The Fighting 44s

6 Responses

#1

Reprogress

3:24 am | Mar 07, 2009

As a big media junkie I was laughing my head off when I watched this. The Daily Show generally hit it on the head and this was no exception.

I do feel bad for CNBC and other business networks though. They simply were forming their professional opinions on something that went awry, the economy. No one saw this coming and as a result most of the networks suffered.

Giving consumers and businesses hope in turns drive the economy. I don’t blame any of the networks reassuring their audiences. But regardless how inside they got into these companies, there is always the “unpredictable”.

This basically is like a team of doctors who told a patient that he is going to die. But where are their credibilities when he makes it through?

#2

minbo

9:12 am | Mar 09, 2009

There was a bit on NPR about this just this morning about how news/investigative media failed. It is not the job of media to simply reassure it’s audience, but to also investigate and report the truth… Some of their examples was how reports of what would happen in Louisiana / New Orleans over 3 years before it happened and ongoing reports on the failed levee system and disaster plans prior.

The media companies do get quite a bit of slack in my book, because even people like Greenspan noted that he did not fully understand the risks and results of various otherwise seemingly unrelated policy and regulation decisions. While Buffet was early in warning that derivatives were financial weapons of mass destruction and time bombs and avoided some aspects of it, he did not exit the market or avoid the downturn either. If the head of the FED who has a nations resources of analysts and compulsory reporting was snowed under, as well as most other economists and regulatory people, then I would expect that very few people besides tinfoil cranks would have been vocal and vigorous in doomsaying.

Anyway, even if media was not totally at fault for sleeping at the wheel, questions like did you see your VP dancing or is it fun to be a billionaire, while they seem innocuous and lighthearted at the time, really do encapsulate in a sound-byte the failure of media to do their job as the fourth estate to investigate and ask hard questions.

#3

THX1138

11:07 am | Mar 09, 2009

DO NOT TRUST THE MASS MEDIA. Don’t trust them on anything: money, war, education, science, social issues, anything. They exist to amp up your emotions, usually fear, anger, and greed, for ratings, ad money, and prestige.

But Jon Stewart himself is part of the mass media, isn’t he? :)

Seriously though, I agree with not trusting–or least being highly critical–of the mass media, particularly in America.

But the problem is not really an issue of the media “failing to do its job.”

In fact, it’s the other way around. The mainstream media does do its job … all too well.

In the USA, the true function of the media is to mold and manipulate public opinion to serve the interests of the American ruling class and promote whatever is their latest political agenda.

The best example of this is the decade-long lies about “Weapons of Mass Destruction” that the American media as a system (from Liberal to Conservative, from PBS to Fox News) promoted throughout the 1990s and of course in the run-up to the American assault on Iraq in 2003. The agenda was to first justify US economic sanctions and bombing of Iraq and finally the invasion of that nation itself.

The American media is very good at promoting simplistic propaganda memes that it repeats over and over again like meaningless mantras:

Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The War on Terrorism.

United We Stand.

Support the Troops.

God Bless America.

Change That You Can Believe In.

The Audacity of Hope.

Freedom and Democracy.

Ignorance is Strength….

#4

Dialectic

8:14 am | Mar 12, 2009

I’ll briefly clarify what I mean by “do not trust the mass media.” I’m not saying this in sort of a simplistic, counter-cultural, adolescent, hippy sort of way: don’t trust the Man, they’re out to get you, it’s a conspiracy, State of Fear, that kid of thing.

Also, I was referring to the news media in particular, but it can be applied to other forms as well.

What I mean is, the media, as it currently exists in the West, is designed to elicit a strong reaction from you: generally speaking, greed, fear, anger, indignation, and short-term thinking and feeling. They do this for two reasons: revenue/ratings/advertising (it’s all one thing), because people love drama, and for the sake of the drama itself.

Without going into some of the bigger and more obvious “propaganda” campaigns, I find an excellent example of this emotional and intellectual manipulation is in financial market reporting.

Quite simply, 99.9% of it is SHIT. It’s complete garbage. It’s absolutely meaningless to report on stock movements of an hour, a morning, a day, a week, even a few weeks or months as if they have some deep intrinsic meaning. But they do, they do it with zeal, and they use words like “surge,” and “rally,” and “tumble,” and whenever they can, they’ll refer to some record, “highest since …” “lowest since …” “largest movement for this type …” and it’s all designed to get you hyped up. It’s all designed to be exciting and move units. It’s not just the content that’s dishonest, it’s the process, the presentation.

With regard to the news media in general, I believe it’s a well-accepted phenomenon that whenever someone actually understands what’s going on in a certain field or context a reporter is reporting on, they almost invariably find that the article misunderstands and misstates certain fundamentals of the situation. I’ve certainly seen it, and been subjected to it, and I remember reading a SciAm article on the psychology of belief when it comes to reading about something you’re knowledgable on and something you’re not.

And this just covers things which are done with little or no malicious intent. Reporters are inclined to manipulate perception and skew stories deliberately all the time.

#5

Dialectic

8:58 pm | Mar 12, 2009

Just found a very nice quote from Obama which sums up my view:

“A smidgen of good news and suddenly everything is doing great. A little bit of bad news and ooohh , we’re down on the dumps,” Obama said. “And I am obviously an object of this constantly varying assessment. I am the object in chief of this varying assessment.”

“I don’t think things are ever as good as they say, or ever as bad as they say,” Obama added. “Things two years ago were not as good as we thought because there were a lot of underlying weaknesses in the economy. They’re not as bad as we think they are now.”

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hEx3tiPJhZQLVqjNmHR_oP6FZMuwD96SPAK01

It’s the media that exacerbates our innate penchant for drama.

#6

Kuroyama

8:26 am | Mar 24, 2009

I get regular doses of DS online… This show WAS a hard watch. Stewart gave him what he Madoff and AIG had comin and he still had a lilbitmo left as they went to commercial!

Next up, Stewart vs AIG?