news

Media must not be allowed to carry only bad news

A free press doesn't mean it's not a tame press.

All the bad publicity they brought down on us, yes, it came, and yes, it hurt us__or a day. That__ how long the dirt clung, maybe a bit less. Twitter, Facebook, TV and internet news__ou know how long a story stays up on a news website these days, unless it__ about some celebrity scandal? Guess. Go on__uess. Three hours. That__ how much we hurt. And then the world turned, and someone tweeted something new, and everyone retweeted it and moved on, and nothing fucking changes. That__ the world. That__ people power. That__ all it fucking means.

What the visual media could not carry into living rooms, the general public could not long remain exercised about. Statistically, a majority of the electorate could not or did not read complicated issues; no pictures, no news; no news, no event; no great sympathy on the part of the public nor sustained interest from the media: safe politics for the Company.

This is how it works now with the news: the story begins with a moral, then a narrative is fashioned to support it.

Does nothing new ever happen in this fucking country?

We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks-that's show business.

When the New York Times scratches its head, get ready for total baldness as you tear out your hair.

If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own.

We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

The mass communications that could enable our politics for good have instead turned it into a bland conglomeration of stinted opinion cloaked in the occasional media frenzy of blame or denial.

The ordinary public is a puppet of worthless news and media.

They segued into a more general piece about AIDS. As usual, they started out with footage of some kind of sweaty nightclub in the city with a bunch of gay men dancing around in stupid leather outfits. I couldn't even begin to imagine Finn dancing the night away like some kind of half-dressed cowboy. It would have been nice if for once they show some guys sitting in their living rooms drinking tea and talking about art or movies or something. If they showed that, then maybe people would say, "Oh, okay, that's not so strange.

A primary reason that people believe that life is getting worse is because our information about the problems of the world has steadily improved. If there is a battle today somewhere on the planet, we experience it almost as if we were there. DuringWorld War II, tens of thousands of people might perish in a battle, and if the public could see it at all it was in a grainy newsreel in a movie theater weeks later. During World War I a small elite could read about the progress of the conflict in the newspaper(without pictures). During the nineteenth century there was almost no access to news in a timely fashion for anyone.

You cannot have your news instantly and have it done well. You cannot have your news reduced to 140 characters or less without losing large parts of it. You cannot manipulate the news but not expect it to be manipulated against you. You cannot have your news for free; you can only obscure the costs. If as a culture we can learn this lesson, and if we can learn to love the hard work, we will save ourselves much trouble and collateral damage. We must remember: There is no easy way.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

Freedom of Speech has become Freedom of Stupidity on the internet. Some ignominious users should not be given a voice to comment at all.

You are where your brain is but not where a front-page headline is.