inkbluesky

More Americans turning to Web for news

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe traditional journalism is out of touch, and nearly half are turning to the Internet to get their news, according to a new survey.

While most people think journalism is important to the quality of life, 64 percent are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities, a We Media/Zogby Interactive online poll showed.

There have been similar surveys over the last few years. I’m at the point where I find them a little tiresome. The main points remain the same. We still have to have a good journalist get in car or hop a plane to gather the primary news. The net is doing that to some extent as at Talking Points Memo and contributors at Salon and The Huffington Post. Though for now the traditional news outlets like Reuters (where I got the link), the New York Times, The Times of London, CNN, etc are still the major primary suppliers of news. We’re just reading Reuter’s news feeds at Yahoo and the old dead tree sources like our local paper. What should be troubling is not the shift to the net as a news dispenser or platform, but the net as a way to avoid unpleasant truths – i.e. – I’ll just search until I find some source that confirms my preexisting view on this or that current event. Then there are supposed sites that have appointed themselves as special dispensers of news or more aptly – the truth. A cultural phenomenon and not a new one where people conflate reportage and opinion. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said”Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” A well known adage and a principle that is part of every intro to philosophy course, but that has not stopped many people from trying. What’s new or a new facet to an old problem is using the net to spread opinion and disinformation as fact; then using the net in kind to fight the spread of disinformation. The game remains the same, we’ve just added another playing field. Around 1439 many people probably looked at the new printing press as some look at the net today. Now the truth can be easily distributed and the truth will prevail. Well the Renaissance and Enlightenment and all that followed was a long and bloody slog. Will the net accomplish what the printing press couldn’t. That depends more on people then technology.

tech toast 

From the way back machine, The Enduring Lies of Ronald Reagan

The neocons would have us believe that Reagan was also a foreign policy genius. Space prevents me from detailing his administration’s adventures and blunders in Grenada, in Beirut and the visit to the Nazi cemetery in Bitburg. So let’s just remember aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, whom Reagan likened to the Founding Fathers, and the revelation that the CIA had produced a manual that taught them, in part, how to kidnap and “neutralize” government officials. Iran-Contra—the secret and illegal selling of weapons to our sworn enemy, Iran, to then fund the Contras—was both a constitutional disaster and a foreign policy blunder about which we were asked to believe Reagan knew nothing.