You and I keep hearing them say it but is it true or MOOT?
One of most spoken criticisms of news organizations is that they only braze the news and do not give enough details to keep the public informed or as much as we would like them to.
They say they do not have the time to do the depth in the stories that they would like to do. Having taken a step back from this and look at it from a far perspective,
I say HOGWASH! (that is a kind word for bullshit).
For the last 20 years the time a local TV station spends on local news is up 300%. It was as I remember it, in the early 80’s 30 min for local news and 30 min for national (network) news. Today we have on most local TV stations, 90 min of local news and I have 1 showing 2 full hours plus the 30 min of National Network news and then 30 to 60 min of Entertainment News.
Problem here is they repeat the same news over and over again. These same stations could and would argue that the attention span for local news is 30 min or that they do not have enough advertisers to pay for that extended depth of news. I say again Hogwash !
They (Newspapers and Television) should have learned a great deal from the kind of stuff Ted Turner put together from their error filled ways. What I mean by that is that Mr Turner created a mega business model from the idea that news could be more in depth and profitable and 24 hours with the creation of CNN. Of course you would need to have cable or satellite to watch this and at the time he made that a profitable News organization and could not yet be viewed by 50% of homes in the US. This proves there was a void and money could be made while expanding services to the public.
Catching the business as usual media off guard in a lesson they still have not learned from.
Profit, Profits and more Profits !
Sorry to say that even Ted Turner has got the shaft from the model he created from his ever expanding merger activity and the profit model is back to normal squeezing every ounce of money from every news organization of cable news networks in general to better match what we see in the same stuff that is/has killed the newspaper business.
Is it news or blog….
1st make no mistake that this website is a BLOG (that is short for web log) . Fox news like most is more entertainment than news. In fact I would go as far as calling the O’Reilly report a video blog just like Rush Limbaugh is an audio blog. Anyone taking anything from these shows as news should only spend a day looking up the facts of one program online (not using links from their webs), that is if you did not know better before hand.
I say this most pointedly as I have for years listened to audio clips Rush would play of folks he would be trashing that I knew what the words to the speech before and after the clip was, so I was absolute about the out-of-context claims before they were even made. Hence I would ask myself, is he really aloud to do this? Yes it is entertainment not journalism as even Rush has answered himself on several occasions.
Oh.. I do listen to these kinds of programs once in a while… I like to know just how the sheep are being lead into the coral so that I may keep grazing.
I wonder just how far this garbage can go before someone crosses the line so bad that it creates riots and we have to have that free speech talk again and yes I would defend their right to free speech but not on public airwaves, hence they have all ready one-up me there as most are on un-regulated cable and taken the all the real entertainment content with them to ensure cable is free to do as it wishes with all the real profits.
My Solution…
Do not allow news organizations to have a corporate charter. Only a Co-Operative charter would work for all sides here.
Any media company or co=op that used the term “NEWS” to describe themselves could be challenged in court to be factual in their content of “NEWS”.
What? Don’t believe that? Well PBS does a fine job bringing you such great programming as FrontLine, Nova, Bill Moyers and my favorite, Charlie Rose.
In fact Bill Moyers may be one of the last great Journalist. Look him up on YouTube as there is plenty posted.
Blogs are not news and the Internet is full of them and most of them are full of shit. They are a way to convey opinion for anyone to read.
You can not rate a blog by how many readers. If 100k folks read it every day, it does not make what is said any more true. But it seems to be a new standard as I see Bloggers speaking as some kind of experts on national news media. When I see this on shows I previously had some regard for, it strips all of it away to the point I ask, Who is running this show anyway? Please tell me the guy who was to be here was killed in a plane or car crash as you are making a blogger a panel expert? What is next, Obama asks Rush Limbuagh or Glen Beck for some facts on the country?
Looking all this in the face, it scares me as soon everyone will be looking for real news and it will be hard to recognize it as most will just be telling us what we want to believe and quite possibly in the interest of corporate profits as they drive the content….. oh… is that time now….
I only hope to see investigative reporting stay alive with me as it may be the only thing that keeps me and you alive.
An interesting after-thought on Microsoft, Viruses, Corporate and Governmental Espionage and You
Yes, once again its doom and gloom for your PC and all from some code that may have been written in Russia, India or China. By now you should be reading several things into this story and start asking more questions about just what you are doing online. Let me make some Major MOOT points here…
1 The banks and every online retailer are telling us just how secure we can do our purchasing and banking online much to my own disagreement. This false sense of security has actually made our entire system venerable to attack whether it is from some young kid in Russia or the government of North Korea, China, Iran or whoever would like to disrupt/end our way life.
2 If you are upset, scared or just pissed-off, let me make matters worse and tell you that this is one of those viruses we know about, somewhat, and there are plenty more that will be modeled after this ones success has been determined even though at this point we do not know just what this conficker (also called configure) virus will get in its update on the 1st of April. But take into consideration the ones that we do not know about yet, sleeping and hopefully discovered before they execute.
