Narrative Before Facts = When will the media acknowledge their role in spreading false and inflammatory stories about police shootings?

by Didgee Wed Jan 27, 2021 4:38 am

When officer Rusten Sheskey shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back last year, the media wasted no time establishing the standard narrative: another unarmed African-American shot by racist police.

In a CNN segment on August 25, anchor Jake Tapper said, “Video shows police shoot unarmed black man.” The Washington Post, CNN, PBS, Buzzfeed, Vogue, and several other outlets referred to Blake as “unarmed.” The day after the shooting, David A. Graham, a staff writer at The Atlantic, asserted, “It’s nearly impossible to imagine any way that his shooting was justified.”

Democratic politicians and celebrities jumped on the story, too. Joe Biden tweeted, “Once again, a Black man—Jacob Blake—was shot by the police. In front of his children. It makes me sick. Is this the country we want to be?” Kamala Harris declared that “the life of a black person in America has never been treated as fully human.” Naomi Osaka, the highest-paid female athlete in the world, tweeted to her more than 800,000 followers condemnation of the “continued genocide of Black people at the hand of the police.”

But as Blake himself admitted in a television interview with ABC News last week, he was not unarmed. “I realized I had dropped my knife, I had a little pocketknife, so I picked it up,” Blake told Michael Strahan on Good Morning America. More critically, Blake admitted his actions at the time were wrong: “I shouldn’t have picked it up . . . considering what was going on. . . . At that time I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Blake’s astonishing admission came days after Kenosha County District Attorney Mike Graveley announced that his office would not charge Officer Sheskey, based on the results of an investigation by former Madison police chief Noble Wray. During a press conference, Wray emphasized that he, too, had been “emotionally troubled” after seeing the initial video of the police encounter in August, and that it had been a “stressful endeavor” to work in policing for several years as an African-American man. However, his 25-page report definitively concluded that the shooting was “justified” because Blake consistently did not comply with the officer’s orders and motioned toward him with his knife. Further, according to the report, Officer Sheskey did not retreat for reasonable fear of the children in the car being “harmed, taken hostage, or abducted by Blake.” For those who deemed the seven shots fired at Blake excessive, Wray’s report clarified that officers are trained to shoot dangerous suspects until the threat to their safety has subsided, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s DAAT standards.

The tragic outcome of Blake’s error in judgment is that he will likely never walk again. But the false story fostered by politicians, media, and celebrities produced tragic outcomes, too. The ensuing riots in Kenosha destroyed several businesses and cost millions of dollars in damage to public property. In a heart-rending interview, the owner of a destroyed car dealership stated, “I’m a minority too. I’m a brown person. I have nothing to do with this. . . . This is not the America I came into.”

All of this pain, damage, and suffering certainly could have been averted had Blake obeyed the officer’s commands when he was first approached. But the irresponsible and ideologically framed coverage of this and other police shootings has also played a part in creating a dangerous feedback loop of mistrust of police, noncompliance with their lawful instructions, tragedy, and public outrage. (Blake also said in his Good Morning America interview, “I didn’t want to be the next George Floyd.”)

The most damning detail in this story, however, is that the victim himself, Blake, has expressed more honesty and remorse for his actions than the media and political elites who pushed an inflammatory, racialized narrative before all the facts were in.

https://www.city-journal.org/police-shootings-media-role-narrative-before-facts

by Maddog Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:42 pm

The media likes action. They don't like reporting about a new post office opening.

I think we are all like that to a degree.

But the media is supposed to be trained better than the average schmoe drawn to the excitement of a train wreck.

They're not in many instances, which leads to distrust.

And here we are.

by Original Quill Wed Jan 27, 2021 6:39 pm

Pocket knives? Fingernail clippers? Dangerous weapons?

Didge, when you impart a lie, you've at least got to make it plausible. I keep such a pocket knife for personally grooming my nails, when away from my personal effects in my bathroom. I would expect no policeman would shoot me for it. Blake was shot because he is black, and not because of some pocketknife/fingernail clippers.

We eat with forks. Dig with shovels. Cut lawns with blades on lawnmowers. Any one of these utensils could be used to harm a person.

Would it be alright with you, Didge, if police walked slowly down Elm Street, shooting your neighbors one-after-another, because they were wielding deadly weapons?

