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  1. #1
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    Hardening attitudes against media

    ‘Sobering’ report shows hardening attitudes against media
    By DAVID BAUDER
    today

    NEW YORK (AP) — The distrust many Americans feel toward the news media, caught up like much of the nation’s problems in the partisan divide, only seems to be getting worse.

    That was the conclusion of a “sobering” study of attitudes toward the press conducted by Knight Foundation and Gallup and released Tuesday.

    Nearly half of all Americans describe the news media as “very biased,” the survey found.

    “That’s a bad thing for democracy,” said John Sands, director of learning and impact at the Knight Foundation. “Our concern is that when half of Americans have some sort of doubt about the veracity of the news they consume, it’s going to be impossible for our democracy to function.”

    The study was conducted before the coronavirus lockdown and nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd.

    Eight percent of respondents — the preponderance of them politically conservative — think that news media that they distrust are trying to ruin the country.

    The study found that 71% of Republicans have a “very” or “somewhat” unfavorable opinion of the news media, while 22% of Democrats feel the same way. Switch it around, and 54% of Democrats have a very favorable view of the media, and only 13% of Republicans feel the same way.

    That divide has been documented before but only seems to be deepening, particularly among conservatives, Sands said.

    “We’re starting to see more retrenchment among those who have already expressed deep concerns,” he said. “Moving the dial on these attitudes becomes more and more difficult for media organizations.”

    The study doesn’t attempt to assign blame for these attitudes. President Donald Trump has constantly labeled journalism he doesn’t like “fake news.” Cable news networks Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNN feature evening opinion shows that are an increasingly popular pasttime for viewers.

    Who is to blame for the nation’s political divide? Well, 48% of those questioned says the media bears a great deal of the responsibility.

    The study found 73% of Americans feel that too much bias in news reports is a major problem, up from 65% two years ago.

    Those surveyed also didn’t believe much in honest mistakes. When there were inaccuracies in articles, 54% of Americans said they believed reporters misrepresented facts, while 28% said reporters were making things up in their entirety.

    The picture isn’t much prettier when you take a step back. Knight and Gallup said 41% of Americans have a great deal of confidence in the ability of the media to report the news fairly, down from 55% in a similar survey in 1999.

    Eight in 10 Americans are calling for more diversity in news. Democrats and Black people are more likely to be referring to racial and ethnic diversity; while Republicans and white people prioritize diversity in political views.

    In a clear message to Facebook and Twitter, nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said social media companies have to work harder to remove hateful language and inaccuracies from their platforms.

    Knight and Gallup conducted a random sample of 20,046 American adults between Nov. 8, 2019 and Feb. 16, 2020, and claimed a margin of error of plus or minus 1%.

    '''Sobering''' report shows hardening attitudes against media

  2. #2
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    Like, I wonder why? Brexit, Trump, the Liberal re-election in Oz, Syria, Crimea- they have been demonstrated wrong on so many points, what credibility do they have left?

  3. #3
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Like, I wonder why? Brexit, Trump, the Liberal re-election in Oz, Syria, Crimea- they have been demonstrated wrong on so many points, what credibility do they have left?
    It's a US study about the US and...Trump.

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    Sure, and yeh... Trump. But you do realise the same is being mirrored in other western societies too? Our media is increasingly being seen as out of touch- part dutiful propagandist, part latte' liberal bubble. And wrong.

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    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Our media is increasingly being seen as out of touch- part dutiful propagandist, part latte' liberal bubble..
    ...part misleading right whingers with a dictatorial streak.

    And wrong.
    Yes, not least in underestimating the stupidity of vast swathes of voters. And journos were supposed to be hard bitten cynics...

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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    But you do realise the same is being mirrored in other western societies too? Our media is increasingly being seen as out of touch- part dutiful propagandist, part latte' liberal bubble. And wrong.
    I'd disagree with your en gros condemnation. There are some outlets which are clearly based and full of shit an others which are more believable, albeit with an inevitable bent.

    But yes, trust in the 'media' has suffered greatly since the orange afterbirth started pilloring them- but that is still mainly in the US and let's ot talk about Pravda/RT and the less independent Chinese outlets which are used here

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    Very little to do with Trump; he merely recognised and took advantage of a trend.

