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Ignorance Is Bliss? The Perils Of Excessive News Exposure

Maybe it was telling you that the bad guys don't always come from the other side.
 
That, I already know, but showing, on national tv, people treating someone's body in a disrespectful way, is still wrong. Neither that person nor his family were ever considered when the film was broadcast.
 
It's a nasty world out there.

But it is reality.

Would it have been more effective from the propaganda point of view if it had been Somalis dragging a Canadian soldier ?

Or do you simply not want to know what actually happens ?
 
For a while now, I’ve been looking for a source of reliable, independent news and have reached the conclusion there’s no hope.
I used to wake up to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 until I noticed those being interviewed were only allowed the first three words of an answer before the interviewer shoehorned their own in opinion into the debate.

Online newspapers have just become tribal opinion sheets without any serious investigation. To me, there’s no real difference between The Mail or The Guardian. They are both peddling an agenda of one sort or another and desperately trying to generate clicks. I regard The Independent as ‘Yesterday’s Guardian’, so that doesn’t get much of a look in.
I’ve looked at this issue online and the best advice seems to be read both sides and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But this is ends up as a sort of Schrodinger’s Cat view where all personalities add their take and there’s no such thing as a simple fact you can start from anymore.

News now is just opinion. So much so that they're reporting and reading out the twitter feed of various professional rent-a-quote fuckwits as if their opinion was somehow a definitive version of events. Presumably playing the odds of hopefully mollifying a suitably large percentage of viewers.

It’s come to the point where I just don’t trust ANY news source now. Which is bad news for the BBC. Today, I heard a conversation where one guy said that if he could, he’d stop paying the BBC because of right wing bias. The other said the same because of left wing bias and the third said he didn’t watch TV at all.

As politics is a no-no here, I’m not seeking suggestions or any prompts for further indoctrination. I’ve looked into it and news as we used to know it is dead and it’s pretty pointless looking for anything decent these days.
 
Analogue Boy said:
News now is just opinion. So much so that they're reporting and reading out the twitter feed of various professional rent-a-quote fuckwits as if their opinion was somehow a definitive version of events. Presumably playing the odds of hopefully mollifying a suitably large percentage of viewers.



As politics is a no-no here, I’m not seeking suggestions or any prompts for further indoctrination. I’ve looked into it and news as we used to know it is dead and it’s pretty pointless looking for anything decent these days.
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All you can do is take a scan of as many as possible and come to your own conclusions.

Of course there is no such thing as a fact; ask any lawyer. A fact is what the client with the most money wants it to be.

As for tweets from fuckwits.....

Can't go there, it's political. ;)

INT21.
 
Is there any hunger for intelligent news? I would not put money on it - if I had any. Not many messengers left worth the price of a bullet.

We now, essentially, get the news someone has paid for.

I try not to hate the audience, who will, eventually, pick up the tab. Bluntly, I'm glad I'm not young any more. :lalala:
 
INT21 said:
If one doesn't follow the news, what is there to talk about (No, football is not a civilised option) ?

The one thing that does frustrate me on the news, and Ted Talk debates etc, is the argument that Statins are good/not good for you.
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On statins...
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317450.php
From what I know...and have read...they are good for you if you have a cholesterol problem...period. The side effects are usually minimal compared to possibly preventing heart trouble etc.
 
‘Who, what, why, where and when’ now seem to be the questions you have to ask about the opinions and motivations of the reporters.
Not really the way things should be... in my opinion.
 
News is more sensationalised these days. Not to minimise any recent crimes or terror attacks, but to have the story on a loop, constant talking heads giving their opinions is too much. I'm in my 40s now and remember the IRA bombing campaign of mainland Britain.We didn't have 24 hour news coverage then but the news we did have was not saturated with the story. I think the media do the job for the terrorists at times. It wasn't Isis who were constantly flying over London Bridge covering the aftermath of the attack, but the TV Stations hyping up what happened,increasing the impact of what took place.Creating more fear and terror.
 
Lizard,

You do know that the bomb that went off in Northern Ireland two week ago was the fifth one this year ?

And it is likely to increase.
 
Dr wu,

I'm on Statins.

But there is a lot of contradictory stuff out there as to whether they do what they say they do, or whether the information is outdated and potentially dangerous.
 
