzFeed published it in full several weeks ago. In truth, however, the fact that the whole thing went public was the only remarkable thing about it.

“The email happened to be posted, but somebody has a conversation like that every day,” said Peter Baker, a White House reporter who has covered the last three administrations, now with The New York Times.

It is one of the signature developments of Washington during the Obama years: a flourishing F-bomb culture, one that has spread far beyond the White House and now pervades government-media relations in both parties, all across the capital.

The close 2012 presidential campaign has been an especially ideal environment for this new mind-set of nonstop combat — marked by blazing email trails, streaked with profanity and accusations of incompetence and bad faith.

These kinds of confrontations, while hardly unheard-of in earlier eras, now happen with frequency and ferocity that represents a fundamental change.

Operatives representing government and campaigns blame a pattern of hyperventilating and shallow coverage by the media, and say getting aggressive — and at times volcanic — with reporters is a natural response when confronted with frivolous or insulting inquiries, or complicated questions that come with a warning that a story will be posting within minutes.

Reporters blame a pattern of swaggering non-responsiveness among press aides, in which operatives often seem to be posturing to win favor with colleagues and bosses for being tough and infuse what should be routine interactions with a mood of snarling, self-important melodrama.

Beyond these dueling accusations, there is clearly a convergence of larger factors that have helped transform Washington’s media culture.

The biggest by far is technology. A nonstop newscycle that began a generation ago with cable television has accelerated vastly with the ascendancy of the Web and, during this election cycle, the pivotal role of Twitter. Operatives say what might look like minor stories or nuisances can metastasize in minutes into major uproars, forcing them to be uncommonly aggressive in confronting unfavorable story lines.

And both reporters and operatives acknowledge that the amount of reporting now done by email and instant message, and sometimes by Twitter, often has the effect of depersonalizing journalism, and makes it easier for insults to fly and tempers to boil over.

“The level of pugilism is higher. The tonal quality of politics has descended and become much more vitriolic. People scream at each other in a way they didn’t used to,” Mike McCurry, the former Clinton White House press secretary, told POLITICO.

“It’s poisonous heading toward toxic,” said Jim Manley, the former spokesman for Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Top White House spokesmen have teed-off at top journalists at such establishment platforms as The New York Times and The Washington Post editorial page. Reporters at POLITICO and elsewhere have been pulled out of briefing rooms or chased down the street by finger-waving flacks demanding that they show greater respect to their bosses. Baker described “long, ridiculous email flame wars” that nevertheless “don’t solve any of the issues.”

One spokesperson said that during the 2008 campaign, when controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was at its height, Obama’s then-deputy press secretary Ben LaBolt would “be screaming so loud at Brian Ross [of ABC News] or Fox News that people came out of their offices to see what was going on.” Dan Pfeiffer, now White House communications director, “would wander out of his office as if he was just talking on his cellphone,” the source said, “but really he was checking to see if he needed to monitor somebody.”

Veteran newsman Al Hunt, the executive Washington editor of Bloomberg News, said that Pfeiffer and White House press secretary Jay Carney “went ballistic” on him after he reported on a background briefing that they had tried to change to “off the record,” despite the fact that the official giving the briefing said it was “on background.”

“They claimed we had violated all the ground rules, and were never going to be invited back again. I essentially said, “F— you” — the official has more authority than the flack,” Hunt told POLITICO. “The next morning, Bloomberg was excluded from the meeting for White House regulars. They’d instructed [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner to disinvite us.”

From the White House perspective, a sensational and traffic-obsessed press corps is increasingly hard to manage. Replying to a POLITICO reporter’s inquiry, sent by email, a top deputy in the White House press office accused the reporter of trying to “drum up some criticism on short notice to facilitate the publishing of another blog item that will hopefully land you the Drudge Report link that you covet.”

“This cycle, this stuff happens literally every single day,” one former White House spokesperson said.

Confrontations like these have a more familiar ring to veteran reporters and political aides in New York City, where a tabloid culture has long defined the media culture and press aides like Zenia Mucha, who worked for Al D’Amato and George Pataki, and Sunny Mindel, for Rudy Giuliani, became legendary for their aggressive style. But in Washington — historically a more collegial town, where journalists traditionally were a part of the establishment rather than a raucous force outside it — routine shouting arguments and digital flame wars are a cultural shift.

