Wry Catcher
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #1
"Trump fumes about supposedly ‘fake’ polls giving him a dismal approval rating." I know there are a number of those reading this thread who believe him. I wonder why.
Trump fumes about supposedly ‘fake’ polls giving him a dismal approval rating
The opinion that the mass media, news services which have existed in print for centuries, and on the radio and TV for over a century, knowingly mislead the public is IMO ridiculous. Of course "yellow journalism" (hate and fear mongering), errors in judgment, conflicts in interests and a few rogues exist; false advertising and demagoguery come from lips of politicians and their surrogates.
But, to accept the idea that the sources the public trusted for decades all of a sudden conspired to report false and deceptive polls and news stories is in my mind absurd. And yet, some of you reading this do.
Worse many attack the journalists and (oddly) the corporations which own and profit from marketing their product. Times changed as did the manner in which the news is promulgated with the development of 24-hours news (CNN) an the widespread Internet. The competition for viewers, and thus advertising dollars created competition among the major news organizations, and marketing of the news became a fact of life.
Thus the reader, watcher, listener needs to read, watch and listen with sagacious diligence, and not take a single source as the be all, end all, of truth, AND never take the speech or written words, tweets or surrogates of any politician (POL) or group of POLs without fact checking, and thus subject themselves to propaganda and echo it as if true.
To do so can be seditious and dangerous in a democracy, especially today when self interest motivates the sources of our information.
Trump fumes about supposedly ‘fake’ polls giving him a dismal approval rating
The opinion that the mass media, news services which have existed in print for centuries, and on the radio and TV for over a century, knowingly mislead the public is IMO ridiculous. Of course "yellow journalism" (hate and fear mongering), errors in judgment, conflicts in interests and a few rogues exist; false advertising and demagoguery come from lips of politicians and their surrogates.
But, to accept the idea that the sources the public trusted for decades all of a sudden conspired to report false and deceptive polls and news stories is in my mind absurd. And yet, some of you reading this do.
Worse many attack the journalists and (oddly) the corporations which own and profit from marketing their product. Times changed as did the manner in which the news is promulgated with the development of 24-hours news (CNN) an the widespread Internet. The competition for viewers, and thus advertising dollars created competition among the major news organizations, and marketing of the news became a fact of life.
Thus the reader, watcher, listener needs to read, watch and listen with sagacious diligence, and not take a single source as the be all, end all, of truth, AND never take the speech or written words, tweets or surrogates of any politician (POL) or group of POLs without fact checking, and thus subject themselves to propaganda and echo it as if true.
To do so can be seditious and dangerous in a democracy, especially today when self interest motivates the sources of our information.