Do you trust the mainstream media?

Discussion in 'Conspiracies' started by Bowser, Oct 11, 2016.

  1. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    I think you have too much faith in right wing media. Trust should be earned. Unfortunately, consumers of right wing media never hold right wing media accountable for truth and honesty.

    Wheras mainstream media consumers always hold mainstream media producers accountable for truth and honesty. That's the difference.
     
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  3. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Mod Hat ― Self-defeat, and other notes

    Most of us have been around long enough to see a certain cycle complete itself at least once, in which an advocate decides to make a point in a deliberately offensive way, and then complains that people got offended: You can't even have a discussion with these people! they lament.

    In recent years, it's even gotten so transparent that they will do these things at the same time.

    My point is that you are certainly welcome to question whether or not a presidential candidate boasting of committing sex crimes is relevant to the election or not, but deliberately doing it in a way that gets your post struck for being deliberately and profanely offensive is hardly an unfamiliar behavior around here.

    Your post is struck; your question remains in the quote above; please don't do that again.

    Thank you.
     
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  5. river

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    Ah.. no .

    The " media " use to tell the facts . Nowadays they chose sides and only report what is allowed , to be reported .
     
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  7. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    No, that's false. The news is the news is the news, particularly "big news"
    It is all reported, although certain slants maybe taken by different political arms.
    eg: The biggest news this century was probably 9/11: Did anyone not report it? Did anyone say it did not happen?
    What was reported was the bias by any particular side. eg: Iran may have suggested it was an inside job.....Other biased aspects may have suggested even more incredible bias.
    Sensationalism as I have also mentioned is another aspect that needs be considered and weeded out.
     
  8. river

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    river said:

    Thats it pad ?
     
  9. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    How do you know any of what the Western media write is true? As if the US media do not design propaganda to benefit the US elite (note, not the US people, but the US elite).

    If you hear both sides, you are better informed, have a much better base to find out who is wrong. By the way, there are some rare exclusions where the Western press writes reasonable things, for example http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...-cockburn-propaganda-we-consume-a7373951.html
     
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    They told that something has happened. But they essentially reported only one version of what has happened, the official one. All other versions are restricted to "conspiracy theorists", and it is forbidden for any "reasonable" person even to consider them. The only way they are mentioned in mainstream media are some refutations of some weak points of some of the "conspiracy theories".
     
  11. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, the obviously evidence backed correct one, not withstanding your usual paranoid doubt mentality".

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  12. river

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    Sometimes pad I wonder if you are .......a plant .

    Just saying
     
  13. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    LOL. Thanks for the nice joke.
     
  14. The God Valued Senior Member

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    If 'anyone' here thinks that mainstream media or journalism is unbiased, fair, undistorted, free of pilitical inclination and epitome of truthfulness...then such 'anyone' is quite naive.
     
  15. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Yeh, ok, abbreviated to:

    "The mainstream media is a stinking pile of gossip and dogshit.
    Rather than focus on serious issues of this election, recently it is a distraction of who touched whom inappropriately.

    What in hell does any of that have to do with the job of president?"

    works for me.
     
  16. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I think that it's important when observing the media to try to separate news from opinion. By that I mean separating reports of things that objectively happened from journalists' opinions about what it all means and what everyone should think about it.

    That's often an extremely difficult task since in the absence of a breaking news event of international significance, the choice of what is and isn't news is itself a matter of opinion. What appears above the centerfold on newspaper front pages or leads off TV news programs is entirely an editorial decision and reflects the editors' personal views about what their audience should believe is most important.

    Unfortunately, I don't think that the intellectual/moral/class interests of most journalists really coincide in any way with my interests.

    That's why I think that it's helpful to get news from a wide variety of sources, representing a wide variety of agendas. I don't assume that any of it is unbiased (it's all journalistic opinion after all) but it does present a spectrum of viewpoints. It's foolish to just mindlessly trust the American NYC/Washington DC leadership elite axis, just as it's foolish to believe everything that Putin's media in Russia or the Chinese communist party puts out. Sometimes people really do need to pay attention to what dissenting voices are saying and try to think for themselves.

    We are lucky that the internet makes it easier to do that.
     
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  17. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    I suggest that the fact that you believe anyone takes anything you say as gospel, evidenced by what you have said in print, in both science and politics, is an even bigger joke.

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  18. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    As usual, you have wild fantasies about what I believe. Why do you think I believe anyone takes anything I say as gospel? Any quote which would support this abstruse claim? But, no problem, for some people it seems funny to invent what other people believe, and find this funny.

    Say, paddoboy believes that Santa Claus really exists, evidenced by the many fairy tales he believes

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    . No, this is not what I do. I have much more fun laughing about people who really believe the official 9/11 fairy tale. And even openly admit it.

    By the way, about media fakes, here some news about the top child actor of the White Helmets, http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/10/assad-says-the-boy-in-the-ambulance-is-fake-we-show-why.html Here some more pictures and a bonus video of the same actor: http://rusvesna.su/news/1476642213
     
  19. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    My mistake, they certainly don't.
    Except the evidence shows I accept what is most supported by evidence...