For some, aggressiveness seems to be, in part, a way of establishing one’s bona fides. After Carney left Time magazine to join the administration — first as a spokesman for Vice President Joe Biden — he became well known for his blustery tirades, coming off a little like a former smoker on an anti-tobacco crusade as he lectured former colleagues about their alleged journalistic failings. Carney, whose edges softened a bit after becoming the main White House press secretary, did not return a phone message that he says his office did not alert him to, and did not return emails at an address that he said is incorrect. After an early version of this story was posted, he did not comment.

“It’s a macho-ness,” said Manley, describing the new style of press relations. “I have to admit that there have been handful of occasions where it made me feel a hell of a lot better, even if a handful of them were completely over the top and egregious. It’s a little bit of trying to prove you’re a tough guy, trying to play the refs, on the expectation that you’ll be in better footing the next time.”

Brad Dayspring, former aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, admitted that he “can run a little bit hot.”

“I look at myself as the center, and my boss as the quarterback,” Dayspring said. “When you have that kind of mentality, you aggressively attack, repeatedly.”

But nothing contributes to the current culture of confrontation so much as the always-on mentality made possible by the Web and social media.

“The onset of digital media, especially Twitter, tends to inflame the tensions. You used to have a real-time conversation. Now you get back to your desk and all of a sudden your boss is getting destroyed for something that you didn’t even know had happened,” Dayspring said. “The entire business is in overdrive; there is never a slow moment.”

“The 24/7 news cycle, the fact that every movement is tweeted, what a candidate is having for dinner is a short blip on cable news — it creates tension,” Manley explained. “The press feels the need to cover every single minute, every single action, and it puts the flacks in a defensive crouch automatically.”

Reporters and media operatives agree that the increases in speed have put more demands on both sides: Reporters who used to file one story at the end of the day are now expected to write, tweet, blog and make television and radio appearances throughout the day. By the same token, those on the communications side have to be at the ready around the clock. To meet these demands, reporters and press representatives spend less time meeting with each other, opting instead to handle much of their correspondence over the phone or, increasingly, by email and instant message.

“Going after someone with an obscenity-laced attack from reporter to flack, or flack to reporter, happened 30 or 40 years ago. But it didn’t happen electronically, it happened over a drink at the end of day,” Joe Lockhart, the veteran Democratic press secretary, said. “It’s amazing just how sterile the relationships are now. There are technologies that bring people together and technologies that separate us. The current technology has allowed people to report things quicker, but it’s driven a wedge between reporters and the people who cover them.”

“There used to be time to get answers, to establish a relationship. Now it’s feels like a fast-food media environment,” said Ron Bonjean, the veteran Republican spokesman. “The media is going through the drive through, and if they don’t get it in time, they go with the story even if it may be somewhat inaccurate.”

Because email and instant message are so impersonal, reporters and flacks are less wary of flying off the handle.

“People will say things to you in emails that they would never say to you to your face. They’ll go further in emails than they would have on the phone or in person,” Baker said. “There is something liberating about typing. You get these emails full of words that wouldn’t be acceptable in the family newspaper.”

Communications people also complained of reporters using email and avoiding phone calls simply to give the appearance of reporting.

One Republican spokesperson described an experience that is all-too-familiar to those on the PR side: “I’ll get an email from a reporter which says, ‘I’m posting something in 20 minutes, I need a comment.’ That isn’t journalism, that’s ‘I need to check a box,’” the spokesperson said. “There are very few reporters who are willing to take the time to understand an issue.”

But if reporters seem impatient, it is due in part to the fact that government and campaign officials have no problem ignoring emails and phone calls, or stonewalling them for hours — an eternity in the contemporary media environment, where there is a premium on speed.

“One thing some reporters don’t understand: Not calling back is a tactic. This isn’t about social graces. It’s a tool, and one that usually works to our advantage,” one high-level government spokesman said.

“I certainly don’t blame journalists, [but] I don’t blame flacks for being more guarded,” said Paul Begala, the Democratic strategist and former Clinton aide. “If you are on the flack side of things, every decision is a calculation of risk vs. reward. The risk of being human or funny or controversial is so high, and the reward is so low.”

Though the reporter-flack relationship is inherently adversarial, these measures have given rise to a new feeling of distance and mutual distrust.