The thing that distinguishes Blake is, he is black.

by Maddog Wed Jan 27, 2021 9:03 pm

Original Quill wrote:Pocket knives? Fingernail clippers? Dangerous weapons?

Didge, when you impart a lie, you've at least got to make it plausible. I keep such a pocket knife for personally grooming my nails, when away from my personal effects in my bathroom. I would expect no policeman would shoot me for it. Blake was shot because he is black, and not because of some pocketknife/fingernail clippers.

We eat with forks. Dig with shovels. Cut lawns with blades on lawnmowers. Any one of these utensils could be used to harm a person.

Would it be alright with you, Didge, if police walked slowly down Elm Street, shooting your neighbors one-after-another, because they were wielding deadly weapons?

The thing that distinguishes Blake is, he is black.

Narrative Before Facts = When will the media acknowledge their role in spreading false and inflammatory stories about police shootings? Fb_im152

I think she may disagree with you.

by Didgee Thu Jan 28, 2021 10:25 am

Original Quill wrote:Pocket knives? Fingernail clippers? Dangerous weapons?

Didge, when you impart a lie, you've at least got to make it plausible. I keep such a pocket knife for personally grooming my nails, when away from my personal effects in my bathroom. I would expect no policeman would shoot me for it. Blake was shot because he is black, and not because of some pocketknife/fingernail clippers.

We eat with forks. Dig with shovels. Cut lawns with blades on lawnmowers. Any one of these utensils could be used to harm a person.

Would it be alright with you, Didge, if police walked slowly down Elm Street, shooting your neighbors one-after-another, because they were wielding deadly weapons?

The thing that distinguishes Blake is, he is black.

Wackadoodle and absurd false equivalence

The man himself admitted to how he caused the situation

A knife can kill, no matter the size

For you to down play a weapon based on your own bias and quite frankly dumb opinion. Is what ends up getting people killed

Shows you are not able to place yourself in the position. Of trying to detain a man who was constantly ressiting and then trying to reach for a knife

Most rational people understand this. Some how when there is a racial aspect to a case, your brain seems to malfunction

by Original Quill Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:34 pm

Didgee wrote:
Original Quill wrote:Pocket knives? Fingernail clippers? Dangerous weapons?

Didge, when you impart a lie, you've at least got to make it plausible. I keep such a pocket knife for personally grooming my nails, when away from my personal effects in my bathroom. I would expect no policeman would shoot me for it. Blake was shot because he is black, and not because of some pocketknife/fingernail clippers.

We eat with forks. Dig with shovels. Cut lawns with blades on lawnmowers. Any one of these utensils could be used to harm a person.

Would it be alright with you, Didge, if police walked slowly down Elm Street, shooting your neighbors one-after-another, because they were wielding deadly weapons?

The thing that distinguishes Blake is, he is black.

Wackadoodle and absurd false equivalence

The man himself admitted to how he caused the situation

A knife can kill, no matter the size

So can a nail. Is it "false equivalence" if any sharp implement can kill? I think not. A rock can be a blunt force instrument; is a man who owns a field full of rocks someone who must be shot?

The man's words are irrelevant when we can judge for ourselves. Clearly, a tiny pocket knife is a utensil for tiny jobs, not an obvious threat. The police are depending for their story on a chance overlap of meaning...both fingernail trimming and a bowie knife require a sharp edge. Therefore, they argue, they are present to do harm, and the bearer should be shot.

Didgee wrote:For you to down play a weapon based on your own bias and quite frankly dumb opinion. Is what ends up getting people killed

Shows you are not able to place yourself in the position. Of trying to detain a man who was constantly ressiting and then trying to reach for a knife

Most rational people understand this. Some how when there is a racial aspect to a case, your brain seems to malfunction

Blake had his back turned when he was shot. He posed no threat, as even a casual on-looker can see. You RW extremists always assume the public is too dumb for simple reasoning. We're not. It's obvious the victim was shot, not because he was a threat, but because he is black. The incident goes to racism on the part of the police. No white man would be shot under those circumstances.

by Maddog Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:43 pm

Original Quill wrote:
Didgee wrote:

Wackadoodle and absurd false equivalence

The man himself admitted to how he caused the situation

A knife can kill, no matter the size

So can a nail. Is it "false equivalence" if any sharp implement can kill? I think not. A rock can be a blunt force instrument; is a man who owns a field full of rocks someone who must be shot?