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    The official 9/11 strory as detailed in the western press after the event, is still evidenced today, not withstanding any contrary unevidenced nonsense you "secretly" suppose.

    With the rest of your inferences, who ever has said that war, any war is anything but brutal? and unhuman....
    Your problem Schmelzer is that your so called attempt to see things from a ' middle of the road perspective" so as to convey a supposed unbiased opinion on your part, is doing the exact opposite, and showing yourself and your weird extremist policies as just that.
    Perhaps if you were more upfront and open, instead of your sneaky insinuations, and implications, you would'nt be criticised as much as you are.
    It's that "supposed fence sitting" that detracts from any credibility you ever had.
     
  20. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    I do not "suppose" any particular version of 9/11. My position is that the official version is too obviously nonsense. And the handling of the story by the mainstream media is to obviously based on lies, as usual. This does not mean that I know the truth. It only means that I'm sure the official version is not the truth.
    Your problem is, again, that you freely invent what I think. As usual without any quote, because it is a complete lie. I do not support at all the idea of some ' middle of the road perspective'. Nor in physics (there is no middle of the road between string theory and my ether), nor in politics. Seems like you confuse two very different things: To hear all sides, with to take some middle ground position as the result.

    Forget about it. If people reasonable hear, in a court, the claims of all sides, and take a lot of care that the suspect can defend himself, the point is not to end with some mild "middle of the road" decision. The decision may be radical - the suspect may be completely innocent, or completely guilty - despite the fact that one hears all the arguments from above sides.

    If I would care about the number of people who criticize me, I would be a sheep applauding the mainstream like you. I do not care about the "credibility" related with a lot of supporters. Nor in science, nor in politics.
     
  21. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Do you have any reputable evidence supporting your nonsensical claim?
    Consider, that question was asked again and again and again of another Maverick, that was implying the Hulse Taylor binary Pulsar system was not professionally handled. He was banned.
    You have just done it again re your nonsense on 9/11,

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    The problem actually is your own warped definition of things as per your defining of adhoms. You want to throw bombs and then hide somewhere.

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    Oh on that I couldn't agree more! Like river, you wear your "alternative thinking" like a badge of honour and then accuse others of being sheep because they align with the bulk of evidence.
    It's just your way of being noticed.
     
    Last edited: Oct 24, 2016
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    The claim that an official version is a lie makes sense. Always. And, given that you accept only official media as reputable, there can be, even in principle, no "reputable" iyo evidence against a mainstream claim.

    Oh? So, even if I do not support any particular position at all about what has really happened, I support some "middle ground" position?

    But, may be this is what your thinking and decision making process is all about? You want to follow the mainstream. But the mainstream is not a particular position, but a wild mixture of very different positions, even if one excludes the clearly non-mainstream positions. And the middle ground of all proposed positions is, in fact, what defines the mainstream position. So, it is, indeed, quite natural: You reject a few openly non-mainstream positions, do not hear them at all. Then, from all what you hear - what is roughly mainstream - you do not exclude anything as wrong, contradicting itself, or so, but find some middle ground.

    And this technique, which you apply yourself, is all you can imagine, so you think I apply it too, if I propose to hear all sides. But, no, what I propose is to hear all sides, to be able to decide myself who is right and who is wrong. So, I will never end in some middle ground. If the information is insufficient to decide who is right, I do not decide (as long as I don't have to).

    So, it looks like your "middle ground" accusation is simply a cheap projection of your own strategy.
    My definition of ad homs is the usual one. They are very weak arguments, but cheap, which makes them easily accessible. So, sometimes they are useful.
    Once you have nothing but these cheap ad hom arguments, I often note that your argument is ad hom - in particular, this makes sense whenever my arguments are not ad hom, but about the content. You have to live with this, given that you are unable to argue about the content. Such is life.
    There is a big difference between the mainstream position and the bulk of evidence. You mingle them, because there is an overlap. The evidence, as well as the mainstream, heavily support quantum theory, GR and the standard model of particle physics. So I support them too - following the bulk of evidence, you support them, following the mainstream.

    But there is a lot in modern physics where evidence remains silent. So, there is no evidence at all supporting string theory or GUTs or supersymmetry. But they are mainstream - so you support them. I don't. Because I follow the bulk of evidence - but once there is none, I'm free to try my own way.

    The "badges of honor" look like another projection. You think in terms of "badges of honor", because this is what the mainstream gives to its rulers. To receive a badge of honor, one has to be mainstream, so you follow the mainstream to have at least some chance to get such a "badge of honor". Unfortunately, the sheeple do not give badges of honor to the sheep in the center. It gives badges of honor to its rulers. And to become a ruler, one has to make own decisions - instead of computing some middle ground from averaging the opinions of all the sheeple around.
     
  23. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Certain components of the media(90+ percentage of which is owned by 6 corporations) choose what they will focus on.
    Ergo, my above complaint.

    Much like if they were comparing 2 basketball players A and B, and they constantly praised the shooting ability and defencive abilities of A, and never mention that A is 7 ft tall and B is only 5' 8", and a much better ball handler/dribbler.

    What they will talk about is often more important than what they will say.
     

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