3 Microsoft has a patch that, assuming you are not infected at this point, you would have got in their automatic update service. Most viruses exploit a failure in operating system or network programming (poorly written code) that is most often just band-aided-over with the patches only to be exploited again in a new way at a future time. Most viruses are not new but derived from old viruses that worked in some way but a programmer can see where the code was in error and even add some new exploits to the mix to create a better monster. Kinda like gene splitting so to speak. Every new rush to market product Microsoft has put out there has even more of these programming lapses or exploits polluting them than the last version.
Some questions you should ask yourself…
Even if bank accounts and your credit cards are as secure as they say they are with your online actions, who will guarantee the security of you PC when you log on and do business with them. Certainly not the banks or credit cards, not your virus scanner manufacture either. This is where you are most venerable. And now lets include the fact that the banks are not as secure as they would say and do not let it be known when they have had a problem as to not scare you from their new teller-less and paperless profit model. I can only guess that unless confronted with a proof positive security breach you will never know how many times your information may have been stolen as we have found out from some of the credit card companies. So you really are on your own out there and it is time someone actually told you that.
But here is a interesting MOOT point…
Microsoft when trying to disrupt every competitor, will normally just include competing software as built-in their next operating system that can not be removed. Examples like Internet Explorer (Netscape Navigator) Windows Media Player (Real Player), Microsoft Messenger (AOL Instant Messenger) so why don’t they provide a virus scanner built in as most of the viruses are from faulty code that belongs to them anyway. No, you need to buy that software, they will not build it in. “Go CONFICKER” ??? Maybe next they will charge us for each bug fix update. Boy how the auto industry would love to have a business model like that… or do they now?
Question For You Is Which Taxpayer Money Deserves Your Attention Most
While most of you are very angry about the “AIG Bonuses” as I am. Please do not let this distract you from the other 99.8% of the money AIG has of yours (maybe even more before it is over).
I am not sure if the bonus money was an intentional distraction or not but the media and public have their teeth in deep on this one.
But what is more important than Congress Grand-Standing again in an area they have no moral authority because each of them has put as much pork in spending bills in the last month via earmarks of the same amounts or more and they now are outraged and everyone is harping on the 170-216 “Million” in MOOT bonus money.
It seems a simple question to answer…
AIG was technically bankrupt and the US Government via the taxpayer is the bankruptcy judge and can easily declare the contracts for bonuses void and congress having control of all spending can easily do so.
See here now, nobody is telling you who is getting the other $169 “Billion”. It is going to other banks… no scratch that it is going to other money institutions and a few may be banks but many of whom were selling new money products called derivatives. This is the money lost when money bets money to fail and it does. Win Win… scratch that…. lose lose… Well that depends on who you are!
Bet on bet to fail???
Start asking the right questions if you want the right answers and don’t take your eyes of the Big Jackpot AIG has of yours or it too will be as MOOT as the bonus money at a future tax in your wallet.
How long can you succeed while fighting the wrong battles ?
On Tues March 17, 2009, one more big print newspaper goes down the drain. The Seattle Post Intelligencer Printed its last paper but has decided to go strictly Online Web News ONLY.
Not a big deal right, if you read this, you may not be a vivid paper reader. For those that are, it is getting to be the mark of the end of print media. Now for the current paper in question, they are cutting staff and dropping investigative reporters and keeping all the editorial staff, Now what does that tell you about what kind of journalism you are going to have. I doubt many will really like it in the end.
How did this come to be?
It is a long history of all media to maintain their own existence and force their way of doing things in a world that had other ideas that they were not interested in considering as the Internet world was expanding rapidly with new models of what folks want/need/enjoy and no longer would have them imposed on them as there are now choices and they have been asleep at the wheel.
Lets look at some flimsy arguments and stupid decisions the media in general have made in the last 12 years.
Newspapers said they could not make a profit and lobbied the FCC to allow them to buy more newspapers and they got what they wanted. They spent their money and marketing time on making a bigger paper or controlling more area and made additional profits with “redundancy elimination” (that would be the term for job cuts commercially correct) common in all mergers and acquisitions.
Radio and TV stations made the same argument with the same result.
Newspapers cried once again in 2008 as they could still not make enough money and wanted to be able to buy Radio Stations. FCC grants wish once again.
Gee, if I was in a market whos whole industry was loosing money, I think I would spend my time, marketing and money in a new market that was making money or re-invent the one I was in.
Now what do you have, the same entities can’t make any money and they are so large now it is ridiculous how much control they have over market areas and content. And for the consumer, it has diminished to the point they are not selling what anyone wants to buy. AM radio fell to FM radio. Of course AM is still there but what quality programming is there. Just a bunch of Aural Blogs that seem to have power and political intent. Oh, they do report news but just reporting news is not a big deal, many do that. Where is the investigative journalism? It dies with each passing merger and media failure.
Take this case in point:
Not so long ago, you could enjoy decent programming on TV over the air broadcasts. For those that are not sure what that means now-a-days, that would be TV programming you could watch with just an antenna connected to your Television. What happened to all the programming?