The man's words are irrelevant when we can judge for ourselves. Clearly, a tiny pocket knife is a utensil for tiny jobs, not an obvious threat. The police are depending for their story on a chance overlap of meaning...both fingernail trimming and a bowie knife require a sharp edge. Therefore, they argue, they are present to do harm, and the bearer should be shot.

Didgee wrote:For you to down play a weapon based on your own bias and quite frankly dumb opinion. Is what ends up getting people killed

Shows you are not able to place yourself in the position. Of trying to detain a man who was constantly ressiting and then trying to reach for a knife

Most rational people understand this. Some how when there is a racial aspect to a case, your brain seems to malfunction

Blake had his back turned when he was shot. He posed no threat, as even a casual on-looker can see. You RW extremists always assume the public is too dumb for simple reasoning. We're not. It's obvious the victim was shot, not because he was a threat, but because he is black. The incident goes to racism on the part of the police. No white man would be shot under those circumstances.

Her dead daddy says you're wrong.

by @lex Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:34 pm

Maddog, did this little girl’s poor dad live in AZ?

by Vintage Thu Jan 28, 2021 6:18 pm

The kind of attitude that says only black men are killed by the police and are always, at least at the time, totally innocent only fuels the problems. Talking about police brutality or over reaction, just might begin to solve the problems and how about why police over react, when they are expected to face violent criminals who will stop at nothing to get away and have records of violence towards the general public and the police and are well known to officers.. Let's talk honestly about the problems that may include racism but certainly isn't the only reason, like criminality, drug taking/selling and preferring a life of crime to an honest job..

by Maddog Thu Jan 28, 2021 6:48 pm

[quote="@lex"]
Maddog, did this little girl’s poor dad live in AZ?[/quote

Wrong white guy. He was shot in Arizona. He was from Granbury, Texas.

by Original Quill Thu Jan 28, 2021 7:57 pm

Arizona has a totally different kind of culture than the old slave states of the south. It is based upon Mormonism, or the Church of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS), which has a strict caste system. The LDS are religious-based, and extremely insular, hence conservative.

A part from party affiliation, Mormons have no truck with southern conservatism, the KKK, the lynching, and southern beliefs about blacks and race. Blacks and women are on lower tiers with LDS, but for different historical/religious reasons.

The LDS predominate primarily in Arizona, Utah, and Idaho, and parts of southern Nevada. Mormons settled the Great Central Basin, a high-desert terrain that exists between the western slope of the Rocky Mountains and the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Originally a sea, this space was at one time connected to the Pacific Ocean via the Sea of Cortez. But now, all that is left of this expansive sea is the Great Salt Lake.

The geography made the rift between the antebellum south and the LDS inevitable. Mormons are a hard-working people, who never relied on others to make their living for them like southerners.

by Maddog Thu Jan 28, 2021 8:24 pm

Original Quill wrote:Arizona has a totally different kind of culture than the old slave states of the south. It is based upon Mormonism, or the Church of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS), which has a strict caste system. The LDS are religious-based, and extremely insular, hence conservative.

A part from party affiliation, Mormons have no truck with southern conservatism, the KKK, the lynching, and southern beliefs about blacks and race. Blacks and women are on lower tiers with LDS, but for different historical/religious reasons.

The LDS predominate primarily in Arizona, Utah, and Idaho, and parts of southern Nevada. Mormons settled the Great Central Basin, a high-desert terrain that exists between the western slope of the Rocky Mountains and the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Originally a sea, this space was at one time connected to the Pacific Ocean via the Sea of Cortez. But now, all that is left of this expansive sea is the Great Salt Lake.

The geography made the rift between the antebellum south and the LDS inevitable. Mormons are a hard-working people, who never relied on others to make their living for them like southerners.

Narrative Before Facts = When will the media acknowledge their role in spreading false and inflammatory stories about police shootings? Screen23

And this guy was beat to death in California.

by Maddog Thu Jan 28, 2021 8:25 pm

And what the fuck do Mormons have to do with this.

Jesus you blather some absolutely useless nonsense.

by @lex Thu Jan 28, 2021 9:50 pm

Maddog wrote:
@lex wrote:
Maddog, did this little girl’s poor dad live in AZ?[/quote

Wrong white guy. He was shot in Arizona. He was from Granbury, Texas.