    The traditional media is struggling to compete with social media. While traditional media tries to tell people what to think, the social media echo chamber makes people feel more comfortable by reinforcing what they already believe to be true.
    Blessed are the piss takers, for they shall inherit the mirth.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Warwick View Post
    While traditional media tries to tell people what to think
    I'd disagree with that as well . . . good media outlets report as objectively as possible . . . and there are enough of them around. If they are biased to a certain extent one can make allowances for it.

    I don't see the world as black and white (yes, a print media pun), in this case all black.

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    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Warwick View Post
    Very little to do with Trump; he merely recognised and took advantage of a trend.

    The traditional media is struggling to compete with social media. While traditional media tries to tell people what to think, the social media echo chamber makes people feel more comfortable by reinforcing what they already believe to be true.
    People tend to seek out things that confirm their beliefs, no matter how absurd.

    It is a cognitive bias known as "Confirmation Bias" and our resident whackjobs often demonstrate it when they post random blogs from idiots who propose 5G causing Covid, fake planes hit the twin towers, and a variety of other nonsensical fairy stories.

    These whackjobs existed before, but fortunately didn't have much of an audience. Now fellow whackjobs can spread their rubbish in a variety of fora.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Warwick View Post
    traditional media tries to tell people what to think
    Wondering why they do it? Aren't they free? Or do they better choose "truth over facts"? Somebody behind it?
    (Many questions...But surely our experts on posts of others will know the answers...)

  11. #11
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    If a journalist reports something incorrectly there's an obligatory retraction and / or correction. If they report something intentionally incorrectly then they lose their jobs. Media bias -- left and right -- exists but unless you're abdicating responsibility to do your own thinking and fact-checking then it doesn't matter (and nor should you be allowed to use scissors or glue unsupervised if that is the case).

    So why would anyone listen to those who have vested interests in things not being reported and discrediting those that have been about the media being 'Fake News' etc.

  12. #12
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Warwick View Post
    Very little to do with Trump; he merely recognised and took advantage of a trend.
    That would be more believable if the situation hadn't worsened exponentially since he was at the helm.

    And if he didn't constantly stoke the fires.

    Oh, and if he hadn't actually invented much of the lexicon involved to describe it.

    In fact, since you say that he recognised it and took advantage of it, then why on earth wouldn't the most powerful man on the planet exacerbate it?

    Because he's too much of a gentleman?

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by cyrille View Post
    That would be more believable if the situation hadn't worsened exponentially since he was at the helm.
    Some 20 years ago - during GWB - hadn't the MSM been so perfectly unbiased and independent, no lies helping the govt fair agenda for wars preparation?

  14. #14
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    Caitlin Johnstone: When corporate power is your real government, corporate media is state media
    3 Aug, 2020

    In the American corporatist system, where wealthy elites control the elected government through lobbyists, corporate media is state media, promoting narratives that help maintain the corporate-approved status quo.

    The New York Times published an astonishingly horrible article the other day titled “Latin America Is Facing a ‘Decline of Democracy’ Under the Pandemic” accusing governments like Venezuela and Nicaragua of exploiting Covid-19 to quash opposition and oppress democracy.

    The article sources its jarringly propagandistic claims in multiple US government-funded narrative management operations like the Wilson Center and the National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored Freedom House, the extensively plutocrat-funded Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the United States Naval Academy.

    The crown jewel of this piece of State Department stenography reads as follows:

    “Adding to these challenges, democracy in Latin America has also lost a champion in the United States, which had played an important role in promoting democracy after the end of the Cold War by financing good governance programs and calling out authoritarian abuses.”
    Whoa, nelly.

    The fact that America’s most widely regarded newspaper feels perfectly comfortable making such a spectacularly in-your-face lie on behalf of the US government tells you everything you need to know about what the mass media in America really are and what they do.

    The United States has never at any time been a champion of democracy in Latin America, before or since the Cold War. It has intervened hundreds of times in the continent’s affairs throughout history, with everything from murderous corporate colonialism to deadly CIA regime-change operations to overt military invasions. It is currently trying to orchestrate a coup in Venezuela after failing to stage one during the Bush administration, it’s pushing regime change in Nicaragua, and The New York Times itself admitted this year that it was wrong to promote the false US government narrative of electoral shenanigans in Bolivia’s presidential race last year, a narrative which facilitated a bloody fascist coup.

