Jon Stewart Tears Down That Fox News Wall (With Some Jabs At The White House)
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1
And significantly more worthwhile than all the MSM navel-gazing and "conventional wisdom" on the issue.
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I wonder if it has ever occured to the DNC to hire the Daily Show/Colbert Report writers to come up with some commericial spots for them. Seriously.
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Wtf is not "compelling" about what Media Matters does? Is it the whole idea of "research"? Since you are a journalist that often fails in primary-level research on the topics you cover, that would be my guess.
And why even make a comparison? Media Matters does research into the news media. The Daily Show is a comedy and interview program. I wouldn't be surprised if you asked a Daily Show writer and they admitted to using the research provided by MM in producing their material.-
3.1
pafro, maybe the answer is in this link-
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200809180019?show=1 -
3.2
Paul, the information at that link provides compelling evidence that in a country with 10% unemployment, there are still far too few journalists that pay the price for inept and shoddy work by losing their jobs.
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Somewhere, Jake Tapper sheds a tear for his poor, poor sister organization.
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5
This would be a wake up call if the media were just asleep. But we're talking zombies at this point and I don't know if there's a cure for that. BTW what would you call the media's equivalent of the thin blue line, that keeps us from investigating rogue cops? Being that the media doesn't have an IA department, what should be done about a media outlet that is deliberately spewing propaganda on same kind of level we saw in Europe when a brainwashed Germany was convinced they were under threat by a small segment of their population? Words have power and media's denial of the corrosive impact of fox's propaganda is ludicrous.
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5.1
I'm willing to coin the term "The thin yellow line" for the cause.
-MBirchmeier
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5.2
How about 'The thin yellow stream' instead? Too on the nose?
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6
In satire, the truth shall be told! The joke is really Obama and his "war" with Fox.
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The other joke is Dunn, the WH "Communication" Director and how she "wags" her tongue like a good lap dog when she speaks. Or is she barking?
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Who cares.
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When the MSM realizes that the attacks by the Obama Administration on Fox is simply an attempt to squash the negative press that Obama is getting at this critical time in his Presidency, as an attack on our freedom, then and only then will the American public fully understand the threat that is currently in the WH.
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I am for one glad that the MSM is finally coming to their senses and seeing Obama and his Chicago thugs for what they truly are, THUGS.
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Chicago politics. Corruption at its finest!!-
6.1
Shorter rusty: "Where's that forest? All these trees are in the way!"
You can get a great price on a #10 can of perspective today at Costco, amigo.
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6.2
rusty,
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Thanks for answering my queries in the thread from yesterday. We disagree (heartily) on the misadventure in Iraq and on our future in Afghanistan.
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Suffice it to say, your argument for staying in Iraq ("So they didn't die in vain") is different from the argument you made for staying in Iraq on Wednesday when you claimed we needed to stay to protect our country from attack. And staying in Iraq because thousands of our forces have died there is not a rational reason for continuing to flush blood and treasure down that sewer that will, ultimately, face a civil war.
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As for the old saw of "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here," I think you are dead wrong on Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is in Pakistan and many other places around the globe, but not in Afghanistan. I know you and your fellow Republicans would love for al Qaeda to be a nation-state so we could focus our military might on a place, but that is simply not what al Qaeda is nor is it how they operate.
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alQaeda is a far-flung, loosely-organized enterprise that funds activities all over the world. I wish it were as simple to "defeat" them as adding another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, but the facts don't support such a proposition.
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And your Vietnam analogy doesn't hold up. Throwing more forces in the bottomless pit that is Afghanistan is the better analogy to Vietnam. As you note, we had 500,000+ troops in Vietnam at its peak. And what did we gain from that huge amount of force? Afghanistan -- with its tribal influences -- is even more unmanageable than Vietnam. We are trying to force a central government on a country that has never functioned under an actual, functioning central government.
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Why we think we can force one upon the many tribes is the really ignorant part of our policy. -
6.3
Again, you simply assume there will be a "civil war" in Iraq, palininatowel. Faith in what our hard working and sacrificing service men and women have done, simply I believe in them that they are doing the job necessary so that a "civil war" will not occur. But, even in America, I cannot say you will never see a civil war. It could happen anywhere in the world given the right circumstances.
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With that said, to further clarify, we now have a base of operation in Iraq, located in the middle east that we did not have in the past. Yes a base of operation that if the terrorists choose to attack us again, we can bring the full force and brunt of our great military down upon them. Iraq is that base of operation. Hopefully our new friends and allies, the Iraqi's will appreciate what we have done for them, and they will be on our side should the time come when the jihadist declare war on all things non-muslim.
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Afghanistan is a much different senario. I again will pass to someone like McChrystal, Obama's hand-picked General on the ground. McChrystal who at one point in time was purely an insurgency strategist, but now has switched to believeing in the Patreus doctrine of Nation buidling. We can all debate the good and bad about nation building, but if I have a vote on how my tax dollars are spent, I choose to set up a government in the area of the world that has an infestation of al Qaeda terrorists to give those people the support needed to crush the Taliban and al Qaeda. Not putting the entire full force of our Military in place only leads me to believe then we should simply vacate Afghanistan before we incur any further loss, in either treasure or lives.