My bad - I assumed he was a Mesa local. The footage of the moments leading up to his shooting is chilling and haunting.

by Maddog Thu Jan 28, 2021 9:52 pm

@lex wrote:
Maddog wrote:

My bad - I assumed he was a Mesa local. The footage of the moments leading up to his shooting is chilling and haunting.

No worries. The shooting of Daniel Shaver was chilling too. He was on his knees begging for his life.

But I'm told that can't happen.

by @lex Thu Jan 28, 2021 9:58 pm

^ He’s the man I meant. Terrifying.

by gelico Thu Jan 28, 2021 10:11 pm

Original Quill wrote:

The man's words are irrelevant when we can judge for ourselves.

how so?

trying to appease white man?
high on drugs?
can't be trusted cos he's black?
just pure crazy?

or maybe he was actually telling the truth and because you can't handle the truth you show your total desperation when you insist on putting your own spin on things.

LOLOL

you're so racist quill

Cool

by Didgee Thu Jan 28, 2021 10:33 pm

gelico wrote:
Original Quill wrote:

The man's words are irrelevant when we can judge for ourselves.

how so?

trying to appease white man?
high on drugs?
can't be trusted cos he's black?
just pure crazy?

or maybe he was actually telling the truth and because you can't handle the truth you show your total desperation when you insist on putting your own spin on things.

LOLOL

you're so racist quill

Exactly Gelico

Quill is from the school of "critical race theory"

Where even though humans are one biological race/species. The view is to actually divide us to a view of people classed as white as oppressive. As being privileged and racist.

Quill ever looks objectively but racially at everything

That is brainwashing

Critical race theory does not seek to combat racism but emulate racism

https://newdiscourses.com/2021/01/what-is-critical-race-theory/

Its why I really have no time for quill anymore

He has always been racist

by Original Quill Fri Jan 29, 2021 12:12 am

gelico wrote:
Original Quill wrote:

The man's words are irrelevant when we can judge for ourselves.

how so?

trying to appease white man?
high on drugs?
can't be trusted cos he's black?
just pure crazy?

or maybe he was actually telling the truth and because you can't handle the truth you show your total desperation when you insist on putting your own spin on things.

The truth about what? That he had a fingernail trimmer in his pocket?

This was total nonsense, put forth by the cops as justification for their shooting of a black man without justification. Such evidence actually raises the crime from accidental, to intentional. This charade is so phony that it stands as evidence of the racist intent. Why else would cops twist meanings to such ridiculous proportions, if not to hide the fact that they shot with malice..

Only racists need to make up things based upon twisted words, not reality. We know didge is an abject racist. You can join him in the racist tent. Twisted Evil

by Maddog Fri Jan 29, 2021 12:52 am

@lex wrote:^ He’s the man I meant. Terrifying.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2020/07/17/noise-complaint-fatal-police-shooting-ryan-whitaker/5459142002/

I thought you meant this white dude shot in Arizona.

It's hard to keep them all straight, unless you just ignore them like Quill does. Cool

by Maddog Fri Jan 29, 2021 12:55 am

Original Quill wrote:
gelico wrote:

how so?

trying to appease white man?
high on drugs?
can't be trusted cos he's black?
just pure crazy?

or maybe he was actually telling the truth and because you can't handle the truth you show your total desperation when you insist on putting your own spin on things.

The truth about what? That he had a fingernail trimmer in his pocket?

This was total nonsense, put forth by the cops as justification for their shooting of a black man without justification. Such evidence actually raises the crime from accidental, to intentional. This charade is so phony that it stands as evidence of the racist intent. Why else would cops twist meanings to such ridiculous proportions, if not to hide the fact that they shot with malice..

Only racists need to make up things based upon twisted words, not reality. We know didge is an abject racist. You can join him in the racist tent.

Seems like everyone has your racist tendencies sussed, and calling everyone else racist isn't working for you anymore.

by gelico Fri Jan 29, 2021 2:02 am

Original Quill wrote:
gelico wrote:

how so?

trying to appease white man?
high on drugs?
can't be trusted cos he's black?
just pure crazy?

or maybe he was actually telling the truth and because you can't handle the truth you show your total desperation when you insist on putting your own spin on things.

