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southwest88
05-12-2015, 01:21 PM
True enough : learning to live in a post-fact society / Farhad Manjoo. , c2008, John Wiley & Sons
Subjects


Mass media -- Objectivity -- United States. (http://javascript<strong></strong>:;)
Mass media -- Political aspects -- United States. (http://javascript<strong></strong>:;)
Journalism -- Objectivity -- United States. (http://javascript<strong></strong>:;)
Journalism -- Political aspects -- United States. (http://javascript<strong></strong>:;)
Conspiracies -- United States. (http://javascript<strong></strong>:;)
Truthfulness and falsehood -- United States. (http://javascript<strong></strong>:;)

Notes


Introduction: Why facts no longer matter -- "Reality" is splitting -- The new tribalism : swift boats and the power of choosing -- Trusting your senses : selective perception and 9/11 -- Questionable expertise : the stolen election and the men who push it -- The twilight of objectivity, or what's the matter with Lou Dobbs? -- "Truthiness" everywhere -- Epilogue: Living in a world without trust.

Summary


How truth has been trumped by "truthiness" - a groundbreaking look at the technology and psychology behind the fictions now flooding the news. Comedian Stephen Colbert's catchy neologism captured something essential about our age: that people are now more comfortable with ideas that feel true, even if the evidence for those beliefs is thin. In a subtle and fascinating exploration, Salon writer Farhad Manjoo explains what's powering this phenomenon. He explores how new technologies that give us control over what we see and read have caused "reality" to split across political and cultural lines, allowing opposing groups to subscribe not only to different opinions from one another, but also different facts.- from publisher's description

[B]Length v, 250 p. ; index, chapter notes, no pix

(Links are illustrative only)

V. good, an explanation of the fragmentation of the news media in the US, & how & why people can now increasingly select the reality (the news outlets, blogs, Internet) they prefer & are comfortable with. If this theory is correct, we're never going to go back to objective news - unless the public should demand such a return. Given that everyone believes that their thinking is rational - & anyone who disagrees is either biased or foolish - rationality is in for a very long slog.

PolWatch
05-12-2015, 01:24 PM
summation: if you want to believe it....that's good enough!

southwest88
05-12-2015, 04:53 PM
summation: if you want to believe it....that's good enough!

It's worse than that - most people don't even notice that they're favoring one side over the other - How they perceive leads them step by step to create their own reality. The author looks @ football footage seen by partisans on both sides - the one side always sees infractions, fouls, etc. only by the other team, & never by its own team. The fans of the other team do the same thing - they see only their opponents' infractions, fouls, & so on - never their own sides'. Whereas an impartial audience - or someone not attached to either side - sees a like amount of infractions on both sides.

The author also cites Lou Dobbs - who used to schmooze (while covering financial news) with the CEOs & CFOs of big companies & get along with them very nicely. But as Dobbs moved out of covering the upper strata of the ultra rich, a funny thing happened to him. He became stridently populist, railing against the very people he used to have chukkers, bloodies & barbies with. It's a strange World, no doubt about it.

Manjoo argues that there are structural reasons that the mass media are abandoning objectivity - & that we can expect more of the same. He also explains why & how local TV news tends to be Scheiss in disguise. (I feel immensely better to know that - I thought I was merely becoming cranky in my dotage.)

PolWatch
05-12-2015, 04:57 PM
I usually watch the local Fox network for local news....until I noticed that they include 'stories' promoting TV shows. I was really surprised. Now, I tend to get most of my news on-line. Pretty tiring having to look up the same story on 3 or 4 sites to try to learn facts without slant.

OGIS
07-19-2015, 02:44 PM
I usually watch the local Fox network for local news....until I noticed that they include 'stories' promoting TV shows. I was really surprised. Now, I tend to get most of my news on-line. Pretty tiring having to look up the same story on 3 or 4 sites to try to learn facts without slant.

One must today use the old Soviet method: read several sources, then - based on your knowledge of the orthodoxy-of-the-moment and which talking heads are following which Handlers - distill out the truth from the various lies. Assume, for this exercise, that NO ONE is telling the actual truth, and that everyone is spinning the few facts that come out of the exercise.