“There isn’t a sense that, at the end of the day, you put your jobs aside and understand you’re all in this together,” Lockhart said. “It’s much more transactional now, 24 hours a day, not 12 hours a day. The relationships are more distant, more superficial, and as a result there is a little bit of a slash and burn mentality on both sides.”

“There is a different style people have now,” Hastings explained. “The media marketplace is so competitive, the pressure on communications people is so big. One remark can dominate a news cycle for days and forever define them. If you’re a communications person, you have to be aggressive.”

Communications people, especially, feel the pressure of today’s hyperpartisan media environment, in which more news outlets than ever are looking to amplify a gaffe or cry foul on the opposite side, and nearly every story is embraced as a weapon or a shield in a nonstop ideological war.

“Part of the frustration people might have is, it’s a more partisan media,” Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed, told POLITICO. “People who work for campaigns believe that some of the folks asking questions are working for institutions that are out to destroy their candidates.”

“There is a younger generation of flacks who believe certain news organizations are either for them or against them, either rooting for them or trying to screw them,” Chuck Todd, the NBC News political director and chief White House correspondent, said. “The fact is, a majority of the mainstream media is not that way. But flacks treat them that way. Younger flacks are somehow accepting those stereotypes.”

One government spokesman echoed those fears when he explained just how much time communications people now have to spend dealing with partisan outlets.

“People will bitch about the White House press office: ‘Why are they so antagonistic?’ But if you were sitting where Dan Pfeiffer or [National Security Council spokesman] Tommy Vietor sit, you’d realize a fair amount of what comes over transom is not just ridiculous, it’s nasty,” the spokesperson said, citing inquiries about the president’s birth certificate and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “If you’re sitting in these kinds of jobs, it’s a harsh shift from when Eagle Publishing calls with some crazy conservative theory and when The Washington Post calls. It gets muddied.”

Age, too, can be a factor. While older hands complain about the “breakdown of collegiality,” younger reporters and flacks seem hardly aware that things were ever any different.

“You probably need to go back a little earlier than me. I came up in the school of ‘f—- you’ communications people,” one young Republican spokesperson said.

“In my experience, the best press secretary-reporter relationships involve cussing each other all day then going out for ice cream,” said Reuters correspondent Sam Youngman.

Youngman, who is 35 and has covered three presidential campaigns, is actually old by the standards of the campaign trail, where many reporters are covering their first presidential campaign alongside traveling press aides who are equally inexperienced. With so few old hands on the trail, there are few mentors to show these novices the ropes.

“The age gap is problematic. When I was on the campaign in 2000, a lot of the reporters were graybeards. Now most campaign reporters have never previously covered a presidential campaign,” Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, said. “In the older days, young reporters could turn to a David Broder or a veteran reporter, and the veteran would put their arm around the reporter and help the reporter. Who does a reporter turn to for wisdom on the trail? And if I’m a press secretary with a complicated story I want to put out, who am I supposed to turn to?”

Fleischer also cited the problem that the informality of Twitter has created for many young journalists.

“Many reporters have split personalities: They’ll tweet madly with a lot of snark, then turn seriously to a communications person and say, ‘I’m really an in-depth, substantive reporter, can I get 10 minutes on the phone with the candidate?’,” he explained. “Reporters who love to tweet and reporters who love substance are having a hard time living side by side in the same person.”

The risks of this relative youth and inexperience came to fruition on the campaign trail in Europe this summer when the Romney press corps, which had hit a boiling point because of restricted access to the candidate, started shouting questions like “What about your gaffes!?” while he was leaving a Polish war memorial.

But if the press corps’ callowness showed that day, so did that of traveling press secretary Rick Gorka, who had hit his own boiling point after days on the road with this restless press corps. As the reporters shouted at the candidate, he told one of them in a shouted whisper, “Kiss my ass!”

“There is no one around to referee the vocab used in the relationship,” McCurry said. “Press aides are screaming at reporters because they crossed some boundary line in the sand, and no one is telling them to rein it in. When I was first the press secretary, one of my mentors would say, ‘That’s too sharp, a little over the top. Calm down, take a deep breath.’”

It’s even worse on the campaign trail, McCurry said, where “any perceived marginal slight becomes something you want to make a federal case out of.”

