(no subject)
Very brief thought:
We're entering an age in which everybody, not just those crazy Chomsky readers, realizes that the range of viewpoints presented in the mainstream media is very narrow, much more narrow than the scope of legitimate positions on the issues. This has resulted in people flocking to other, even less well-vetted news sources, and generally embracing only those sources that flatter their existing preconceptions.
One of the big casualties of this is that (thanks the the last fifty years of oversimplification and bias) we're rapidly coming to a point where no one has any real concept of what reality is. Someone cited in this article can wilfully disregard Obama's reported positions on gun control, because she just naturally knows better. The McCain campaign can continue claiming that Obama will raise everyone's taxes, even though his plan says the exact opposite, because duh, "everyone knows" that's what he'll do, forget whatever he or anyone else says.
Those outside the Free Republic still suffer from the same syndrome. Weren't we seeing polling results within days of each other going from a 10% Obama lead to a statistical dead heat to a 2% difference to another 10% lead? MSM commentators tried to analyze these as due to new revelations during the final weeks (Joe the Plumber has made it an even race again!) but the far simpler explanation is that the polls are not accurately reflecting public opinion; at the end of the day, there's just a lot that no one actually knows about what's happening right now.
"Citizen Journalism" stands as a possible solution to that, but only if we actually read a variety of opinions and try to insist on stories that are credible and vetted (even though reality is sometimes not credible, alas, depending on your prejudices). (Oh, one more for good measure.) And I think that the growing incredulous-credulousness of the American public is substantially a result of the mainstream media's years of poorly representing reality; people don't know who to trust, but know enough to think they can safely disregard anything they don't agree with that's in the papers, without engaging with it at all.
I suppose that is easier than just reading The Guardian, huh?
PS:
Note I'm not endorsing the corrupted-postmodernist view that there is no such thing as truth or reality, or that we cannot have real knowledge of what actually happened. I'm just saying that given our current information sources, we definitely don't; and even to the extent that true knowledge of the real situation is theoretically impossible, we can get a pretty good approximation if we put in the effort.
We're entering an age in which everybody, not just those crazy Chomsky readers, realizes that the range of viewpoints presented in the mainstream media is very narrow, much more narrow than the scope of legitimate positions on the issues. This has resulted in people flocking to other, even less well-vetted news sources, and generally embracing only those sources that flatter their existing preconceptions.
One of the big casualties of this is that (thanks the the last fifty years of oversimplification and bias) we're rapidly coming to a point where no one has any real concept of what reality is. Someone cited in this article can wilfully disregard Obama's reported positions on gun control, because she just naturally knows better. The McCain campaign can continue claiming that Obama will raise everyone's taxes, even though his plan says the exact opposite, because duh, "everyone knows" that's what he'll do, forget whatever he or anyone else says.
Those outside the Free Republic still suffer from the same syndrome. Weren't we seeing polling results within days of each other going from a 10% Obama lead to a statistical dead heat to a 2% difference to another 10% lead? MSM commentators tried to analyze these as due to new revelations during the final weeks (Joe the Plumber has made it an even race again!) but the far simpler explanation is that the polls are not accurately reflecting public opinion; at the end of the day, there's just a lot that no one actually knows about what's happening right now.
"Citizen Journalism" stands as a possible solution to that, but only if we actually read a variety of opinions and try to insist on stories that are credible and vetted (even though reality is sometimes not credible, alas, depending on your prejudices). (Oh, one more for good measure.) And I think that the growing incredulous-credulousness of the American public is substantially a result of the mainstream media's years of poorly representing reality; people don't know who to trust, but know enough to think they can safely disregard anything they don't agree with that's in the papers, without engaging with it at all.
I suppose that is easier than just reading The Guardian, huh?
PS:
Note I'm not endorsing the corrupted-postmodernist view that there is no such thing as truth or reality, or that we cannot have real knowledge of what actually happened. I'm just saying that given our current information sources, we definitely don't; and even to the extent that true knowledge of the real situation is theoretically impossible, we can get a pretty good approximation if we put in the effort.