Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

NPR has always been my go-to, for what it's worth, but that's admittingly more of a talk-radio source for myself than the written word.

There is a website...

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

that provides a litmus test for various news sources. NPR and the NYT are rated the same, but I see their projections as nothing different than a normal curve of distribution. As long as something is in the range of "left-center...center....right center", it's largely a credible source that a reasonable human being can discern the truth from. It's the obvious outliers (FOX) that we all already know are ridiculous that get rated accordingly.

I don't know, but would assume, that the word "journalist" is a term used far too loosely...much akin to the idea that the 20-something bombshell/stud with no meteorology degree does the weather on the evening news and people assume he/she is a meteorologist.

You used the phrase “generally true.” I completely agree with you that truth is truth and that it’s not something on a slider, but it’s clearly treated as such. You say they don’t report falsehoods, but they reuse stock photos for stories that misrepresent reality. Wasn’t there a photo used to represent an ER in New York that was also used to represent one in Italy? Things like that absolutely are falsehoods.

Also, I agree on your WW2/Nazi example, but I’m not saying that people needed the Nazi side of the story. I’d be happy to provide a better explanation of my viewpoint if you’d like, but I’ll aim for brevity. Just keep in mind that while the Nazi example is one with a clear-cut definition of truth and morality, it gets very easy to apply the same logic to grayer areas where you think you may be in the right, but you very well may not.

Jeff said:

I can confidently say that the NYT, and the big three nightly news broadcasts, are generally truthful in reporting. Being truthful isn't the same as neutral.

I made this same statement in what you called me bullsh-t on.

No, you said all news media sucks, regardless of bias. That's what I called you on.

"Journalist" is certainly misapplied. As the print ad market slowly died, so did the quality of the craft. Pundits were all like, "Citizen journalism is the future," as if having a Twitter account replaces years of training. Reporting requires expertise and experience. It isn't just learning to write inverted pyramid style.

A lot of what is written or broadcast is intended to induce clicks or pander to a disposition. No one cares about trust anymore. When Jennings, Brokaw or Cronkite went on, they have no ****s about whether or not you liked what they were telling you, and audiences respected that.

Cable news is not news. They fill 24 hours with more talking heads than reporting. That's made everything worse.

The NYT is an outlier. Near death, they stuck to their guns and integrity and built a business that no one else wanted to be in, and I respect that. Their editorial board is separate from the news room. I find their reporting to be consistently accurate and factual. When they get it wrong, and sometimes they do, they own it and say so.

I wish people would stop treating the nightly NBC News broadcast the same as MSNBC. The 24 hour networks have personalities that present their take on the daily news. It’s a different medium.

Also, that National Review piece mentions “a recent study” that helps prove their point but doesn’t even link to it. That’s the equivalent to “a guy I know said”. I agree with sentiment though. Shaming people is just another way we’re being divided and I wouldn’t doubt for one second that the memes are originating from a foreign bot farm.

I think you all have hit a couple great points. With regards to the cable news not really being news. You have these personalities that are giving their interpretation of events that are occurring. They spin the facts into a story, throw in some what if's, and add their own thoughts to the process. How many people take this for literal news? These networks derive their revenue from advertisements, product placement, and sub fees. Your local nightly news is just a small piece of the overall content on the network. There are plenty of shows and content to draw the eye of people. The 24hr news network have only news, so what can they do to draw people in? They can add in opinions, flavor the content as they see fit, cater to an audience, bring in politics, and they have to give the viewer a reason to not change the channel or their revenue suffers.

Ask any random soul on the street where they get their information, I bet a large majority say 'insert whatever 24hr network you want'. I was once upon a time in a position where I spent the majority of my work day inside people's residences. Want to guess what channel the TV in the living room was left on all day?

Now, taking this one bit further, the consensus on this site seems to be that 24hr news networks aren't a good source, they are biased and not always fact based. However, as we have established many times in the past this site is a bunch of nerds who have assembled to discuss the inner working and intricacies of amusement parks and roller coasters. I would venture to guess that we are not the average parson who fits in the bell curve, we are probably a bunch who are more educated than the majority. That being said, how many people of the general population watch this 24hr news and take it to heart. I would bet that a large majority are working under a large amount of confirmation bias and don't know or care. Ask the general population about Fox News being right and CNN being left and they are probably well aware, and they also probably watch the one they align with and ignore the other. Confirmation bias at work.