Reporters, who believe the relationship with the people they cover should remain fundamentally adversarial, still argue that neither side is benefiting from the current climate of confrontation.

“It’s counterproductive,” Baker said. “Some [press aides]] believe if you push against a reporter on one story, you may think you’re getting into their head for the next one. But I tend to think it’s opposite. The best flacks I work with deal with you professionally. If they don’t like something, they take the time to explain why they thought it was wrong.”

“In general,” said Hastings, “a kind word gets you further than a ‘f—-you.’”

© 2012 POLITICO LLC
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ASU2003 · Nov 6, 2012

The media has become a big part of the problem. They are trying to find the next gaffe instead of the next watergate. And when the lack of facts, lots of money, and biases get into it... The coming up with solutions is replaced by whose sports team/political party will win.

rogue49 · Nov 25, 2024

The Pot calling the Kettle black...

rogue49 · Nov 25, 2024

I consider polls as part of the media

Willravel · Dec 18, 2012

I read a book recently, Blur by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, that I think did a good job of very plainly analyzing modern journalism and reached some conclusions that are difficult to ignore.

One of the points of the book is that the onus of determining objective truth has shifted a great deal over the past 50 years and now lies squarely on the consumer of information, not on the press.

Major current issues in journalism include 'clerkism', a term coined by Homer Bigart which describes a common practice among journalists to uncritically accept the official story, especially when it comes from sources like government (like the DoD and White House) and larger corporations. Many journalists and news organizations act more as stenographers than people interested in disseminating the truth. Another major issue is one of the new models of news, namely that news organizations are, now more than ever, profit-driven entities. This added budgetary pressure from management and stockholders means that ratings must be maximized and costs minimized, leaving investigative journalism in the dust of the two major types of modern journalism: journalism of assertion and journalism of affirmation.

Journalism of assertion is built for the modern 24 hour, instant information new cycle. It's built to maximize speed and content meant to get ratings, but there's little verification, it's largely live, and features heavily rumor, innuendo, allegation, accusation, supposition, and hypothesis. It's basically a conduit, whereas older models were more of a filter.

Journalism of affirmation is built to gain a ferociously devoted audience by affirming the audience's preconceptions. These are the highly biased networks that present cherry-picked facts, accusations against those the audience already doesn't like, are often highly political and are in line with one particular political framework.

There's also interest-group journalism, which has started to grow with the movement of think tanks and political groups to the center stage of media. Very often heavily biased think tank and political group spokespeople are invited on news programs ostensibly to share a viewpoint but actually just there to heap outright propaganda.

What all this means is that the fourth estate is not so much the press, but has shifted to the consumers of news media. Savvy media consumers should be ultimately responsible for filtering the media they take in, by using questions like "how reliable is the evidence presented with this segment?" and "who stands to gain from the narrative of this story?" They can, by studying, find journalists that consistently provide news that is reliable and gives the consumer all of the information necessary to come to an informed conclusion about what's really going on.

I recall taking critical thinking back in college, learning about systems of skepticism and such. Perhaps one solution to the situation we find ourselves in would be teaching critical thinking at a younger age.

rogue49 · Nov 25, 2024

You gotta love this guy...Nate Silver of 538.
Reminds me of the line..."Just the Facts, ma'm"

rogue49 · Nov 25, 2024

Congress is not a team of horses that are out of control to be brought under control.
But more like a Board of Directors that votes and sets policy ...and the CEO attempts to implement beyond that.
Can the CEO try to influence? Sure, but they certainly don't control.
And the Board and Congress are responsible for their OWN actions...or lack of them.

rogue49 · Nov 25, 2024

You know...this is why I created this thread.
Even the media is now recognizing that the media is now tabloid...the headline means more than the truth and context.

rogue49 · Nov 25, 2024

Ok, we hear about how the media has a "liberal" bias all the time.

Baraka_Guru · Aug 8, 2013

This is my own translation of conservospeak:

"The media has a liberal bias" or "the liberal media" generally refers to the rare situations in the media when journalists act like journalists and ask tough questions, let loose "controversial" facts, disprove falsehoods, and challenge extremist ideologies from a centrist position.

This is driven, in the most part, by that largely (but not exclusively) American phenomenon known as binary thinking (e.g., "If you're not with us, you're against us."). The general formula of American conservative thinking is: If it isn't A, then it must be B, whereby it is assumed that B is the opposite of A, and the rest of the alphabet doesn't exist.