Cable companies started to buy all the movie companies. When they owned them all, you could not watch a movie on broadcast TV. You now needed Cable TV or Satellite TV. Now when you watch these same “I Love Lucy”,”Leave it to Beaver”, “Mash”, Bugs Bunny” re-runs you not only have to pay for the service that brings it to you, you still have to watch even more commercials that you did for Broadcast TV.
Now how can the Broadcast stations make any money without content. Thank you Congressmen for they great work they have done in making less competition so it costs more and gives you less. Now I am waiting for all those new Digital TV stations to show something. What can they show, there is no content for them except very old C & D Movies that most are not as good as the garage videos one can watch on YouTube.Com or other great programming throughout the web and on demand.
So we now have 3 times as many Broadcast TV channels so we can watch those infomercials in vivid Digital High Definition. How long will they be able to profit from that?
The Big MOOT Point here is if you provide meaningful content, you will have an audience.
Now they all have been monopolizing on each other and the world has been changing around them and they paid little notice. Their monopolizing ways do not work on the Internet because there are choices.
A great opportunity is opening for others to now fill the gap in new business models and the voids will fill in.
I don’t really want to hear them cry not one more time to the FCC and/or lobby Congress.
They will sound like the banks wanting Congress/FCC to fix something that will allow them to control more when it is their business model that is broken.
I just refuse to feel sorry for them at this point as they have had plenty of time and warning to do something for themselves and keep choosing incorrectly. “Are They Stupid Or Something?”
Now again for the current paper in question, Why would you not want to do investigative journalism. Without that you can never be more than 2/3 of your competitor in your market area. You will never be unique !
A chance to have a monopoly on some content would win the day for them.
That is how it worked when print & radio media were the only media, and it still works.
The drive for continual higher profits year over year at their own expense is making them MOOT media !
I am reminded by recent events that Communism was never a threat to Democracy but it was a threat to Capitalism and Capitalism seems to have won the war in part. I say this as I look at recent world events (20 years) in China and former USSR republics, Central America and Africa. But it seems as of late that Capitalism may be a threat to Democracy or is it.
I actually think it could be the case in its present form.
But remembering a man I once seen on the Charlie Rose Program the startled my mind as he was thinking right up my ally. His case in part was that Capitalism was not complete because in its present form it has left most of the populations out of it. In other words, most of the Capitalist Societies populations were not being included or had an open door for them to receive loans to start a business, build a house in even its smallest forms. So they are the forgotten many who the door was closed on or never opened in the first place. No opportunity to enjoy the same services as the other half of society at no fault of their own.
It is about people and trust and a relationship that is lost when banks are so big that they do not know who you are what you really do and your real dreams and aspirations. You can talk all you want about political or religious view to folks that only want to feed/care for his/her family as talk will do little for them. They want to do for themselves but need a chance for the same Capitalism that you enjoy.
His name is Muhammad Yunus. (Please read Wikipedia Article)
What a breath of fresh air he is to the nature of problems in this area and is leading the way in Capitalism for the rest of society through micro finance. I know some of you have herd the term but it is a reality to the folks that benefit from it and has already started to change the world.
This comes not at any better time for everyone else to stand up and take notice to what this man and others are promoting.
Mr Yunus has won a Nobel Peace Prize in Economics and has many nameless wealthy folks from around the world now supporting his efforts through both putting up capitol and political action efforts to enable the same.
Please enjoy this YouTube.Com post of the Charlie Rose Program with Muhammad Yunus.
If Capitalism Invades Democracy any more than it has, The US economy may be MOOT if it only serves a few.
Perhaps we need separation of Social and Economics like we have for Church and State?
I have always been very proud of our nation in many ways even though I criticize it as most of us do. Like it or not it was the best thing around. Please notice I did use the word “was”, as time will tell, it may not be now or again. I have been ashamed of what has taken place in the last 20 years.
To sum up the root of all evils, Lobby Money!
Well, what else is there to persuade law makers to make laws to favor those who are contributing to the cause.
So who is your lobbyist? How much do you contribute ? How much influence do you have ? If you think your vote is enough, you are fooling only yourself. So listen to more lies and keep quite!
Money will change your mind, it always wins!
The Supreme Court has already decided that “money = free speach” so do you have enough free speech ? Do you exercise it ? Can you afford corporations and their lobbyist having more free speech than you ?
Obama has at least proposed we tried to break this cycle but I don’t think he can find a trustworthy person who is not or has not acted as a lobbyist.
Besides Lobbyist and trustworthy by itself could be defined in modern times as a oxy-moron.
Knowing that the lobbyist are promoting those who pay his/her check. That is why they are hired in the first place. You don’t think for a minute that someone is going to pay 6 figure salaries to promote laws in your interest as opposed to the person witting the check do you.
So, who represents you ? Your Congressman ? Your Senator ?
Why would they listen to you? Many, have no money and still will not use what free speech they have left… Voting. The money that is lobbied often makes the mind up for those that do.Unless in front of a camera for all to see during an a election cycle, would they even give you the time of day? Money has a play on the what the media will report as they make theirs through advertising dollars and the threat of loosing any of it will change minds and so has control of changing your mind as well from what you will never hear.