The truth about what? That he had a fingernail trimmer in his pocket?

The truth as told by Jacob Blake that he picked up his knife when he knew (in hindsight) that it was stupid

that he ignored police orders and approached the cop gesturing with his knife

but of course, i forgot, he's black so as far as you're concerned ''his words are irrelevant''

also, the fact that the investigating officer (Noble Wray) is black and backed up the officer on his actions tends to suggest that you are writing your own narrative here with your usual clear racist agenda

away with you, fool

Rolling Eyes

by Original Quill Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:41 am

The fact that Blake is black prompted the police to do what they did. I'm just responding to didge and other posters on here.

Do you think that because Mr. Wray is black, should bias him in some way? He's there to make a token show of blackness for the department. He's doing what he is told...towing the company line.

by Maddog Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:54 am

Original Quill wrote:The fact that Blake is black prompted the police to do what they did. I'm just responding to didge and other posters on here.

Do you think that because Mr. Wray is black, should bias him in some way? He's there to make a token show of blackness for the department. He's doing what he is told...towing the company line.

What prompts the police to shoot all of those white people?

by Didgee Fri Jan 29, 2021 6:38 am

Maddog wrote:
Original Quill wrote:The fact that Blake is black prompted the police to do what they did. I'm just responding to didge and other posters on here.

Do you think that because Mr. Wray is black, should bias him in some way? He's there to make a token show of blackness for the department. He's doing what he is told...towing the company line.

What prompts the police to shoot all of those white people?

He will never answer that question mate

by Maddog Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:05 pm

Didgee wrote:
Maddog wrote:

What prompts the police to shoot all of those white people?

He will never answer that question mate

He can't even acknowledge that it happens.

by Original Quill Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:20 pm

Maddog wrote:
Original Quill wrote:The fact that Blake is black prompted the police to do what they did. I'm just responding to didge and other posters on here.

Do you think that because Mr. Wray is black, should bias him in some way? He's there to make a token show of blackness for the department. He's doing what he is told...towing the company line.

What prompts the police to shoot all of those white people?

The answer to that is simple: they don't shoot whites in the proportions that they shoot blacks.

As quantitative analysts and policing experts often note, comparing how many or how often white people are killed by police to how many or how often black people are killed by the police is statistically dubious unless you first adjust for population. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population.

That means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers. U.S. police officers have shot and killed the exact same number of unarmed white people as they have unarmed black people. But because the white population is approximately five times larger than the black population, that means unarmed black Americans were five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by a police officer.

It gets worse when you focus in on black males. Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40 percent of them were black men, even though black men make up just 6 percent of the nation’s population. And, about 13 percent of all black people who have been fatally shot by police were unarmed, compared with 7 percent of all white people.

The issue of Black Lives Matter is not in the individual life taken by police. After all, taken individually, all lives matter. Rather, it is the higher probability that that a black male confronts of unprovoked murder by police.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/

by Maddog Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:23 pm

Original Quill wrote:
Maddog wrote:

What prompts the police to shoot all of those white people?

The answer to that is simple: they don't shoot whites in the proportions that they shoot blacks.

As quantitative analysts and policing experts often note, comparing how many or how often white people are killed by police to how many or how often black people are killed by the police is statistically dubious unless you first adjust for population. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population.

That means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers. U.S. police officers have shot and killed the exact same number of unarmed white people as they have unarmed black people. But because the white population is approximately five times larger than the black population, that means unarmed black Americans were five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by a police officer.

It gets worse when you focus in on black males. Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40 percent of them were black men, even though black men make up just 6 percent of the nation’s population. And, about 13 percent of all black people who have been fatally shot by police were unarmed, compared with 7 percent of all white people.

The issue of Black Lives Matter is not in the individual life taken by police. After all, taken individually, all lives matter. Rather, it is the higher probability that that a black male confronts of unprovoked murder by police.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/

So the police do shoot white people?

by Maddog Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:25 pm

Quill wrote: No white man would be shot under those circumstances.

by Ben Reilly Sat Jan 30, 2021 10:00 pm

People have the media so wrong, I've pretty much at the point of throwing my hands up and letting people carry on as they want to.

But I'm not quite at that point just yet, so I will offer up some insight from my more than two decades experience as a journalist. I'm ready for the points I make to go ignored, since most people have already made up their minds about the media anyway, but here goes:

1) The media is all about the sort of stuff that makes people gawk at train wrecks.

