Government and media

Gosh, let me think of an example... how many stories did we read about Heath Ledger's death before he was dead 24 hours? In that time, we thought maybe he had snorted coke (one headline read: "Rolled up $20 bill found near Ledger's body..."). That's just a small example. Many stories printed before we knew the truth.

Journalists have a Code of Ethics to follow -- their number one code is the "seek the truth and report it." In an era of trying to get the story first, being the news organization that gets it out the faster (which feeds into their success and their bottom line economically) they will report ANYTHING just to get the story out there. In the days of an evening and morning paper, there wasn't the urgency. Stories were checked out. They were doublechecked. That is relatively gone. Media people will tell you it's gone.

Don't get me wrong. We're in a era of blogging, too, and quite often, we get information the mainstream media doesn't report. We often find things out that contributes greatly to the truth being spread.

My point is this: we are still navigating through this new era of the media. And there is no denying that the more information thats out there, it can often lead to confusion, sometimes on purpose. This is where those that know how to control the media can play their game. They can put so much crap out there to hide a truth and they will often do that for their own purposes. That is where the relationship of government and media can be very dangerous.

A democracy only survives with an independent media. When the two are connected, we are no longer in a democracy. The government that controls the media is no longer a democratic government. It then begins to resemble a dictatorship.

I have to go to bed... sorry I contributed so much in this thread. But this very subject is something I feel very strongly about.

I don't know, Swedy, but sometimes people don't have an open or formed mind and believe the first thing they hear about something, especially if it's supported by their friends and family.

I'm too busy to find specific examples, but everything seems to be in a revisionist mode at this time: politics, religion, science, or even important crap, like movies and music!

This is brillint Keep It coming, So what do you Think Of Actual governmental portrayal Do you think it is Changing/ Has already changed and is it positive or negative?
DO my Examples make sense at all, Are they justifiable as a point?

Well, yeah, I guess. If you look at any large-scale disaster type movie (like your two examples), the government is most commonly portrayed as being either incredibly incompetent or incredibly insidious. Except the president. Usually he's pretty cool.

Swedish Chef: I have no idea why you have decided that the media is so perfect today because of the internet.

The 90s saw the rise of the "talking heads." Truth is lost. And how about FOX News? We have an actual tool of propaganda mascarading as a "news" station.

But I want to make the point here that I do not understand why you seem to think everything is rosy. It isn't. Just because there is all this information out there doesn't equate that the public is actually informed. And who has the time to look all around for the truth? People are busy. Those FOX viewers thought they were getting the news! They often were getting what the government and FOX was feeding them. Misconceptions.

And the government does have control over our media today. That's the point I'm trying to make. The combination of the mega media moguls along with government agenda has made a new world media that is quite a mess.

My friend Bruce Feiler had a thought that he said I could steal. It's this:

Everybody says competition, plus the Internet, has speeded up the news cycle. You used to watch the evening news once a day, or watch Meet the Press once a week. Now you look at Salon and complain that they've had the same article up for an hour and a half. In this environment, charges and countercharges fly faster. The conventional wisdom forms, and contrarian pundits react against it, and counter-contrarians weigh in, etc., all in a day, instead of over the course of a fortnight. Call this speeding up of the news cycle Trend 1.

People have also noted that the primary schedule is front-loaded and very compressed this year, with more than a dozen important primaries crammed into the month and a half between the Iowa caucuses and the big delegate payday on March 7. Call this campaign compression Trend 2. Generally, it has been a cause for lament--by underdog, low-budget candidates worrying they won't have time to get their messages out, or (lately) by establishment candidates worried they might be victims of an impetuous crush briefly entertained by the electorate but later regretted. Once a candidate gets momentum, the argument goes, he or she can't be stopped until it's too late.

Feiler's point is that we should put these two trends together--and that when we do, Trend 1 considerably softens the impact of Trend 2. We have a speeded up primary calendar, but we have a speeded up news cycle to match it--a news cycle that lets voters get the information they need to make their decisions in time to avoid the superficial rush to judgment that critics of the compressed primary schedule fear.

In particular, the concept underlying the rush-to-judgment fear--the old idea of "momentum"--obviously needs to be reassessed. After New Hampshire, commentators wondered how McCain's momentum could be stopped. (After all, he was on the cover of all the newsweeklies. Remember what that did for Gary Hart!) Well, McCain got a New Hampshire bounce, but it didn't last nearly long enough. He was beaten, rather decisively, two weeks later in South Carolina.

Then Bush had the momentum, which would surely sweep him to victory in Michigan's primary just three days later! Wrong again. Bush's Big Mo (and the impact of McCain's bitter, Nixonian concession) lasted about 24 hours, which was about 36 short of what Bush needed. In part that's because the speeded-up news cycle let McCain counter Bush's momentum (by using Bush's Bob Jones University appearance to rile Catholics) with record speed.

In short, political trends that used to last for weeks now last for hours. It's like watching the 1984 campaign on fast forward, except that the calendar still drags on into early June, meaning there's room for plot twists we could only dream of in 1984. To be commensurate with the speeded-up news cycle, the calendar would probably have to be compressed even more. Maybe we could have had the whole thing wrapped up by St. Patrick's Day!

Of course, voters may not entirely be keeping pace with Trends 1 and 2. Are they really as well-informed and conscientious as before--swooning, having second thoughts, rebelling, coming "back home," and so forth, just as they used to, only more rapidly? Can you keep dividing time into smaller and smaller bits without bumping up against the limitations of the human brain?

I would read James Gleick's book Faster and come up with some conclusions on that question. But I've got to get this up on the Web quickly before somebody beats me.

Let me be clear here. I have an agenda too. My agenda is truth. Opinions are all well and good, but one of the most difficult things to teach a "student" is the difference between "fact" and "opinion", and if anybody else tells me there's no way to tell the objective difference, I will call them either brainwashed or part of the "new, bad" way people believe it's OK to see things.

And Carl Bernstein is a human paraquat.

Yes, she came with a fair amount of baggage didn't she? Police investigation probe into allegations of attempts to use her political leverage to have her brother fired, pregnant teenage daughter, lobbying for earmark favors with a corrupt senator. etc etc.