In summary, conservatives will criticize "the liberal media," but what they're really saying is that they have a problem with anything outside of their rigid, myopic, and narrow ideology.

They fear liberalism even though they benefit immensely from it. They fear it because they can't control it.

Aceventura · Aug 8, 2013

rogue49 said: ↑

You tell me what you think?
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I think about 99% of the American do not live in the 24 hour news cycle bubble. I think most people casually follow politics and the news most of the time and occasionally focus on major events periodically for short periods of time. People in the media and politicians take the role of the media much more serious than it actually is. People who read and post on this forum are the exception (yes, I am saying you are not normal). Most people look at media and political issues from a very clear point of view, i.e. - does this make sense? is it reasonable? is it fair? can I trust you? An editorial in the NY Times is not going to make them change their views, nor will a monologue by Rush Limbaugh. There is no media bias. It's the public that has a bias and the public consumes the media favorable to their bias.

Baraka_Guru · Aug 8, 2013

Aceventura said: ↑

I think about 99% of the American do not live in the 24 hour news cycle bubble. [...]
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I think you've grossly overestimated this figure, especially considering the smartphone penetration in America is over 60%. Add to that television, radio, laptop/desktop Internet, and traditional print media, in addition to word of mouth, to say that 99% of Americans aren't at least indirectly receiving information from the 24-hour news cycle is a bit naive to say the least.

As for the rest of what you wrote, that is likely the bigger factor: how engaged people are with the information, how they view the information, and how they gauge other peoples' responses to it.

Aceventura · Aug 8, 2013

Baraka_Guru said: ↑

I think you've grossly overestimated this figure, especially considering the smartphone penetration in America is over 60%. Add to that television, radio, laptop/desktop Internet, and traditional print media, in addition to word of mouth, to say that 99% of Americans aren't at least indirectly receiving information from the 24-hour news cycle is a bit naive to say the least.
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I will elaborate. When I am busy and focused on work, family and my down time - politics and hard news come in fourth place and I am a self-proclaimed news junkie. When I do focus on news it is background to other activities, for example my interest in business overlaps with my interest in socio-economic government policy and the politics involved. When I am driving in rural areas and want something other than my Podcasts (hobby related) or music, I will listen to AM talk radio mostly conservative stuff like Rush. When I am getting dressed in the morning I will flip between MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN. During football season my consumption of political news drops significantly and I focus on football. When my wife has control of the remote she she is into Hooda and Kathy or whatever they call themselves - certainly not political news. and so it goes.

Working people don't spend much time per day consuming political news at all. I know many people who purposefully avoid it. tablets, laptops, cell phones, etc. are not being used for political news but are used for social interactions. Even when I go to my gym, and now almost every machine has a TV attached, a survey of what is being watched shows it is almost never political news. And when people are watching a news channel - that channel had better be spending time covering the weather and traffic!

As for the rest of what you wrote, that is likely the bigger factor: how engaged people are with the information, how they view the information, and how they gauge other peoples' responses to it.
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MSNBC spent a considerable amount of time this morning discussing the 2016 Presidential election - polls, who may or may not run, who is or is not a serious canidated, etc. I would say 99.999999999% of the public could careless at this point. About a few months prior to the general election is when most will start to pay attention. Most are not even going to participate in the primaries.

I am not trying to be offensive, but you are a person in the bubble. Step out of it and talk to people, observe people and you will begin to realize that I am correct.

Baraka_Guru · Aug 9, 2013

Aceventura said: ↑

I will elaborate. When I am busy and focused on work, family and my down time - politics and hard news come in fourth place and I am a self-proclaimed news junkie. When I do focus on news it is background to other activities, for example my interest in business overlaps with my interest in socio-economic government policy and the politics involved. When I am driving in rural areas and want something other than my Podcasts (hobby related) or music, I will listen to AM talk radio mostly conservative stuff like Rush. When I am getting dressed in the morning I will flip between MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN. During football season my consumption of political news drops significantly and I focus on football. When my wife has control of the remote she she is into Hooda and Kathy or whatever they call themselves - certainly not political news. and so it goes.