    This is propaganda. There is no other word for it. And yet the only time Western politicians and news reporters use that word is to talk about nations like Russia and China.

    Why is propaganda used in an ostensibly free democracy with an ostensibly free media? Why are its news media outlets so consistently in alignment with every foreign policy objective of US government agencies, no matter how destructive and inexcusable? If the media and the government are two separate institutions, why do they so consistently function as though they are not separate?

    Well, that’s easy. It’s because they aren’t separate. The only thing keeping this from being seen is the fact that America’s real government isn’t located where people think it is.

    In a corporatist system of government, where no hard lines are drawn between corporate/financial power and state power, corporate media is state media. Since bribery is legal in the US political system in the form of corporate lobbying and campaign donations, America’s elected government is controlled by wealthy elites who have money to burn and who benefit from maintaining a specific status quo arrangement.

    The fact that this same plutocratic class also owns America’s media, which is now so consolidated that it’s almost entirely run by just six corporations, means that the people who run the government also run the media. This allows America’s true rulers to set up a system which promotes narratives that are favorable to their desired status quo.

    Which means that the US has state propaganda. They just don’t call it that themselves.

    Strip away the phony two-handed sock puppet show of US electoral politics and look at how power actually moves in that country, and you just see one more tyrannical regime which propagandizes its citizens, brutally cracks down on protesters, deliberately keeps its populace impoverished so they don’t get powerful enough to change things, and attacks any nation which dares to disobey its dictates.

    Beneath the thin layer of narrative overlay about freedom and democracy, the US is just one more despotic, bloodthirsty empire. It’s no better than any of the other despotic, bloodthirsty empires throughout history. It just has good PR.

    Plutocrats not only exert control over America’s media and politics, they also form alliances with the secretive government agencies whose operators remain amid the comings and goings of the official elected government. We see examples of this in the way new-money tech plutocrats like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and Pierre Omidyar have direct relationships with the CIA and its proxies.

    We also see it in the sexual blackmail operation which was facilitated by the late Jeffrey Epstein in connection with billionaire Leslie Wexner and Israeli intelligence, along with potentially the FBI and/or other US intelligence agencies. Today the internet is abuzz as newly unsealed court documents relating to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell reveal witness testimony regarding underage sex trafficking, with such high-profile names appearing in the documents as Alan Dershowitz, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew.

    The Overton window of acceptable political discourse has been shrunk into such a narrow spectrum of debate that talking about even well-known and extensively documented facts involving the real nature of America’s government and media will get you laughingly dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, which is itself a symptom of tight narrative control by a ruling class which much prefers Americans thinking they live in a free democracy whose government they control with their votes.

    In the old days you used to be able to tell who your rulers were because they’d sit on thrones and wear golden crowns and make you bow before them. Human consciousness eventually evolved beyond the acceptability of such brazen indignities, so it became necessary for rulers to take on more of a background role while the citizenry clap and cheer for the illusory puppet show of electoral politics.

    But the kings are still among us, just as cruel and tyrannical as ever. They’ve just figured out how to mask their tyranny behind the facade of freedom.

    But 2020 has been a year of revelations, a trend which seems likely to continue accelerating. Truth cannot stay hidden forever.

    Caitlin Johnstone: When corporate power is your real government, corporate media is state media — RT Op-ed

  15. #15
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    Ummm.....

    This is a Klondye thread...

    ... Please do not be fooled.

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    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bsnub View Post
    Ummm.....

    This is a Klondye thread...

    ... Please do not be fooled.
    Well of course klondyke would like the fucking nonsense he posts to be taken seriously, but one way of doing that is to try and drag down peoples's perceptions of respectable media to the level of shit like RT.

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    Quote Originally Posted by bsnub View Post
    Ummm.....

    This is a Klondye thread...

