(Interestingly, Rupert Murdoch praises bloggers for reporting on issues the mainstream media ignores and not patronizing to their audience. He’s like: “It’s too late for meeee! Save yourself!!!”)

Connor, you mentioned an “entitlement mentality” in America, in your last post. I think there’s truth to the view that a lot of people let themselves to be spoon-fed their news, without really trying to bite the hand that feeds them. Even among those that’re aware there’s a problem.

I’ve encountered the unconscious belief that “The News” is morally unassailable……..(yet another image which is carefully cultivated by corporations.) Other times, I’ve seen people are rightly skeptical, but lapse into apathy without trying to further develop their information-gathering skills. Either way, the propagandists win. Compounding this is when a person egocentrically assumes they “have the corner on truth,” and that no further information is needed. Everybody (except me!) is guilty of this, the bias of rushing to judgment, rather than facing and accepting uncertainty. This is another part of feeling “entitled”, I think; believing that getting what’s truly valuable to us should be easy.

Of course there’s nothing new about ignorance. Arguably, it’s just that much more damaging and dangerous these days. when finding good information is more vital than ever.

My opinion is the problem of today’s News is twofold.

-The first is that a majority of “traditional” news media are owned by a handful of huge and powerful holding companies. It’s an open secret that such holding companies have co-opted their subsidiary news outlets (by systematically controlling what is and isn’t reported, down to the very letter.) Thus converting them from sources of critical information, into mere tools for projecting an “image,” which is profitable to the holding company. In other words, a sort of “propaganda of silence.”

The obvious result of this is that the new corporate news will almost never report in ways which are critical of the government; as riddled as it is with corporate interest as well. neither will such reporting be accurate or attempt to be unbiased. Also, under no circumstances will there be any reporting on any industry or corporation whatsoever, no matter how damning or mundane the story. Well…. besides the occasional glowing praise of this or that business venture.

For example, It’s old news that Rupert Murdoch and all of fox news were major players, colluding with the white house in order to “sell” the Iraq war.

-The second problem, however, is far greater and much more serious, and it is this. The average American simply doesn’t know what is good news and what is bad news, nor does he/she know the difference between good information and bad information.

This makes the problem of corporate news ownership and control trivial in some ways, when the majority of America can’t tell the difference!

In the age of the internet, now that Average Joe has access to the collective knowledge of the world, he finds he lacks the judgment and critical thinking skills needed to filter it. The sheer volume of information becomes a liability to him, not an asset, in some ways.

Actually, I think that the questions levied at Biden were all leading, rhetorical questions. There were honest ways to ask all of those questions.

How about “Critics of your campaign have compared Obama’s tax and health care promises with similar socialist foundations. How can you separate the two?”

(Here Biden might be forced to answer that the wealthy, with their many investments and assets, benefit more from public goods than the poor with no investments, and they will pay in turn for the extra services provided them. This is true and perhaps the only consistent answer that could be given, but I don’t think Biden, or anybody else for that matter, has considered the question on those terms. Plus it assumes that all wealthy people are resourceful entrepreneurs.)

The ACORN question was ridiculous, though – ACORN has nearly the same error rate as any other registration organization, since they all rely on records submitted by individuals (actually they have a much higher self-reported flag rate for investigation). The only reason we’re hearing about them is because Obama has associations with them. Biden should have answered that ACORN’s mistakes were their own and that they’re doing their best to eliminate error.

I think that these questions were misleading, because they act like the socialism debate is new. Most of Obama’s policies are retreads of canceled Clinton plans, and Bush and Reagan both propped up corporations while building up a mammoth paid military force. I sympathize with Constitutionalism, but building things that go boom to kill brown people is worse even than income distribution. Not putting these questions into historical perspective is misleading and makes it look like the campaign was “socialism vs. capitalism”, when in reality it was merely one species of socialism and encroaching totalitarianism against another.

People who watch Fox News either watch it to agree with it or to disagree with it. Nobody is watching Fox News to learn something new. The function of learning is reserved for the History and Discovery channels. Well, it was until those channels started showing censored movies, UFO files, crime-solving and home decorating shows instead.

To be honest, who needs television journalism when you have Bloomberg, WSJ, and Connor’s Connundrums?

I can think of no better example than this one of John Kerry.

The problem with asking questions with any substance is that politicians are masters at answering the question they want to answer, not the one they were asked. I believe that’s why so many folks don’t care for Sarah Palin–she hasn’t mastered that skill. I’m not suggesting she’s inferior or that she should master the skill, but she comes across as less intelligent or clumsy because she lacks what we’ve all come to accept in our politicians. They’re no smarter than she is, they’re just better at disquising it.

This is also why Bill O’Reilly is often villified by the liberal left–he won’t accept a politician’s refusal to answer a question. He’s public enemy number one to the mainstream media and yet he’s more fair and unbiased than most. He’s equally as hard on Bush as he is on the left.

All I can do is shake my head at reporters like Chris Matthews saying it’s now his job to do everything he can to see that Obama’s presidency is successful–how is that the job of the media?

I think this is why “right-wing hate radio” has become so popular in the last ten years. Perhaps it has always been the case that ‘big media’ is under intense pressure from ‘the powers that be’ (advertisers, etc.) but guys like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Glen Beck (etc. etc.) look for one or two “under-investigated news items” [that -- fairly or not -- push their predetermined worldviews and portray their constituencies and backers in a positive light] and proceed to delve into that issue with “politically incorrect” depth.

There is a famine of depth and perspective in most ‘big media’ and these talk-radio hosts step in to try to fill that need with their own artificial [but sorta kinda different] tripe.

I really appreciate blogs (like this one lol) where in addition to a philosophy of ‘in-depth is good’ there is so much interaction with people posting links and different viewpoints. Tougher to assimilate into the Corporatocracy I think . . . in all fairness, some ‘big media’ have comments sections like this that can enrich their online reports which I think is an improvement upon our past.

Funny thing is they report the news better then the “journalist”

I’m curious what you thought of this reporter’s questions for Joe Biden? Personally, I thought they were fantastic. But the contrast between such questions and the ones interviewees are accustomed to being asked in our day was evidenced by the backlash from Biden’s group afterwards (he was quite upset) and the widespread popularity of this news segment in the blogosphere (we were all surprised that such questions were asked in the mainstream news).

Thoughts? Were these questions charged and leading, or an opportunity to get after some meaty issues and ask something many of us were thinking?

But maybe I’m wrong, and just so accustomed to the current state of apathetic journalism that I feel that way :). Certainly news networks are more interested in being trendy or partisan than looking at the underlying realities of our country and its systems.

Journalists constantly throw the dismal approval ratings of president and congress in our faces, but they rarely acknowledge that their own approval ratings lurk in the same regions.

But journalists do a great job of one thing: getting us to focus intently on the road forks on Satan’s road map.