The media industry is a capitalist enterprise and has been since the invention of newspapers. It does not sell news and information to readers and viewers. It sells the attention of readers and viewers to advertisers, for profit.

In order to capture the attention of its desired audience, a media outlet will seek out stories it has deemed (these days, through digital analysis of internet searches, time spent reading articles, etc.) are interesting to its desired audience.

In other words, the media is not to blame for what it covers -- society is. If you want a media that isn't all about the sensational, speak up, call a reporter or an editor, and stop clicking on headlines that aren't the sort of coverage you'd like to see.

2) Despite the fact that conflict sells, professional journalists are indeed trained not to make a story juicier than the facts allow.

The challenge to you, dear audience member, is to figure out which media outlets are professional and which ones pander to their audiences and only tell them what they want to hear.

Remember, every media outlet will claim to be fair and balanced, so you can't trust how a media outlet markets itself.

3) A professional journalist will never report anything he or she didn't witness personally unless he/she attributes it.

If there's one thing I wish people would stop ignoring, it's attribution. Attribution is the difference between "Coronavirus eradicated from the UK" and "Coronavirus eradicated from the UK, says that guy who's always smoking outside Tesco".

Practically speaking, the media is almost never reporting that "this happened." It's reporting, "Someone SAID this happened." And yet, when the guy who's always smoking outside Tesco turns out to be wrong, it's not him who is blamed, it's the media that's blamed for reporting that he said it.

4) The media is both fallible and self-correcting.

Reporters make mistakes just like the person taking your order at a restaurant or counting out your change at a grocery store; the only difference is that a reporter's mistakes are seen by thousands or millions of people.

But on the big stories that make a real difference to people, if one reporter screws up, that's a golden opportunity for another reporter from another media outlet to get the story right, both to make themselves look good and make the competition look stupid.

by eddie Sat Jan 30, 2021 10:09 pm

I treat most media stories like a big pot of salt...just take a pinch.....and be done.

by gelico Sat Jan 30, 2021 10:59 pm

Ben Reilly wrote:People have the media so wrong, I've pretty much at the point of throwing my hands up and letting people carry on as they want to.

But I'm not quite at that point just yet, so I will offer up some insight from my more than two decades experience as a journalist. I'm ready for the points I make to go ignored, since most people have already made up their minds about the media anyway, but here goes:

1) The media is all about the sort of stuff that makes people gawk at train wrecks.

The media industry is a capitalist enterprise and has been since the invention of newspapers. It does not sell news and information to readers and viewers. It sells the attention of readers and viewers to advertisers, for profit.

In order to capture the attention of its desired audience, a media outlet will seek out stories it has deemed (these days, through digital analysis of internet searches, time spent reading articles, etc.) are interesting to its desired audience.

In other words, the media is not to blame for what it covers -- society is. If you want a media that isn't all about the sensational, speak up, call a reporter or an editor, and stop clicking on headlines that aren't the sort of coverage you'd like to see.

with everyone owning a phone camera and taking ground level footage of an event showing one thing

then you get media reports insisting it was another thing

that's why no one bothers with mainstream media any more

it has a responsibility to seek the truth and then report the facts as they know them

they don't

which is why they are failing big time

that isn't society's fault

by Ben Reilly Sat Jan 30, 2021 11:12 pm

A lot of people will shoot something on their phone and call it something that it isn't. The internet is riddled with supposed photos of, say, the Indonesian tsunami that turned out to be from something that happened 10 years prior.

Real journalists have to not only try to sift through that nonsense but try to report the facts as well.

by eddie Sat Jan 30, 2021 11:18 pm

gelico wrote:
Ben Reilly wrote:People have the media so wrong, I've pretty much at the point of throwing my hands up and letting people carry on as they want to.

But I'm not quite at that point just yet, so I will offer up some insight from my more than two decades experience as a journalist. I'm ready for the points I make to go ignored, since most people have already made up their minds about the media anyway, but here goes:

1) The media is all about the sort of stuff that makes people gawk at train wrecks.

The media industry is a capitalist enterprise and has been since the invention of newspapers. It does not sell news and information to readers and viewers. It sells the attention of readers and viewers to advertisers, for profit.