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And, if you believe that al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan or at least right on the border of Afghanistan / Pakistan, then I have a few 1,000 acres of swampland for you to take off my hands. You simply do not know what you are talking about making a statement like that.
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Obama I believe will hedge. He will only put 1/2 of the needed troops on the ground so that he doesn't look like a whimp, but to also placate the left and simply put in half as much. It is suicide for our troops, and absolutely nothing will be gained.
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So, put the troops in, ALL of the troops or get the hell out of that God forsaken place. If I had the choice to make, I would drop so many bombs on the place that nothing would survive, and then leave. I would make "shock and awe" look like a tea party with Alice in Wonderland. If you do not rid the place of all the rats, they will simply come back and multiply enforce.
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7
Michael Scherer:
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The one essential thing that Stewart comes right up to the edge of saying is this:
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The news media's distinction between the truth standards applied to "opinion" and those applied to "reporting" overwhelmingly fail the public in practice.
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This method catastrophically degrades your product in two key ways:
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1) Opinion columns and columnists can endlessly lie, speculate, mislead, and be factually wrong without acknowledgment or sanction, often in the service of un-labeled or un-clearly labeled agendas...including the media outlet's specifically, or the profession's generally, as well as partisan or ideological
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2) Reporters often omit, de-emphasize, needlessly qualify or otherwise render oblique factual reporting that resembles political, activist or partisan positions in order to advertise this arbitrary distinction
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The only people who genuinely accept the premise --your profession's made up frame-- that there is some Aristotelian, taxonomic wall in practical reality between "opinion" and "news" are those whose job it is to deal with the absurd reality of your profession's dictates. That would be either you (the press corps) or the people who are getting you to write or not write about them in various ways...Nobody else does.
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When people say "Well, the problem is that there's too much opinion in the news.", they're either repeating something that they've read or been told on the teevee that they think explains what they intuitively know ("I can't trust these jokers to tell the truth, no matter how much they look like reporters!"). That, or they do so because working closely with the press corps forces them to say things that all parties know are merely theoretical premises, but on which credibility with reporters and editors hangs.
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When Fox News people say "The American people aren't so dumb as to mistake the opinion section for the new section", they are telling the truth, but they are omitting another, more important truth: the American people aren't so dumb as to not know that both news and opinion sections frequently don't tell the whole truth, and in different ways.
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Try to explain to a kid sometime that, because there is a difference between subjective interpretation of an event, and empirical measurement of an event, it therefore follows that people should be allowed to lie or be wrong on the facts in opinion columns.
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Try to tell that kid that when the columnist said"It felt like the film was three hours long! I sat there for what seemed like forever! I don't see how anyone can stand to be treated like this. Do not go see this film, unless you like wasting the precious hours of your life."
over and over again for eight weeks until the film's run was over in disgrace, there was no necessity for the publisher to insist that the columnist include the fact that the film in question was actually sixty-eight minutes in length --as had been reported elsewhere in the publication.
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Until your profession's bosses comes to terms with the simple fact that their credibility goes even further down the toilet every time they let someone like Maureen Dowd make up things that she imagines politicians are feeling or thinking, and write about it as if those were indeed the facts, news consumers will become more and more alienated, and seek "the truth" --those who acknowledge that these things go on in reality-- instead of news. Every time George Will in an "opinion" piece denying the nature of climate change is allowed to insist that his citation of a since-correct piece on sea ice levels --clearly described by the research center cited as a false characterization of their data-- is merely an "interpretation" given license by his location on the editorial page, the press corps becomes more useless.
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Credibility comes from the consistent application of standards of quality --the practical, everyday application of which result in truthfully informed news users -- both to news and analysis and opinion. That credibility is in steep, perhaps irrecoverable decline.
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If this theoretical (dare I say ideological) distinction your profession makes between "opinion" and "news" weren't absurdly arbitrary, and weren't such a piss-poor failure in practice, don't you think that the situation vis-a-vis plummeting levels of trust between the press corps and its presumptive audience would be, you know, different, Michael Scherer?-
7.1
Stuart: the canard is that there is a "firewall" between the editorial pages and the news section. WSJ has found defenders using this line. Why should a reader spend ten minutes telling himself " Oh I know Krauthammar is a one tone opinionator and I must treat him differently from Dan Balz." . What I see in the line up of op-eds in the Post is that a group of commenters get way with baldfaced lying by calling their stuff opinion - one of the most devalued word in our language. There was a time when the word "opinion" was taken seriously.
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7.2
Let's face it what is at the heart of the problem in journalism is that, and I use this term guardedly, journalists are not interested in reporting the story, they want to be the story. Opinions and gottcha reporters have flourished. And quite frankly, journalists on both sides have no idea what the meaning of unbiased is.