Working people don't spend much time per day consuming political news at all. I know many people who purposefully avoid it. tablets, laptops, cell phones, etc. are not being used for political news but are used for social interactions. Even when I go to my gym, and now almost every machine has a TV attached, a survey of what is being watched shows it is almost never political news. And when people are watching a news channel - that channel had better be spending time covering the weather and traffic!
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Let me elaborate myself. Facebook, which I'm sure you've heard of despite your online habits, has over a billion active users. Think about that for a moment. 1) That's a huge number. 2) That's just one "portal" through which people will be exposed to the 24-hour news cycle, whether directly (links to articles/videos) or indirectly (commentary from "friends" or "friends of friends"). The nature of social media is such that it is highly penetrating. Facebook and many other places such as Twitter and Tumblr are the new commons. It's what many people now use to know what's going on in people's lives, whether it's immediate family, extended family, friends, co-workers, colleagues, etc. While I'm aware that there are many who aren't that "connected," many are, especially those who live urban lives and who participate in popular culture (engaging online is highly popular when it comes to entertainment and even virtually any product and service).

I know people with busy professional and family lives. This doesn't stop them from logging into Facebook on their smartphone when they have a spare moment while waiting in line, sitting on the toilet, stuck in traffic, waiting for a flight connection, etc., you get the point.

I haven't even mentioned more traditional ways people get news. Americans still like TV, right?

You say that news and politics comes fourth to you. Hey, it's in the top 5 in a world where there is too much choice. I'm sure it is the same for many people.

MSNBC spent a considerable amount of time this morning discussing the 2016 Presidential election - polls, who may or may not run, who is or is not a serious canidated, etc. I would say 99.999999999% of the public could careless at this point. About a few months prior to the general election is when most will start to pay attention. Most are not even going to participate in the primaries.
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You're kidding, right? Your exaggerations are absurd.

I am not trying to be offensive, but you are a person in the bubble. Step out of it and talk to people, observe people and you will begin to realize that I am correct.
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You assume too much. I don't go much beyond top headlines when it come to the news. Some days I don't catch more than one or two headlines, and often they aren't even anything that relate to me directly. On weekends, I can go a day or two without knowing what in hell is going on in the world beyond my apartment. I'm more into books, essays, and the like.

I do talk to people, and usually I get the impression they are way more connected to the news than I am. Smartphone penetration in the U.S. is over 60%, and the figure is similar in Canada. Keeping connected to the world is way too easy on one of these devices. I recommend getting one if you haven't already. It's amazing how you can go anywhere and always have information at your fingertips (though I admit this can be abused).

So if over 60% of Americans have such capability to connect, why do you think your 99% figure is so accurate? When you actually look at the trends, it seems absurd. If you said the same about India, it'd be less so, but I'd still be skeptical.

You claimed that barely 3 million Americans live in the 24-hour news cycle. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that that many New Yorkers live in the 24-hour news cycle. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by that. Could you explain what you mean by this "bubble"?

Aceventura · Aug 9, 2013

Baraka_Guru said: ↑

Let me elaborate myself. Facebook, which I'm sure you've heard of despite your online habits, has over a billion active users.
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I am not saying I use the internet for adult content, I am not saying anyone is, it is a private matter in my opinion as long as it involves consenting adults. If you think FB's billion users are impressive...

And if you think people are actually following the news on their news feeds rather than looking at photos of family, friends and cats or sharing jokes and amusing stories involving cats...you may be 100% correct because I don't spend time on FB. I am just going to say I am a cynic.

I haven't even mentioned more traditional ways people get news. Americans still like TV, right?

You say that news and politics comes fourth to you. Hey, it's in the top 5 in a world where there is too much choice. I'm sure it is the same for many people.

You're kidding, right? Your exaggerations are absurd.
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Right. Given about 315 million Americans - the number one MSNBC show gets less than 800,000 viewers. What is that about .2%

MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” led MSNBC in total viewers, placing 14th overall and averaging 781,000 viewers. The program placed 18th overall in the demo, averaging 218,000 viewers. “MSNBC Investigates,” the blanket term for MSNBC longform crime docs, led the channel in the demo, averaging 240,000 A25-54.
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Ratings - TVNewser

I know this is just one little isolated way of looking at this issue - I suggest you do your own homework. No doubt when I write something like 99.99999% I am not being precise. But if you actually look at some numbers, then tell me about how I am exaggerating!

redux · Aug 9, 2013

Here is another way of looking at it:

More than half of those in a Pew Center for People & the Press watched the news yesterday, but only a third of the 18-29 demographic:

At the same time, those 18-29ers, particularly those using social networking, are increasingly receive their daily news in that manner (up from 14% to 41% in 2 years):

In Changing News Landscape, Even Television is Vulnerable | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

The frequency is not the issue as much as the source...and the growing reliance on social networking for "news" that is more likely to be biased and/or partisan, less likely to be fact checked, and generally less reliable than the more traditional news sources.