Something else we discussed earlier was freedoms and their retention or loss. Do I agree that news outlets should be able to report as they see fit, included biases, adjust the news to fit their political stance? Not really, I think in a world of perfect journalism that all news outlets would have basically the same exact report on world events taking place, it really wouldn't matter who I watched because they would all be the same. There would be no politics involved in the news other than to report of events happening in the political spectrum. From a business perspective this would not work well, so they need to stand apart somehow. Do I support freedom of the press, absolutely, do I agree with it, not exactly. However, I firmly believe that erosion of freedoms will lead to much bigger unfavorable outcomes.

Earlier somehow WWII got tied into this discussion, during this time basically the entire world said what Germany is doing is unacceptable and needs to be stopped. The world didn't want to hear the Nazi's story because it didn't matter, what Germany was doing was immoral. However, I would bet that the Nazi's felt the exact same way about people's viewpoints from outside their regime. Remember that just 20 years earlier the US, UK, and France basically stripped Germany of its resources and forced them to pay reparations for WWI. Germany also had no representation when these hearings took place. Did we basically pave the way for the rise of a dictatorship in Germany? Along came Hitler in a time of crisis, wooed the German population with some good promises and smooth speaking, and boom, dictatorship. The people put him in power because he played on their fear and emotions during a time of crisis, and then he was in a position to alter the country as he saw fit to advance his personal agenda. We didn't really need to listen to Germany's side of the story in the 1940's, but had we listened to their side of the story a couple decades earlier, we might have avoided all of it from snowballing out of control.

If you piss off the general population enough and get them to band together, you can achieve almost anything you want. That's more or less how this country came to be.

/ManifestoBuzz

Jeff said:

Being truthful isn't the same as neutral.

This. This is what it all comes down to.

1. It's one thing to say, "This happened."

2. It's another thing to say, "This happened and here's how you should feel about it."

3. It's a-whole-nother thing to say, "This happened." when it didn't.

I think the whole "fake news" thing started because most of what people consume now is #2. And when you start blurring news and opinion, a dissenting opinion (opinons come in shades of grey) on something traditionally black & white (information is either true or false), suddenly you end up in the weird world we live in.

"2. It's another thing to say, "This happened and here's how you should feel about it."

But we have polls telling you that you should feel this way, too!

TheMillenniumRider said:

The world didn't want to hear the Nazi's story because it didn't matter, what Germany was doing was immoral. However, I would bet that the Nazi's felt the exact same way about people's viewpoints from outside their regime.

Nazis didn't feel anything, they were led by a sociopath. But what they did do is counter criticism by:

• Stoking feelings of nationalism and a better past to justify their position.
• Scapegoat groups of people globally for the nation's problems (non-whites, but primarily Jews).
• Discredit the press, and move to control it.
• Discredit the democratic process with allegations of fraud.
• Frame everything as a threat to national security to justify actions.
• Appoint friends, family and supporters in positions of power.

Does any of that sound familiar to you?

I presume you are talking about our current leader. Regardless of actions, I do not believe that he would ever have any ability of turning into a dictator. He just doesn't possess the charisma and charm needed to sway and lure the public into following him. Not to mention this country is full of skeptics. Hitler did terrible things, but he was very good at getting his way and making people follow his lead. Our leader just doesn't seem to share those characteristics.

Anyway, I can't speak about every point you made, as I don;t know if they have all happened in the past or not. I can however say that Wilson wanted press censorship, and actively pursued it. Nixon had a horrible relationship with the media and sought to discredit them. Threats to national security have been used many times in the past to push bills through congress, most recent major was I can think of was the Patriot Act.

I am not huge into politics by any means, I really don't discuss it because it doesn't lead anywhere productive. I really only ever watch the presidential debates because you can pick up a ton of information from those. I doubt that any of these plays are new by any means and have been recycled through by past leaders. The question is were any of these tactics used by people who were effective and beneficial leaders or not, I am unsure.

Where does all of this leave us for 2020? Trump or Biden??? Seems like we have to choose between the top students of the special ed class.

Can;t we just give the presidency back to Clinton, he did a good job and did it with flair, who else is going to get a handy in the oval office? He gets my vote.

