The media loves to stir up controversy. Sensationalism and outrageous ideas help with the ratings and ad revenues, but that doesn’t do much to educate the public.
Jay Smooth asks whether it’s too much to ask of the media to not feed the trolls?
Tag Archive for 'news'
In January, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission announced an open comment period on a proposed modification limiting that clause to “cases in which broadcasters knew the information was false or misleading and that reporting it was likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”
Speaking on behalf of journalists’ union Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union, Peter Murdoch commented, “Where is the motivation for change that would lower the standards of truth and fairness in broadcast journalism?” And Canadian consumers overwhelmingly agreed, expressing concern about ensuring the veracity of reporting by media outlets.
After uproar, the Commission dropped plans to move forward with the revision this February.
The timing of the attempt to open the door to more manipulative reporting did not go unnoticed by media savvy Canadians. Last year Quebecor Media announced plans to launch Fox-inspired news network Sun TV News. Friendly government-ties to the network were questioned.
It seems that Canadians have learned a thing or two from watching US media broadcasts.
Last December, the University of Maryland release a study that found Fox News watchers ill-informed about the major issues polled on in November, more so than any other news outlet’s viewers. Give the network’s reputation for hyperbolic coverage of policy issues, it’s no wonder that reporting that is high on emotion is short on information. In fact, regardless of the political leanings of those polled, the more Fox News hours clocked the more misinformation they retained.
It’s particularly disturbing because nearly half of Americans trust Fox News, while just 39% trust CNN, the next most trusted network. That Fair and Balanced branding has served them well.
Though the first amendment right to free speech precludes regulations similar to the Canadian RadioCommunication Act in the US, surely some type of truth-telling accreditation should be possible. If food can meet certain standards so as to be declared USDA Organic, why couldn’t chyrons include labeling from news to edutainment to opinion programming?
With the Citizens United case opening elections to unlimited corporate spending on political advertising, it’s more important than ever that Americans know where they can turn to for the actual facts. In the University of Maryland study
9 in 10 voters said that in the 2010 election they encountered information they believed was misleading or false, with 56% saying this occurred frequently. Fifty-four percent said that it had been more frequent than usual.
It shouldn’t be challenging to ferret out the truth when the direction of your democracy can hang in the balance. And yet there’s little assurance that we’re consuming fully veracious content — between the agendas of media outlets and our individual viewer biases — even when we’re looking for it.
I’ve been enjoying the trail of MEDIA DIET posts over at The Atlantic and was especially thrilled to find out what Ezra Klein reads a few weeks ago.
I’m a bit of a news junkie myself, so I thought I’d take a walk through what I read on a regular basis with the help of Google Reader trends. It is probably best to start by saying that I don’t own a TV, so RSS feeds are the basis of my news world.
As a night owl, I do most of my media consumption between 7 p.m. – 1 a.m. because it’s uninterrupted reading time once I’ve made it home from the gym and whatever afterwork commitments I have on a given day.
I start any news dive with a visit to the Huffington Post to see what’s trending. I love using it as a starting point because as I begin following the aggregated content back to its home source, I wind up pinging across a number of news sites I wouldn’t necessarily visit daily otherwise. It is also rare for me to miss the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC (videos are released online about an hour after the show ends each weeknight), and I catch most episodes of The Daily Show.
As I write this post, there are 167 feeds in my reader, so this post is hardly exhaustive in reviewing what I read. It is impossible to keep up with everything, but I find that each time I remove a feed, I somehow wind up adding a few more. So I let my topics of interest ebb and flow over time.
For current events I follow parts of the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, ProPublica, Washington Post, Salon and TreeHugger. For tech news, I head to TechCrunch and Mashable.
The blogs I read are disparate to say the least. I read Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, Center for American Progress’s Think Progress, BoingBoing, BigThink, Jezebel.
Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof, Ezra Klein, Michelle Goldberg, Robert Reich, Jon Taplin and Jay Smooth provide lots of food for thought.
In case you hadn’t noticed, I find culture and politics fascinating, so Talking Points Memo and the latest Pew Research statistics are regular reads.
I also read for entertainment value – Indexed, ChartPorn and Joy the Baker.
The most surprising item in my reader is probably Michael Hyatt‘s blog. He’s the CEO of a Christian Publishing Company who writes excellent posts on leadership.
I’m not a huge fan of print magazines. They tend to stack up for 3 or 4 months before I finally flip through them. It is a rare day that I read a magazine cover to cover. Current subscriptions: Wired, Fast Company and Ode.
And, of course, there’s my 50-book goal each year.
In between all the reading, I keep up with some TV thanks to the Intertubes and Netflix: Bones, House, Vampire Diaries, 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother during the regular network season and Rescue Me, The Closer, Leverage, In Plain Sight and True Blood online and by DVD in the off season.
That’s a basic overview of my media consumption. What about you?
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