Is the US Isolated?
Posted in Lifestyle, Politics by George
When you watch the news on TV, or read about it in the newspaper, do you ever wonder how much bias it contains?
There’s plenty of reason for the news to be slanted. Individuals with a particular political leaning can write an article in the newspaper that is technically factually correct, yet selectively include or omit facts to make one viewpoint look superior to another. Take global warming, for instance. Environmentalists have pointed out that there exists a scientific consensus that global warming is happening and is caused by humans, and their opponents say no consensus exists at all. Technically they are both telling the truth, the only difference is that they define “scientific consensus” in a different manner, and the definition of scientific consensus never really comes up in the debates. But I digress…
There have been many accusations that the US media has not offered a good international perspective in today’s news. Of course that is true: a news organization is going to reveal its own perspective simply because it is what it is. If you ask three people from three different areas of the world to interpret what’s going on in the middle east, you’re going to get three significantly different interpretations.
However, a problem that might be present in the US today is the lack of available news sources that we have access to. With the internet, we can read any international news source, but on TV, in newspapers, and on the radio, the only news sources we are getting are from the US. Why is that?
In other parts of the world you’re able to get plenty of foreign TV stations, but here I don’t think we have anything widely available other than the BBC. Is it because it’s expensive to make foreign news channels available? Is it because they’re inferior news channels? I don’t know, I’m just curious. Answer me!
August 24th, 2006 at 8:33 am
Why was Enterprise canceled? It was one of the better shows and had a list of firsts to its name. Scott Bakula was actually pretty good, and the stories improved significantly toward the end — mostly by going back to story-arcs and to less touchee-feely crap and more toward good action and conflict.
But despite the availability of hundreds of channels it’s hard to make money on TV and so it is with news. The competition is massive and the desire to pander is overwhelming.
That, plus the large corporations have a vested interest in the news they present to be consistent with the government line, with conventional wisdom, and with their desire to keep their parochial viewers without offending them with the alternate truth (Hezbollah better than FEMA on disaster relief…) There are many more syndicates in use now and fewer stringers and a story will reuse data and work-product constantly in the retelling.
Improve news and expose Americans to the world? Don’t hire Katie Kouric. Hire Kevin Sites instead. Hire a bevy of Kevin Siteses for what you pay for Katie and her promotionals.
August 24th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
The man is keeping you from getting the alternative news…
You have no choice but FEMA.
August 24th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
there was a prof from MIT that i saw do a lecture where he advised people on how to take a holistic view of your business and the surrounding environment. 1. read your local paper 2. read a foreign paper 3. keep track of your industry trends.
Likewise, if you make a reference to europe, of course the people there will have to have newspapers from neighbors and will know at least some of the neighboring languages.
If there was demand for foriegn papers or TV we might have it. So going back to Shaniqua’s post, who’s gonna make money for george and one other person to watch News: New Zealand, or a subtitled Japanese news show.
You came up with the solution george…you can go online and read pravda or al jazeera(you know that there is some kind of FBI tracer on my IP after visiting that last one) and read their version of the news. It always helps to know all 10 sides of the story… have fun…it’s out there.