In order to capture the attention of its desired audience, a media outlet will seek out stories it has deemed (these days, through digital analysis of internet searches, time spent reading articles, etc.) are interesting to its desired audience.

In other words, the media is not to blame for what it covers -- society is. If you want a media that isn't all about the sensational, speak up, call a reporter or an editor, and stop clicking on headlines that aren't the sort of coverage you'd like to see.

with everyone owning a phone camera and taking ground level footage of an event showing one thing

then you get media reports insisting it was another thing

that's why no one bothers with mainstream media any more

it has a responsibility to seek the truth and then report the facts as they know them

they don't

which is why they are failing big time

that isn't society's fault

Holy shit you sound like me!

Especially this:

“with everyone owning a phone camera and taking ground level footage of an event showing one thing
then you get media reports insisting it was another thing”

Spot on!

by gelico Sat Jan 30, 2021 11:20 pm

Ben Reilly wrote:A lot of people will shoot something on their phone and call it something that it isn't. The internet is riddled with supposed photos of, say, the Indonesian tsunami that turned out to be from something that happened 10 years prior.

Real journalists have to not only try to sift through that nonsense but try to report the facts as well.

if by real journalists you mean mainstream journalists then they don't have to.

they attend marches, protests, and so many other events in person. they are there at the time

their reporting is still openly warped and biased and then, because of so much other footage available, people get to see the actual truth

hence why mainstream media is dying out

by Ben Reilly Sun Jan 31, 2021 12:16 am

The news industry is the only industry in which lying can not only get you fired but make you unhirable.

But people have very fixed, emotional reactions to me trying to tell the truth about this subject, and frankly, they close their minds even to someone who's seen how it works from the inside, so I'm going to drop it now.

by Maddog Sun Jan 31, 2021 1:41 am

Ben Reilly wrote:The news industry is the only industry in which lying can not only get you fired but make you unhirable.

But people have very fixed, emotional reactions to me trying to tell the truth about this subject, and frankly, they close their minds even to someone who's seen how it works from the inside, so I'm going to drop it now.

The media isn't the same as profesional journalism. The latter is a small subset of the former.

Sean Hannity and Shaun King are part of the media. They are not professional journalists.

by Ben Reilly Sun Jan 31, 2021 9:42 am

People shouldn't use "the media" as a blanket term anyway. The media includes film, television, video games, books, newspapers, the internet, the music industry, etc.

People should also be at least sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a news reporter and a commentator.

Along with that, it should be obvious that anyone with a phone can download a video of the explosion in Lebanon last year and make a social media post claiming that Muslim terrorists just detonated a bomb in Greece, for example.

by Maddog Sun Jan 31, 2021 5:02 pm

Ben Reilly wrote:People shouldn't use "the media" as a blanket term anyway. The media includes film, television, video games, books, newspapers, the internet, the music industry, etc.

People should also be at least sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a news reporter and a commentator.

Along with that, it should be obvious that anyone with a phone can download a video of the explosion in Lebanon last year and make a social media post claiming that Muslim terrorists just detonated a bomb in Greece, for example.

But even the news media is heavily biased anymore.

Fox NEWS and the Cable NEWS Network (CNN) have folks like Hannity and Cuomo on there 5 nights a week purporting to be reporting the news when they are just political mouthpieces.

by Original Quill Sun Jan 31, 2021 6:51 pm

gelico wrote:their reporting is still openly warped and biased and then, because of so much other footage available, people get to see the actual truth

I think there's a lot of truth to that. When I lived overseas, and saw the media over there, I was amazed to see how conservative currents ran in US and UK standard news channels.

And this was before Fox and others with deliberately biased news. Now, of course, the whole game is one of legitimizing pure fiction, and the tail wags the dog.

by Ben Reilly Tue Feb 02, 2021 10:37 pm

Footage without reporting is like raw ingrediants without a chef -- it's a good start, but you have to do something with it.

Reporters serve as a chain of custody for information. They can take a video or photo and chase down the interviews with leaders, witnesses, etc. that give their audiences a much better chance of telling whether they're being decieved.

Anybody who thinks that a news organization has a purpose that overrides profit is living in a dream world. It's about as preposterous as believing that there's a car dealership out there somewhere that cares more about who wins an election than it does about selling cars.

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