Comments on: Blogs and newspapers

By: qwan

qwan — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 16:26:25 +0000

Turn the other cheek is a wonderful philosophy and reading the headline this morning about hand cream, and matches and bombs and terror – I thought along similar lines.

That the whole thing has got out of hand, and out of context. That we are playing right into their hands. What is the phrase … the “oxygen of publicity” ?

Perhaps if we just took deep breaths, stopped running round screaming “ah terror, civilization over, civil liberties must go, worst threat ever ever ever you know ” … and just got on with watching the footy, visiting the corner shop and cooking our tea, maybe the whole high pitched shrieking – look at me, look at me – would just eventually shrivel up and die.

Or maybe there’d just be no more footy, shops or tea ?

By: Charles Barton

Charles Barton — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 03:31:54 +0000

My great revelation about media accuracy came when I discovered that Palestian leaders had claimed in the Arab lanhuage press on numerour occasions in late 2000 and 2001, that they had manipuated event during and after Arial Sharon’s visit tothe grounds of al-Aqsa in order to trigger the Intifada. This has largely been ignored by the European and American media, which vew anything not said in an European language to be irrelivant to the derermination of facts. Evidence that Palestinians played an active role in the outbreak of violence in 2000 is also inconvient for media recapitulation of a Palestinian narritive which portrays the Palestinians as never being actors, only victums in their own history.

By: Clarice

Clarice — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:35:28 +0000

Represenatives of the media do not like to have their credibility questioned

But yet, regardless of what Popper says, the facts of the matter that you mention, namely time constraints, access to information, prejudices and so forth, all dictate that their credibility should be questioned, in the name of accuracy and “truth”. Too much emphasis, I fear, is placed on “freedom” and not enough on responsibility. Freedom of the media to present limited or distorted information either explicitly as “fact”, or implicitly, knowing full well that that is how it will mostly be understood, is not a freedom I desperately want to fight for.

By: Jherad

Jherad — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 18:17:13 +0000

I read somewhere (I think it was a Greenslade article at the Guardian) that the downward trend in printed media seems to be fairly consistent across the board, barring the odd specialist publication like ‘Kerrang’. Certainly ‘teen’ and ‘celebrity news’ mags seem to be hit hard, with readers apparently turning to the internet for their gossip.

I’m of the opinion that, at least regarding MSM on the internet, the pricing model has yet to be perfected. I’m not about to start paying £1 per article from the Independent, or sign up for a yearly subscription. Advertising based models look interesting, such as Salon’s ‘watch this advertisement and get free article access for the duration of your cookie’ – though I have no idea how much profit they make from this. Viable?

By: Charles Barton

Charles Barton — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 17:27:36 +0000

The journalistic process involves the selection of of facts in order to generate narritive. This is both a hasty process, due to the time pressures, and one which is subject to distortion. Juornalists may not be in possession of relivant facts, or due to their personal prejudices, they may ignore facts. Journalists may simply be lazy, and not sort through avaliable facts, in order to come to reasonable conclusiions. Bloggers have access to alternative sources of facts through the internet. They may taked more time to think through issues of fact, and narrative construction. Thus bloggers at best engage in an on going critical conversation about and with the media. Represenatives of the media do not like to have their credibility questioned, yet as Karl Popper pointed out, criticism is the essence of a free society. Blogging serves truth.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 10:05:26 +0000

corner shop abouve my flat

How I wish that were true. A third floor cornershop, with customers traipsing past perfectly servicable ground-floor flats to get to it. That would require a pretty fine selection of loss-leaders, I reckon.

I’ve corrected the conceptual error and the spelling error in the post now. These comments can serve as a reminder to posterity of the upside-down world I almost lived in.

By: KKiller

KKiller — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 09:54:10 +0000

*cough*

You mean a corner shop “abouve” his flat.

By: Clarice

Clarice — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 22:30:41 +0000

Yes, that would be sad. But he could diversify, find new income streams. He could make a questionnaire and give it to all his customers and local residents asking what products they wish he would sell, and in what quantities they would buy if he did. In the words of Porpoise Pit, “you can’t stop progress”.

I love the immediacy of this post, especially the concept of having a corner shop above your flat. Love it.