INT21 said:
Lizard,

You do know that the bomb that went off in Northern Ireland two week ago was the fifth one this year ?

And it is likely to increase.
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There was a time though when hundreds of bombs would have gone off in NI by mid August. There are at least three dissident IRAs and that's the best they can do. They don't have popular support, they don't have the equipment to carry out a large scale campaign.
 
I work in a news environment (as you probably already know - for the police), and over the last ten years there has been a huge shift towards the public coming to us for their news rather than the local publishers.

Our website and social channels have many, many times the traffic of the local media as people would rather get the info direct from us than through a journalistic filter. And to be honest, most of the news providers just do a straight copy-and-paste from our press releases anyway. We know this as we sometimes leave a deliberate typo and see where it's reproduced. Then fix it.
 
My point is not so much about the IRA but about the coverage of Terror attacks in London now and 30 years ago since we now have 24 hour coverage.How unnecessary it is. Apologies if I did not make this clear.
 
My point was that the bombing has never gone away. And it is likely to increase.

Not wishing to get into a political discussion. Just pointing something out.
 
INT21 said:
My point was that the bombing has never gone away. And it is likely to increase.

Not wishing to get into a political discussion. Just pointing something out.
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Yes. The 'troubles' never went away. They just got downplayed by the press and media, while other issues rose to the fore.
 
Analogue Boy said:
Too right. The fact that Gemma Collins is a thing pushing important information out of my brain has to be dealt with at the highest level.
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Who? No, I don't need that information in my brain either.
 
INT21 said:
My point was that the bombing has never gone away. And it is likely to increase.

Not wishing to get into a political discussion. Just pointing something out.
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Sorry INT21 I could have chose a better example. No need for political discussion. It was more to do with how the media cover stories not so much about the politics. The way the media cover the stories to the extent they do, there is no need at times.
 
No worries.

You are correct. I suppose someone has to decide how the news will be formatted. and it depends a lot on the country of origin and also the channel.

We will soon be getting a lot of the latest hurricane as it hits Florida. But mostly on CNN and Fox.

The BBC will cover it, but not to the same extent.

There is, it seems, also a hope that if some stories are kept quiet we wont notice.

INT21
 
I'm not so sure that people just don't like being told what to do or think unless it EXACTLY conforms to their opinions, so when something is on the news (or in the news) they don't like they start making excuses for themselves in a weirdly unconscious way. Unfortunately for them, the news isn't personally curated, so they start to reject increasing amounts of what they hear. It's like a creeping solipsism.

I genuinely believe media studies should be taught in schools to process the masses of information and opinion we're bombarded with. I can still find news reports and opinion pieces that are well thought out and informative, but I guess I'd be classed as naïve by the cynics because I trust selected outlets, and no, I don't mean Twitter or Facebook, which I would term "entertainment". It's either that or become a hermit. Or more of a hermit.
 
You mean go the full Herman ? No need.

There are many interesting and, when looking back, reliable news outlets.

INT21.
 
GNC said:
I genuinely believe media studies should be taught in schools to process the masses of information and opinion we're bombarded with.
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Media Studies was once very popular at GCSE & A Level. In fact schools and colleges were once dedicated to it and named after it.

It tended to be rubbished by employers and was downgraded in the rush towards STEM subjects.

It does limp on, as one of those add-on subjects that private schools offer as a six-week crash course to their brighter candidates. No reason good English students shouldn't hack it in double-quick time.

Contemporary news items were once part of the mainstream GCSE syllabus, when consideration of layouts and use of imagery were taken into account. There was, I recall, an extreme example, where one of the "texts" turned out to be the front page of The Independent. There was little or no text, just the image of a shrink-wrapped Morrisons swede! Teachers were horrified. Only the most thoughtful pupils were able to write about the way this contradicted every ordinary expectation of a front page with its lavish use of white space, drop-shadow and subdued colour-scheme. Most had very little idea of what a traditional front-page was like! :willy:
 
Did they explain why the swede needed to be shrink-wrapped ?
 
INT21 said:
Did they explain why the swede needed to be shrink-wrapped ?
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There was some wrap-around text, they should have been able to link to the image.

Page is here.

They could also, in theory, have linked the list of associated pages to hyperlinks on a web-page. All a bit of a curve-ball, for kids expecting more text to analyse!
 
Thanks,

I see the context now.
 
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