What should be of real concern to all journalists is this current WH attempt to silence, isolate and damage anyone, not just Fox News, who disagrees with them. No good will come of this.
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7.3
bitterpill8:
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Even if there was some sort of mythical firewall between news and opinion in existence, it still doesn't change the basic equation:
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The same standards of value must be applied to the editorial page as to the front page. If, at the end of the day, opinion pieces mislead or misinform, then it's not simply the cost of allowing rhetoric its place in our discourse.
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Simply drawing an imaginary line down the middle of this profession between reporting what is known, and telling stories hasn't solved any problems for anybody except a news media that for decades felt like it could prance around pretending that there aren't any.
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...but not anymore. -
7.4
"The news media's distinction between the truth standards applied to "opinion" and those applied to "reporting" overwhelmingly fail the public in practice."
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Opinions are simply that, my intrepretation of the information as it is given to me by any source. Opinions also are made up of questions as well. Questions that hopefully will bring out the truth that you so desparately seek, or elicit more investigation into the matter to seek out the truth. Reporting usually involves investigation.
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Things which can not be empirically proven, generally will have two sides. One pro, and one con.
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You cite climate change. Even this subject can be debated, and opinions abound as to the validity of climate change, and is it man-made or simply change which has gone on for millions and millions of years.
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While certain peices of evidence point towards climate change as being possible, there is also sufficient evidence to prove the opposite. One then has to make up their mind as to what they believe MIGHT be happening. Most of the current theories, and that is all it is a theory, are produced from computer models. Do you believe everything your computer tells you stuart? Do you think everything that comes off of your computer is the truth?
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We can accept that most things from a computer are objectionable and without predjudice. However, a computer model is simply only as good as the individual who creates the computer model, and the infomation which is put into the model. I can skew any result by adding or eliminating information.
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I found this recent study that uses actual data for the past 20 years interesting.
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http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2009m8d18-Carbon-Dioxide-irrelevant-in-climate-debate-says-MIT-Scientist
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Yes that's right ladies and gentlemen, carbon dioxide has absolutely no effect on Global Warming, Climate Change or any of the other fear tactics the Environmentalist are attempting to rape us of our tax dollars. Nothing, it is simply nature at it finest.
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It is a man-made fact however that people like Al Gore have used inconvenient truths (opinions) to scare people into believing this bunk. It is all about money. Period. How can I make this into an issue that will make me money. That is all it is.
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Now do I believe it is prudent for us to be conservationists? Absolutely yes. Do I separate out my garbage and recycle? Absolutely yes. Do I even drive a hybrid? Absolutely yes.
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But, I do it more for the savings that I get, rather than from "saving the planet".
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So in conclusion, stuart. Al Gore's "inconvenient truths" are really just opinions. You stuart, have the choice to believe them as truth or fiction. It is my opinion that good 'ol Al, is simply full of hot air and methane gas. -
7.5
rusty
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Who did the peer review of the study?.
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Do you agree that there was a mistake in a calculation?
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Lindzen did a correlation between changes in outbound radiation against natural changes in sea-surface temperature. He found that radiation goes up at about 4 W/m^2 per increase in sea surface temperature, which is exactly what we would expect if Earth shows NO short-term climate feedback. Still, somehow Lindzen claims the opposite. The mistake that Lindzen can be traced back to one mistake in the formula he uses for short-wave radiation feedback. After correcting this error, the conclusions change dramatically :
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The data from the Lindzen and Choi paper shows only that there is no significant climate feedback on the short term, and that this is in line with model predictions.
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http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2009m8d18-Carbon-Dioxide-irrelevant-in-climate-debate-says-MIT-Scientist
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Jon Stewart is hilarious and he really knows how to drive home a point when he needs to. The stoner, young, college crowd that watches him just start making sense of politics at this age and Jon does a great job of influencing and exposing the hypocrisy in politics.
therightchoicepolitics.com
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9
You DO realize, MS, that the point between the two of them isn't to compete in compellingness.
Daily Show is a comedy news show. They get 30 minutes every weeknight save Friday. They only have so much time to put toward mocking some of the stupid crap in the news.
Media Matters, meanwhile, is online enough that they can not only cover more, but be more in depth.
Yes, Daily Show is more entertaining, but that's entirely not the whole point in the matter. Daily Show seeds the acceptance of the absurdity as absurdity. Media Matters helps to explain, with video and context, why it's all so absurd.
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Slightly on-topic: PEW just released a research poll on the public perception of bias in the news media. JP over at Tuned in covered it in his blog. Swampcritters, not so much.
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[...] Posted by Minister of Information on Friday, 30 October 2009 Be sure to watch the whole clip •••here•••! [...]
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[...] Jon Stewart Tears Down That Fox News Wall (With Some Jabs At The White House) More evidence that a Daily Show’s little left toe is more compelling than all the YouTube muscle at Media [...] [...]
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