    ... Please do not be fooled.
    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    Well of course klondyke would like the fucking nonsense he posts to be taken seriously, but one way of doing that is to try and drag down peoples's perceptions of respectable media to the level of shit like RT.
    As usually, kill the messenger. Anything to the matter? What about e.g. the 1st sentence: is it a lie?
    In the American corporatist system, where wealthy elites control the elected government through lobbyists, corporate media is state media, promoting narratives that help maintain the corporate-approved status quo.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    As usually, kill the messenger.
    Nah, just expose him for the bullshit minger that he is . . . umm . . . you are

  19. #19
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    One rule that I use is whether their is criticism of both sides. E.G. How many times does RT criticises Putin, CGTN Xi, etc etc. There appears to be so much polarisation of news. Even in Oz now you have the ABC which champions left issues/politics and Skynews that champions right issues/politics. There seems to be little room for the middle ground in politics anymore.

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    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hugh Cow View Post
    One rule that I use is whether their is criticism of both sides. E.G. How many times does RT criticises Putin, CGTN Xi, etc etc. There appears to be so much polarisation of news. Even in Oz now you have the ABC which champions left issues/politics and Skynews that champions right issues/politics. There seems to be little room for the middle ground in politics anymore.
    Anything Murdoch owns is going to be right wing, it's how he makes money.

    Anything mainstream that is consistently to the left is probably following a similar business model, e.g. MSNBC.

    Between the two of them you can get both sides of the coin and use other sources to fill in the gaps.

    Although the lengths some of them go to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear is incredible.

    I am often reminded of the old tale:

    "A cub reporter is walking through a Liverpool park when he sees a dog attacking a young child. A man races up and beats the dog off, killing it.

    The reporter says "Where are you from sir?". "Sefton Park" says the man.

    The reporter scribbles "Liverpool Hero saves child from savage dog".

    The man says "Hold on mate, I am an Everton fan".

    The reporter crosses out his headline and writes "Everton fan brutally murders family pet"."

  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hugh Cow View Post
    How many times does RT criticises Putin, CGTN Xi, etc etc.
    Perhaps you should read the RT in order to know whether they criticise Putin, CGTN Xi, etc, etc. or they do not...

    Anyway, it seems there are not so many issues to be criticised as are the issue somewhere else. And if you read and listen what Putin, etc says, I wonder whether you would find such lies and blames we are daily hearing somewhere else... The Western MSM will tell to the world immediately if there is anything to criticise, won't they?

    But who does not like to see, to hear... better "to choose truth over facts"...

  22. #22
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    Perhaps you should read the RT in order to know whether they criticise Putin
    Seriously?



    Maybe I'll look at peanuts afterwards to see if it features a small dog and a fookin bald kid.
    Last edited by cyrille; 07-08-2020 at 01:49 PM.

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    How Covid-19 Signals the End of the American Era - Rolling Stone

    Odious as he may be, Trump is less the cause of America’s decline than a product of its descent. As they stare into the mirror and perceive only the myth of their exceptionalism, Americans remain almost bizarrely incapable of seeing what has actually become of their country. The republic that defined the free flow of information as the life blood of democracy, today ranks 45th among nations when it comes to press freedom. In a land that once welcomed the huddled masses of the world, more people today favor building a wall along the southern border than supporting health care and protection for the undocumented mothers and children arriving in desperation at its doors. In a complete abandonment of the collective good, U.S. laws define freedom as an individual’s inalienable right to own a personal arsenal of weaponry, a natural entitlement that trumps even the safety of children; in the past decade alone 346 American students and teachers have been shot on school grounds.
    The American cult of the individual denies not just community but the very idea of society. No one owes anything to anyone. All must be prepared to fight for everything: education, shelter, food, medical care. What every prosperous and successful democracy deems to be fundamental rights — universal health care, equal access to quality public education, a social safety net for the weak, elderly, and infirmed — America dismisses as socialist indulgences, as if so many signs of weakness.

    How can the rest of the world expect America to lead on global threats — climate change, the extinction crisis, pandemics — when the country no longer has a sense of benign purpose, or collective well-being, even within its own national community? Flag-wrapped patriotism is no substitute for compassion; anger and hostility no match for love.
    (cannot find it on RT...)

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    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    Perhaps you should read the RT in order to know whether they criticise Putin
    Why don't you post these Pravda/RT attacks on Putin like everyone here posts anti-Trump/Johnson etc... articles from many sources, including Pravda/RT

    Hard-hitting stuff . . .



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