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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (17809)	12/9/1998 9:59:00 AM
From: mrknowitall	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

No, Daniel, I didn't. The opinion pages are just that, opinions. The problem is with supposed "news" content. So much of what reaches final publication is specifically designed to shape public opinion vs. informing the public that a lot of it is a waste of time. I filter based on the theory that you can expect a given news outlet (such as those you put so much stake in) to adapt the story to their position. In the advocacy print-journalism world, the tools are pyramidical in nature - worst-case news headline and negative topical introduction about your subject/opponent (or their views) moves upward (i.e., toward the front page); exculpatory or remedial information moves downward into the detail-level that most readers don't delve into. The TV news folks are the best at bending stories to suit their objectives - and the key tools are called teasers; the intent is not just to pique the viewer/listener's interest to keep the fingers off the remote and stay through something else - often, the teaser is presented in the form of a question, which helps to entice the prospective audience's curiosity. Once you've developed the question in the mind of the viewer, the answer becomes a curiosity item and when finally provided, has a very strong "recall quotient," in that subjects in tests can clearly recall the item (opinion, fact, drivel, whatever) as opposed to the substance of some other 17-second news bit that wasn't placed in the form. This is the same strategy applied to supposed "news" about and from polls. The average person wants to feel commonly bonded membership in the public at large; we are conditioned to not wanting to be too far outside of the mainstream line of thought on most subjects - and the media demonizes fringes and seeks to humiliate and denigrate them and keep their "mainstream" clean of such nonsense. Polls are carefully concocted and engaged with perfectly predictable results that can then be trotted out on the stage as some kind of "news" in displacement of investigatory or reporting effort. All of a sudden, opinion is news, as opposed to finding and reporting news. This is particularly apparent now, where the supporters of moral relativism are continually pounding us with non-news about the apparent (and carefully concocted) lack of support for impeachment. Timing and release of "news" is another key difference between advocacy journalism and real journalism. Isn't it odd that the "news" about all the people who are serving time for perjury in civil cases regarding sexual matters was all of a sudden "a story with legs" after the last election? Even the inimitable liberal Sam Donaldson actually confronted a Clintonista on Sunday with the fact that he had interviewed a woman who was serving time for the same offense. Had the journalistic community been honest about the civil perjury issue, they would have presented those kinds of stories (and they knew full well they existed) well before the election and would have crafted their polls and results so as to put Clinton in the "I'm above the law" and "I don't have to follow the same rules you do" camp where he rightfully belongs. That is only one example of how we get to where we are at the behest of our cherished "fifth estate." How dismal. Mr. K.