For Better or Worse?
Is it ironic that a company called "Better" first fired 900 employees by telling them on a Zoom call last year and are now firing 3,000 more by making their most recent check a severance check? I'd hate to see "Worse" in action.
In that vein ("better or worse") I found it hard to gather a News Weakly entry this week. The more I see, the less I know. The media -- mainstream, social, whatever -- seems as if it is bent on not telling us what is or isn't going on, but simply what they want us to think. And it's not just the "Left." Oh, it is definitely the Left, but I think the Right is doing the same. Someone told me, "I believe only half of what I see and none of what I read" and I'm thinking these days that that's pretty generous. Maybe the story about an Indianan teen who got stuck in a tree trying to rescue a cat has sufficient truth to buy into (primarily because there seems to be little to gain in making it up), but I don't know what to believe on the big stories. Did the U.S. finance biological weapons labs in Ukraine or not? I don't know. How much more is up in the air on the air? It's disturbing. Are gas prices going through the roof because of the Middle East or Russia or is it a worse conspiracy? Was January 6th an insurrection or not? How involved was the FBI? Is Putin the evil face or is Ukraine President Zalenskyy a thug? (And how do you spell Zelenskyy?) (Note: Representative Cawthorn did not say Putin was right -- says so in the story -- but that both are problematic. But that's not what our media will portray.) It feels like telling stories from the news these days is very possibly perpetuating a lie. I don't know what to believe anymore because all sources seem to have gone out of their way to prove themselves unreliable. A "News Weakly" entry seems to be all that anyone is doing ... news weakly.
7 comments:
That's why I find it difficult to listen to any news. I know that all of the sources are trying to tell their own narrative. It is so difficult to get the simple facts it seems. There's always a bias someone is trying to portray.
Bias is a given. It means nothing by itself if you already know it exists. All that matters is the quality of reporting...are they including all relevant facts, for example. I've perceived a distinct difference between what we might call leftist vs right-leaning news sources with regard to which side is more likely to set aside their biases to provide relevant facts.
totally agree with both Marshal and David. Stan, keep writing your news weakly. You are my best source on the news! When you post a topic that gets me thinking, I try and research it to the best of my ability and discernment. Plus, I always love your last entries, very humorous.
And I'm sure a leftist would say the opposite is true, Marshal. I see both sides just as guilty with pushing their agenda. And to a degree I can understand why. Very few news sources are in it just to spread news. Most are a business trying to make money. To get the most eyes on them they need to attract people. To attract people they need to be more sensational. And since most people to day are led by emotion rather than reason, they must play with those emotions. Both sides are equally guilty. It's not a left versus right action.
It doesn't matter what a leftist would say. What matters is whether or not what the leftist says is true. It's really easy to say both sides are equally guilty of pushing an agenda. It's far harder to support that premise. I don't know if it's possible to show that the main right-leaning sources have an agenda beyond presenting all facts pertinent to a story. Whatever "right-wing" angle would simply be in the choice of stories to report. Here's an area where the "both sides do it" angle is legit, because that's absolutely true. But that's still not as it sounds, with the choice of story being a legitimate belief of the story's relevance to the viewer, versus stories which push a political/social agenda, which I see as true of the leftist sources. A good example of the choice of the leftist media (news AND social) to not only not report on the Hunter Biden laptop situation, but to prevent the exchange of that info by others. Another, of course, is all that was reported by the leftist media about Trump, while never lifting a finger to investigate ANY allegations about leftist politicians, such as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, etc. In the meantime, I don't know that one could say if there was a legit charge against Trump or any other GOP politician, the right-wing wouldn't report on it. I say they would and would also provide more details with more accuracy.
Stan, keep up the News Weekly, it's something we all look forward to.
I was thinking about the history of journalism in the US recently and the fact that the earliest news sources were blatantly and openly biased. They were pro-crown or pro-revolution, or somewhere in between. They were pro-federalist or pro-Jeffersonian. And everyone knew it and could interpret them accordingly. The notion that news organizations or reporters are bias free is naive. It'd make much more sense to just admit reality and move forward.
Just so everyone knows, I wasn't contemplating ending the blog or even the News Weakly. I just find it frustrating that 1) we can't get reliable news in this so-called "land of the free" and 2) we can't ask questions about the "news" we're given and all the contradictory info around it.
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