He's the only president in our lifetime to serve in the office with a balanced budget. Too bad he abused his position to take advantage of an intern. He'll always be that guy, despite his achievements, and that's not a guy you want to be in history.

eightdotthree said:

That’s the equivalent to “a guy I know said”.

What ever happened to the Lemon Chill Guy?

Every job I've had has metrics. The president has metrics but do they mean anything? Why not tie their salary to performance and come up with some items for measurement. Balancing the budget, setting goals and attaining them. Or is the role just so ambiguous that it could never be measured.

Issues are rarely simple. But for simplicity sake, lets assume a given issue has 5 relevant facts and two possible approaches to address. Facts 1 and 2 point to A. Facts 3 and 4 point to B. Fact 5 is neutral. I can write about facts 1 and 2 and leading to approach/conclusion A. Everything I said was truthful. And with limited space/time, you can't report everything (on its face providing plausible deniability). But if you include facts 3-5 (also truthful) the approach/conclusion isn't nearly so clear. Like a securities law standard of can't misstate a material fact but also cannot omit a material fact to make the statements being made misleading. Which to me makes the "truthful but not neutral" approach incredibly dangerous.

"We tell the truth but pick facts which align with our world view" is an incredibly grade school like approach to journalism. Either you have the mental capacity of a grade schooler or you are appealing to people with grade school mental capacities. The latter is far more problematic (and though is grade school like in its approach can be very sophisticated).

Reagan and Clinton are the two best revered presidents of my lifetime. I think they were the most destructive. Reagan made repubs believe that debt and deficits don't matter as long as you pay lip service to them. Dems never thought you even needed to talk about them much less let them have any real influence on policy. Clinton made politicians thing balancing the budget was easy as long as you make "hard" decisions. And to be fair, talk with repub about the balanced budgets of the 90s and you will almost certainly hear it was Gingrich and the repubs who drove Bill there.

But ultimately, you had the dot.com bubble ("irrational exuberance") and boomers in their peak earning years pumping records amounts into the US treasury at the same time you had no major wars or other long term currently caused expenditures. Neither party had much to do with any of that. But in politics (and other aspects of life as well) correlation equals causation.

In those years of "balanced budgets" I think one or two were balanced without using the social security surplus for general expenditures. If you had kids in grade school and are saving for college, at the end of the year you have a college fund surplus you should just spend on normal expenses (maybe even take a vacation) and drop an IOU in your kids piggy banks. Makes a lot of sense.

Clinton would never want to come back for another stay in the White House. He knows the dynamics (largely his fortune for his first tenure) has changed dramatically.

Mulfinator said:

What ever happened to the Lemon Chill Guy?

He was laid off a couple weeks ago. Times are tough in the tourism industry these days.

GoBucks89 said:

Like a securities law standard of can't misstate a material fact but also cannot omit a material fact to make the statements being made misleading. Which to me makes the "truthful but not neutral" approach incredibly dangerous.

This feels like a variation on the suggestion that all things are morally equivalent, when clearly they are not. If you're covering the Bosnian war in the 90's, you don't have to pretend that ethnic cleansing was ok. When white nationalists are suggesting they rise up against Jews and immigrants, you don't have to take a neutral stance in reporting that either.

And just like that, our friends at NPR posted this:

The link is really long so I'm putting it here

The gist is, based on meeting specific standards, including testing, tracing, and infection rates, different states are currently on track to start lifting social distancing requirements (mind you, that's start...not "lift everything").

Ohio is, to no surprise, on the early end, with May 14th as the the current target.

Georgia is getting just a little ahead of itself.

Nothing set in stone, just another link and another model to toss into the fire.

The author astutely advises caution and common sense, however, stating...

In general, models of this sort should not be taken as literal predictions of the future. They can be useful tools for gauging the likely trend line of an emerging disease and the likely impact of various response strategies. But models are inherently subject to error because they are based on numerous assumptions that scientists can only make educated guesses about right now.

I think it does, however, offer a pretty realistic ranking of where different states stand.

Jeff said:

This feels like a variation on the suggestion that all things are morally equivalent, when clearly they are not.

If you are bringing to the table a grade school mental capacity, I suppose. Otherwise no.

Well, you know who the president is...

Sorry Gonch, "Fake News" came along because a con man saw a mark, and the mark fell for the con completely.