media

There's a long-standing debate in the media biz over whether the news outlets should give the public what it wants, or what it needs. This debate presupposes that media execs actually know what it wants or needs. And that there actually is a unitary "public.

To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, __y restraining it to true facts & sound principles only._ Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.___etter to John Norvell, 14 June 1807[Works 10:417--18]

There hasn't been a scandal this big at the C.I.A. since (CLASSIFIED) committed (CENSORED) to (REDACTED).

On the day Princess Diana died, a group of students had gathered before a lecture, talking about what they had heard on the radio that morning, repeating __aparazzi_ over and over, all sounding knowing and cocksure, until, in a lull, Okoli Okafor quietly asked, __ut who exactly are the paparazzi? Are they motorcyclists?_ and instantly earned himself the nickname Okoli Paparazzi

Yet, the main issue is not the shaping of the minds by explicit messages in the media, but the absence of a given content in the media.

When every single piece of media you consume is time-shifted, does that mean it's actually you that's time-shifted?

Gain fame, and the paparazzi or media waits and watches for them to slip, just to shame their name.

The Media and the internet have taken up the responsibility of molding the young ones amongst us, leaving us to pursuethe careers we treasure.

I think that the media and its influencers send out a negative message to young girls these days, when it comes to the relationship between power and money. The message that young girls receive these days, from watching reality t.v. shows and such, is that the more money you spend, the more powerful you are. But I'd like young girls everywhere to know that it's not about the money that you spend; but what it's really about is the money that you have! Financial power lies in actually having money and your intelligence is determined by how you spend it. And it's not even about buying only what you need, because we should have the things that we want, too, not only the things that we need! But it's more about knowing the value of material things because without the knowledge of the value, things aren't going to make you happy, because there's always something more that you can buy! So you've got to know how to buy what's really going to make you happy and not just buy things for the sake of spending.

There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake.

All the media of modern consciousness__rom the printing press to radio and the movies__ere used just as readily by authoritarian reactionaries, and then by modern totalitarians, to reduce liberty and enforce conformity as they ever were by libertarians to expand it.

The mainstream media act just like in the classic studies of herd animals; at the exact instant more than half of the herd makes a move to bolt, they all move.

The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no 'normal' because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher__ Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over...We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It's worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy. A year later there is a new political ring or a change in the paper's ownership, consequence: more confusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, their tempering, their distillation, the reaction against them-

They were interchangeable tools, and the catchy phrases continued without abatement.

Those who make objectivity a religion are liars. they are scared of human pain. They dont want to be objective, it's a lie: they want to be objects, so as not to suffer.

Journalism is not a precise science, it's a crude art

When you are the only laowai in a village of 10,000 Chinese martial artists and you've sat through several dozen films where a white man shouts, "You Chinese dog," before getting his ass kicked, it starts to irritate you. We all need role models.