What is happening to the news? (1 Viewer)

[PaulJR]

For instance:

Front page of the Independent Online:

1) 'Darling is running out of options' - are we really surprised? Don't we all already know that changing interest rates is really the tail wagging the dog!

And who really cares about any of this....

2) 'Soho - Why sex trade florishes...'
3) Nicole Kidman has been through a lot
and so on....these are top articles!!!!

So is the quality of news reporting declining? Is this caused by a deterioration in our society, political correctness, bias, manipulation or what? Where is it possible these days to find a excellent source of news when you feel you want to grasp a better understanding of something....apart from these forums of course

 

[marleymanner1]

It's whatever sells the papers Paul. Sorry. People love negativity. It flourishes. Get used to it my good friend. Sucks, eh?

 

[PaulJR]

I think it works both ways, people love to read crap, but also the newspapers / media also play a part in our direction. They tell us what it is we want to know about.

 

[Steve R.]

Regretfully the news is especially deplorable when it comes to technology. Seems that the newspapers simply reprint the companies press release. So all we ever hear about are all the glowing "positives" but the "negatives" are seldom disclosed.

Recently, there was a review in a newspaper of this "nifty" device that would act as a charger for a variety of portable electronics. Sounds fairly innocuous. While the device may perform as advertised the reviewer, to me, missed the significance of his own story, why doesn't the industry provide a universal plug? Clearly each company wants a proprietary plug so that you would have to pay $10 for a $1 device. Had the reporter been thinking, the article could have spent a few sentences lambasting the industry for this unjust practice. We need to have reporters who will do some real thinking on what they are reporting on.

 

[Rabbie]

Most reporters don't have a science background and don't want to know so it's much easier just to print the release from the company.

 

[Rich]

Most reporters don't have a science background

Or common sense

 

[David Eagar]

Or common sense

If it was common, everybody would have it!!

 

[Steve R.]

Well you would expect magazines devoted tp personal computers, such as PC World to do some independent testing and thinking. Here is an article related to the release of Spore: Spore, The Year's Most Anticipated PC Game.

From the team headed by Will Wright, creators of The Sims, comes Maxis's next wild burst of imagination, Spore. It's a game, it's a toy, and it's the most intriguing computer gaming experience to come along in years. Matt Peckham, PC World

The article also references an interview with Lucy Bradshaw, the game's executive producer. In terms of a quick read, I did not see any references to anything that would disclose a downside to the consumer. I need to make a bit of a retraction. PC World did have a followup article: Casual Friday: Why Spore Won't Work

Actually, I didn't even know about Spore till I ran across the following article on TechDirt: EA Admits That You Can Only Have One Spore Player Per Install. Naturally this piqued my interest.

TechDirt wrote

Things aren't getting much better for EA since critics of its overly annoying DRM on the new video game Spore expressed their displeasure in droves on the Amazon page for the game. Now, Consumerist alerts us to another, related, issue that is pissing off many of those who did buy the game: you can only have one player account at a time. That means that if you live in a multi-person household, and multiple people would like to play the game themselves... EA says you need to pay up for another $50 license. Of course, if the game didn't have DRM that wouldn't be a problem.

Here is a listing of TechDirt articles on Spore. So here we have a magazine that in theory serves its subscribers, but in reality is a shill for its advertisers. I guess that is not really much of a surprise. So that is the state of what is happening in the news.

 

[MarkK]

Follow the money. News is a product sold for profit and is therefore very carefully and explicitly manufactured to please you. The more pleased you are the more you consume, and the more you consume the more likely that large corporations will buy advertising with the successful news agancy.

It is suicidal for a news agency to be critical of you or to be critical of corporations.

As a result, any message in our society that receives significant promotion is a message fundamentally engineered to produce a payoff for the messenger.

 

[statsman]

Makes you wonder about the interest level of the average reader.

They care more about who Nicole Kidman is sleeping with than whether they'll have a job in the New Year.

BTW - the tabloids over here are really overloading on Jennifer Aniston. She was on the cover of all of them when I went through the supermarket checkout this week. Has she actually appeared in anything since "Friends" went of the air? It's not as if blonde actresses are an endangered species.

 

[David Eagar]

Makes you wonder about the interest level of the average reader.

They care more about who Nicole Kidman is sleeping with than whether they'll have a job in the New Year.

BTW - the tabloids over here are really overloading on Jennifer Aniston. She was on the cover of all of them when I went through the supermarket checkout this week. Has she actually appeared in anything since "Friends" went of the air? It's not as if blonde actresses are an endangered species.

Maybe because of this type of pap, newspaper sales around the world are going down

 

[Banana]

This is what made Mad magazine great back then. They were truly free to skewer anyone because they had no advertisements (any ads inside it were fake and spoof of the real thing).

If people actually wanted real and hard news they would have to be prepared to pay more for it, I think. People has come to expect news to be dozen a nickel and would spur $3 newspaper in favor of a quarter newspaper which would give the broad overview.

There's an alternative, though: Watch Colbert instead of 9 o'clock News. He's likely to be more informative than those meatheads running the news.

 

[Steve R.]

Another interpretation of what is happening in the news:

Times Co. to Borrow Against Building

Tribune Co. Could Be Flirting With Bankruptcy

PC Magazine, a Flagship for Ziff Davis, Will Cease Printing a Paper Version

Mourning Old Media’s Decline

 

[dkinley]

In terms of ad revenue, a news company (video, print) will not run negative stories in fear of that company pulling advertising or will prevent future sales of advertising with that company (commercials, ads).

This is especially prevalent since the internet has picked up and companies starting moving advertising dollars from the video/print world to on-line media. The companies will do advertising with a website that does negative reporting because in the matter of an hour the story will be buried under 16 billion reams of newer stories whereas on TV, it will remain their top story because it takes too long (and $$$) to prepare a new one (b-reel footage, etc).

This is why if they run negative or feature stories on smaller companies and/or celebreties there is no lash-back in terms of advertising revenue.

-dK

 

[Fifty2One]

Bad news makes good news and controversial news make great news. It is sad when a head line like this

"A great social evening":
More than 200 enjoy lively seniors gala in Vankleek Hill
You can't get a better evening's entertainment for seven dollars. That's what people were saying after the sixth annual Seniors Gala held in Vankleek Hill on November 25.

is not at the top of the page of the Review, heck, you would hardly notice the announcement that Hans Lindenmann is raising Wild Boars and European Red Deer

 

[dan-cat]

There's an alternative, though: Watch Colbert instead of 9 o'clock News. He's likely to be more informative than those meatheads running the news.

Amen to that. Funny as hell too.