Canadian Speed
People have the idea that there’s free press in the US
It is.
keeping their ratings high
Which usually means scaring everybody into thinking the world is going to end. Because people don't read the news when it says what they want it to say - they read it when they think the **** has hit the fan.
This is by far one of the greatest examples of how US media are popularity/ratings whores.
It's a good example of bias anyway.
At first everybody (media) was outraged and made him out to be this huge bad guy and people bought it. Then as time passed, people at home really started to think about it… Opinions polls started coming back showing that people were starting to favor Clinton and that they didn’t think it was such a bad thing over all.
The press recognized that Clinton had broken the law, so they attacked (nothing boosts ratings like scandal). But they didn't bash him as much as they would... say... a republican president (because they lean to the left). The result? People heard about the scandal but didn't understand why it was important, so public opinion bounced back.
All of a sudden, it’s no longer Clinton who’s the bad guy, but the prosecution who are the bad guys.
Keep people reading and watching, that's the rule. Which means that the press will smear whoever they have to - especially if it's the republicans going after a democrat president who has broken the law when he was under investigation for sexual harrassment.
Why do you think they have opinions polls anyhow? To see how the public feels about certain issues so they can cover them on the stance that most people would like them to be covered.
They have opinion polls because people like to hear about what everyone else is thinking. They aren't doing this stuff so that they can concentrate their biased coverage, they're running stories like this so that they can get viewers. Anything to get viewers and readers, which, like I said, means that they usually have to scare people into picking up the paper. The more shocking the story the better.
When did news become about opinion and rating and less about facts and telling the real story behind the stories?
When the general population stopped being intelligent enough to understand the facts and the difference between opinion and fact.
In my opinion, the best news comes from England. The BBC does a good job of letting their people run with stories and report things the way they are, not the way the public or government would like the issues to be perceived.
They report it with their own personal slant, just like almost everyone else in the news industry. I've seen enough BBC to realize that they're heavily biased as well.
But then again, it’s hard to keep people supporting a war they already don’t want, if they get 100% of the story and see what’s really going on and the hurt and destruction taking place in a country they don’t know anything about except for what they’ve been spoon fed by guess who… The media.
How did you get your information about Iraq? Did you go there? Talk to the people on the street? Get the insiders take on the sitution? Or did you get your information "spoon fed" to you by the media?
...oh and the destruction going on in Iraq right now isn't caused by the US.
It’s a vicious circle. In order to get the real story you've got to read about five different papers and then sort out the facts from opinions... Then, maybe then you'll get a few lines that make sence and give the real story... Or you could read British papers...
This indicates bias to me. You started out right with needing to cross-reference stories between sources and ignore opinion that gets thrown in. BUt when you say that the British papers get it right you give away your own bias.
What a punk, he could've at least went to camp david or something. Not the OVAL OFFICE! Anyway, yeah, good point about media spin and fickleness.
