[mos6507]

When I hit up Google News, I'm rather alarmed at the ratio of editorials (or should I say, propaganda vehicles) vs. genuine news stories. And then you have entire channels like Fox News that seem to only concern themselves with pushing a conservative ideology. And lastly, almost every single news site has a comments system at the bottom. So the process of reading the news has gone from a newspaper or the network news where there was some expectation of journalistic integrity, where opinion was relegated to the editorial section and analysis was on Sunday morning TV, to the point where opinion has overtaken journalism.

So when you digest the news, you wind up paying inordinate amount of attention to the talkback underneath. So if it's something on global warming, then the comments may be flooded with global warming denial. This totally skews the impact that the news would have otherwise had. It's like if you were to read your morning newspaper and after every article, 1,000 mischievous imps are whispering in your ear to tell you how to react to it, positive or negative. In the past, people had the personal space to let their mind think about things but now it's just assaulted by opinion, analysis, meta-analysis, and more meta-meta-meta analysis (like this even if you like).

It doesn't help that so many of these editorials and analysts have clear ulterior motives. Almost every professional editorial seems to be motivated not by personal conviction but because he has a book to peddle or is some sort of thinly veiled corporate shill. So the plug shows up right at the bottom shamelessly. So surely, this guy or that guy is going to slam or promote peak oil because it just becomes a way to promote their wares.

There was a book that came out a while ago that attempted to explain how the internet has actually made people dumber by raising up every goober's opinion to the same level of importance and I'm starting to believe it. The whole idea of experts is going away. The marketplace of ideas has grown to the point where there is no longer any information pre-filtering whatsoever. While you can argue that the old days when information was tightly controlled was too limiting, having this sort of free-for-all is also bad, because amidst the information overload people will merely select their "experts" like a buffet. So shortonsense will have his list of denialist experts and we will have our doomer experts. But there is no vetting process anymore, and so people are just getting led astray by the most compelling manipulators who tell us exactly what we want to hear.

I think this has played a part in making people less willing to compromise, less willing to work together. It is the balkanization of ideas.

[highlander]

MOS wrote

And then you have entire channels like Fox News that seem to only concern themselves with pushing a
conservative ideology

This bit of mis-information is quoted ad-nauseum by "mainstream" sources.

Pew research found that Fox NEWS is in fact the most balanced.
The opinion shows are another matter.

The lovefest with Obama is wearing out. We should starting getting more of the real story soon.

[Chuckmak]

[Jotapay]

It's even worse than you describe in reality. The news industry news has been completely co-opted by corporations and the government to push their agendas.

It's gotten to the point that the experts that are sourced for interviews are actually many times working for the government to spread propaganda as part of a deliberate program to indoctrinate the American people.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')size=150]Pentagon used psychological operation on US public, documents show[/size]

In Part I of this series, Raw Story revealed that Bryan Whitman, the current deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, was an active senior participant in a Bush administration covert Pentagon program that used retired military analysts to generate positive wartime news coverage.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jotapay', 'I')t's even worse than you describe in reality.

[rangerone314]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West#Democracy.2C_media.2C_and_moneyThe Decline of the West;
Written in 1918, my notes in green, emphasis of text in purple...

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')is worldview also took a dim view of democracy as the type of government of the declining civilization. He argued that democracy is driven by money and therefore easily corruptible...

Spengler notes the urge of a nation toward universalism, idealism, and imperialism in the wake of a major geopolitical enemy’s defeat. He cites the example of Rome after the defeat of Hannibal—instead of forgoing the annexation of the East, Scipio's party moved toward outright imperialism, in an attempt to bring their immediate world into one system, and thus prevent further wars....(sounds alot like the bold invasions of the Middle East after decline of USSR)

Despite having fought wars for democracy and rights during the period of Contending States, the populace can no longer be moved to use those rights. People cease to take part in elections, and the most qualified people remove themselves from the political process. This is the end of great politics. Only private history, private politics, and private ambitions rule at this point. The wars are private wars, "more fearful than any State wars because they are formless." The imperial peace involves private renunciation of war on the part of the immense majority, but conversely requires submission to that minority which has not renounced war. The world peace that began in a wish for universal reconciliation, ends in passivity in the face of misfortune, as long as it only affects one's neighbor. In personal politics the struggle becomes not for principles for but executive power. Even popular revolutions are no exception: the methods of governing are not significantly altered, the position of the governed remains the same, and the strong few determined to rule remain over top the rest of humanity...

