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Post by sagobob on Jul 28, 2020 10:38:43 GMT -8
I was offered news from a very few sources. On the tube it was NBC, CBS and ABC, all of whom pretty much covered the same events. The broadcasts didn't last that long and you could trust the talking heads. Print media consisted of Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report and a lot of daily newspapers.
When I was 31 (1969)
Not much had changed. IIRC the news was delivered from the same sources in generally the same way, the exception was that TV News could bring the reality of the Viet Nam War into the living rooms of America.
When I was 41 (1979)
Things were still much the same, but it all began to change in June of 1980 when Ted Turner launched CNN. That may have marked the beginning of the decline of print media.
When I was 51 (1989)
I was on the Internet and a lot had changed, or was changing. There were manifold sources for news, or what was passed off as news. Fox News was underway and print media continued to lose traction.
I've picked a few dates and events to make this point. There was a time when most of us were on the same page in where we got our news/information. Now we're offered news/information (and just plain lies) from thousands of pages, all with differing POV's. You can sort out what you like and ignore the rest, or call them fake. No wonder we've become so tribal and unable to unite for a common good, like wearing masks.
Walt Kelley was right: "we has met the enemy and he is us".
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Post by Floppy Johnson on Jul 28, 2020 11:14:09 GMT -8
On our road trip, as I was flipping through Sirius, I paused for a moment on Fox. If you accepted their stated facts as legit, they made a great case for Trump sending in the Federal secret police. It was eye opening for me. I used to watch Fox and listen to Limbaugh to see what the talking points are. After years of doing that, and being prepared to debate conservatives, and influencing the opinions of exactly ..... no one, I decided I've got one life to live, and that would be a waste of it. But, my point is, that physicists say we live in a multiverse. Sociologically? Absolutely. My feeling is that (and I've posted this a billion times, feel free to stop reading), when media splintered, the divide was inevitable. I read an article back in the cable-explosion days that predicted that the increasing # of news outlets would let people find "news" that they agree with, dividing the country. And, a little later, read an article that it is a feature of group dynamics that the group will always take a more extreme view than the individual members entered with. People crave attention, in a group you get positive attention by taking a position that is on the acceptable forward edge of the collective position. So, that forward edge keeps moving forward. This is now exacerbated by social media algorithms that are written to feed incrementally more extreme content. We all live in different worlds. It's hard to talk to each other because have different realities. I was chatting with a "fake news" guy on a friends FB page. I asked "well, if bodies start stacking up outside of hospitals, will you say that is being faked?" His response was "there is so much disinformation being propagated, that you will have a hard time convincing me that is real" I admire his honesty. He lives in a completely different world than I do. Since, I feel like we've all (to a certain extent) been led down the garden path to completely different realms of Oz (sorry not sorry for the mixed metaphor), I'm not that angry at people who don't see the world that I do. They see the world they live in. Yes, there is lot's that is wrong with the world that they live in. But, if you grew up in Disneyland, that's your world. Hard for me to work up a lot of hate for the average North Korean. Even if they believe the silly stuff about Kim. To me, the touchstone of the idea that we can't even talk to each other is the phrase "dog whistle." Words and phrases have political meanings. We can't use plain English. This is not a criticism of the "dog whistle" concept. It's an acknowledgment of the reality. Read/listen to media from different perspectives, they'll always talk about the other side's dog whistles. I was listening to an old environmentalist being interviewed the other day. He was talking about the environmental hell to come. He said that when his daughter (who has been side-by-side with him in the fight) told him she was having a baby, he cried and said "Why?  " The political world is not much less f*cked up than the environmental. (sorry for the long reply. I went to post it, and it says "post quick reply." I'm like, "quick?, I need another button.") |
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Post by andyh64000 on Jul 28, 2020 16:01:07 GMT -8
I had braces my Freshman and Sophomore year of college (88, 89) and to get them off as quickly as possible I use to have to drive home to folsom every 3 weeks. I listened to Rush Limbaugh on every drive because it was pretty much all you could get back then on I-5. He was actually pretty entertaining back then. I disagreed with most of what he was saying but was pretty reasonable back then. At some point I guess they realized going completely off the rails could make them more money.
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Post by Floppy Johnson on Jul 28, 2020 16:31:04 GMT -8
I had braces my Freshman and Sophomore year of college (88, 89) and to get them off as quickly as possible I use to have to drive home to folsom every 3 weeks. I listened to Rush Limbaugh on every drive because it was pretty much all you could get back then on I-5. He was actually pretty entertaining back then. I disagreed with most of what he was saying but was pretty reasonable back then. At some point I guess they realized going completely off the rails could make them more money. Some of that was while he was still on local Sac radio, only, right? Before he syndicated? In his early days he had a recorded disclaimer that ran on his show that it was not a political show and was "for entertainment purposes only." When people called him out untruths? lies? he would actually defend himself by saying that. I think that it was shortly after he went into syndication that he dropped the Entertainment defense. He was funny. But, I don't like it when I laugh at/like "mean" humor. Like, he made that "I Ain't Got a Home" song funny. It made me chuckle. But (I imagine you feel the same way) when it gets down to the fact that he was using it to dehumanize the homeless, I didn't feel good about laughing at it. |
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Post by TAMPATIDE on Jul 30, 2020 3:26:00 GMT -8
Sago, I think the biggest change came with the advent of the internet and the ability to choose unlimited sources of confirmation bias.
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Post by sagobob on Jul 30, 2020 8:11:28 GMT -8
We has met the enemy and he is us......Walt Kelly.
We're sort of like an hour glass that's been set on its side. After awhile the sand doesn't move in either direction.
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