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Ellen Goodman's column discusses those who treat opinions as facts and why the MSM is far more trustworthy than your favorite website or blog:
Quote:
"Truthiness" has exploded alongside a new media that is decidedly not mainstream, that flows into as many rivulets as there are cable channels, points on the radio dial, and unvetted bloggers.
It's now possible to find a group somewhere in Googleland that will agree with anything. Any outlier can find a tribe and a "fact" — Global warming is a hoax! Evolution is a fraud! — that reinforces his own belief.
There is a sense that we don't need science or editing or fact-checking as long as we have crowd-sourcing. We don't have to build opinions on facts. We can build facts on opinions. Column: Facts losing | CJOnline.com
She doesn't address the MSM selectiveness on what topics to "provide" for us. ACORN? SEIU thuggery?
Questionable cabinet/czar appointments? 60 Minutes/Dan Rather's fake-but-real documents?
Of course many rigid ideologues insisit those examples were all fabricated or at best, not newsworthy.
Ms. Goodman is just trying to keep her rice bowl filled in a changing information environment and who can blame her.
Maybe her employer is threatening to move her to FL like the NYT did with many of it's employees.
The need to teach critical reading skill is higher than ever. We and our kids are bombarded with a mountain of advertizing BS masquerading as fact and many cannot separate the fact from the fiction.
She doesn't address the MSM selectiveness on what topics to "provide" for us. ACORN? SEIU thuggery? Questionable cabinet/czar appointments? 60 Minutes/Dan Rather's fake-but-real documents? Of course many rigid ideologues insisit those examples were all fabricated or at best, not newsworthy.
Hmmm. You seem to realize already the lack of any basis for those sorts of stories. Political propaganda deliberately manufactured from nothing but pure innuendo and speculation. But I don't see the article touting the MSM as any sort of bible of full and impartial coverage and analysis. But for all its many, many shortcomings, it does remain far above the standards of the internet, where any damn fool can say any damn fool thing at all. Medicine tastes bad. Sugar pills are easier to swallow. Easier to swallow seems to be the order of the day for way, way too many, a lot of whom in fact post on CD as if they had some actual clue as to what they were talking about...
Location: The Land Mass Between NOLA and Mobile, AL
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GregW
The need to teach critical reading skill is higher than ever. We and our kids are bombarded with a mountain of advertizing BS masquerading as fact and many cannot separate the fact from the fiction.
This really endangers our Republic.
I completely agree with this. The level of hypocrisy available astonishes me. If I were a comic, a satirist in particular, I would have bountiful material for any number of lifetimes.
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