And I wont get into the studies that have shown Fox News viewers/readers (TV and/or website, facebook, etc) are more likely to be misinformed than other similar sources.

roachboy · Aug 9, 2013

among the problems to maybe think about is the consequences of a combination of cut-backs in correspondents and bureaus with a concomitant increase in reliance on officially pre-packaged infotainment that circulates as if it were "news". remember the selling of the iraq debacle?

for example.

Baraka_Guru · Aug 9, 2013

Aceventura said: ↑

I am not saying I use the internet for adult content, I am not saying anyone is, it is a private matter in my opinion as long as it involves consenting adults. If you think FB's billion users are impressive...

And if you think people are actually following the news on their news feeds rather than looking at photos of family, friends and cats or sharing jokes and amusing stories involving cats...you may be 100% correct because I don't spend time on FB. I am just going to say I am a cynic.
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Can you find a single adult website that has over a billion active users? My guess is that you can't. Do you understand what I'm getting at here?

Right. Given about 315 million Americans - the number one MSNBC show gets less than 800,000 viewers. What is that about .2%
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Do you know how many articles from MSNBC are posted via Facebook alone? What about virtually all other news sources? What about other social media sites and all the other means people use to access information on their smartphones? Do you understand what I'm getting at here?

I know this is just one little isolated way of looking at this issue - I suggest you do your own homework. No doubt when I write something like 99.99999% I am not being precise. But if you actually look at some numbers, then tell me about how I am exaggerating!
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I've done my homework. Have you done yours? I've told you how you're exaggerating, and all you've done is given me data on a single show from a single network. You pulled a number out of your ass. I suggested you're exaggerating and have given you some ideas why. The onus is still kind of on you.

redux · Aug 19, 2013

Al Jazeera America goes live tomorrow (check here for availability)

Fourteen hours of straight news every day. Hard-hitting documentaries. Correspondents in oft-overlooked corners of the country. And fewer commercials than any other news channel

It sounds like something a journalism professor would imagine. In actuality, it is Al Jazeera America, the culmination of a long-held dream among the leaders of Qatar, the Middle Eastern emirate that already reaches most of the rest of the world with its Arabic- and English-language news channels. The new channel, created specifically for consumers in the United States, will join cable and satellite lineups on Tuesday afternoon.

Al Jazeera America is the most ambitious American television news venture since Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes started the Fox News Channel in 1996. It faces some of the same obstacles that Fox eventually glided over — including blanket skepticism about whether distributors, advertisers and viewers will give it a chance. But that is where the parallels to other channels end, because Al Jazeera America is going against the grain of seemingly every trend in television news.

“Viewers will see a news channel unlike the others, as our programming proves Al Jazeera America will air fact-based, unbiased and in-depth news,” said Ehab Al Shihabi, the channel’s acting chief executive, on a news conference call last week. He was explicit about what will be different, saying, “There will be less opinion, less yelling and fewer celebrity sightings.”

Mr. Al Shihabi and other Al Jazeera representatives say proprietary research supports their assertions that American viewers want a PBS-like news channel 24 hours a day. Originally the new channel was going to have an international bent; now its overseers emphasize how much American news it will cover and how many domestic bureaus it will have, which some see as an effort to appease skeptics.

full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/business/media/al-jazeera-america-promises-a-more-sober-look-at-the-news.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&smid=tw-share&adxnnlx=1376950791-bw9qEaQG7OE/WwFMI bR2w
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A fresh perspective on cable news is a good thing even if if will only be available in half of all US households with cable.

A Fox News panel today was not so open-minded, proclaiming it is still a "mouthpiece for bin Laden...and most Arabs supported bin Laden and killing Americans" (despite overwhelming polling data to the contrary).

roachboy · Aug 19, 2013

way to go, fox assholes.

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