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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jjkirk who wrote (97791)	5/12/2003 9:28:29 PM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 281500

I should be more attentive to the creative solutions you and your fellow travelers offer to solve these knotty problems. I’m not actually a journalist, though I once was, in a peripheral sort of way. I do have a lot more respect for the profession than many people do. I have an innate tendency to admire any organization or profession that is consistently pilloried by both the left and the right. This admittedly reflexive reaction has even led me to a certain fondness for the IMF and the World Bank, though I’m well aware of their shortcomings. When I see the major media consistently demonized by the left (“the corporate media”) and the right (“the liberal media”), I figure they must be doing something right. I think most reporters are pretty honest about telling it as they see it. What they see is of course influenced by their own cultural backgrounds and ideological prejudices, which is why it’s never wise to rely on a single source – or even a variety of sources from a single nation - for news. My own biggest concern in the news world is not with the major media, but with the consumers of news, and with the huge variety of fringe sources and blogs that are now accessible. This leads to the tendency to use publicly available news and analysis as sources of affirmation, not information: people find sources that tell them what they want to hear, and stick with them. This is not conducive to good thinking: it’s always necessary to look around and see what the other side is thinking, and to consider the possibility that there are probably sharp people with legitimate points on the other side of the picture too. My worry in US politics is not the left or the right, but what seems to me to be a growing level of polarization and hostility between them. I think both have pieces of the puzzle, and I hope to see some more moderate, compromise-oriented candidates emerging. Not likely, but I still hope.