[edit] Democracy, media, and money
Spengler asserts that democracy is simply the political weapon of money, and the media is the means through which money operates a democratic political system. The thorough penetration of money's power throughout a society is yet another marker of the shift from Culture to Civilization....

Democracy and plutocracy are equivalent in Spengler's argument. The "tragic comedy of the world-improvers and freedom-teachers" is that they are simply assisting money to be more effective. The principles of equality, natural rights, universal suffrage, and freedom of the press are all disguises for class war (the bourgeois against the aristocracy). Freedom, to Spengler, is a negative concept, simply entailing the repudiation of any tradition. In reality, freedom of the press requires money, and entails ownership, thus serving money at the end. Suffrage involves electioneering, in which the donations rule the day. The ideologies espoused by candidates, whether Socialism or Liberalism, are set in motion by, and ultimately serve, only money. "Free" press does not spread free opinion—it generates opinion, Spengler maintains.

Spengler admits that in his era money has already won, in the form of democracy. But in destroying the old elements of the Culture, it prepares the way for the rise of a new and overpowering figure: the Caesar. Before such a leader, money collapses, and in the Imperial Age the politics of money fades away.

Spengler's analysis of democratic systems argues that even the use of one's own constitutional rights requires money, and that voting can only really work as designed in the absence of organized leadership working on the election process. As soon as the election process becomes organized by political leaders, to the extent that money allows, the vote ceases to be truly significant. It is no more than a recorded opinion of the masses on the organizations of government over which they possess no positive influence whatsoever.

Spengler notes that the greater the concentration of wealth in individuals, the more the fight for political power revolved around questions of money. One cannot even call this corruption or degeneracy, because this is in fact the necessary end of mature democratic systems.

On the subject of the press, Spengler is equally as contemptuous. Instead of conversations between men, the press and the "electrical news-service keep the waking-consciousness of whole people and continents under a deafening drum-fire of theses, catchwords, standpoints, scenes, feelings, day by day and year by year." Through the media, money is turned into force—the more spent, the more intense its influence.

For the press to function, universal education is necessary. Along with schooling comes a demand for the shepherding of the masses, as an object of party politics. Those that originally believed education to be solely for the enlightenment of each individual prepared the way for the power of the press, and eventually for the rise of the Caesar. There is no longer a need for leaders to impose military service, because the press will stir the public into a frenzy, clamor for weapons, and force their leaders into a conflict.

[mos6507]

RangerOne, you're doing just what I'm talking about. Opinions are like assholes. Everyone's got one. What makes your opinion more valid than someone else's? That you dug up a book written in 1918? The immediate accessibility of information means that a quick google search is all that is required to dredge up reams of "stuff" that appears to give credence to an idea. So now it's not just you making your point. It's you and a closet full of hyperlinks. But I can gather a closet full of hyperlinks about anything including perpetual motion machines, Nibiru, hollow earth, abiotic oil, and end times prophecy. So that being said, what barometer should we use to separate the wheat from the chaff, or should we merely believe whatever we want to believe since we all have our warchest of google search results?

[Jotapay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '1'). The way I see it, the type of people who are positioning themselves as the white-knight whistleblowers like your hero Alex Jones are just another form of manipulator. So FoxNews is selling a conservative-only spin on the news, and someone like Alex Jones sells a survivalist tinfoil "product", and Michael Moore sells a tinfoil-tinged liberal "product". You don't get the real truth from any of them. You get what they think their core audience wants to hear and nothing that would clash with that outlook on reality.

2. Or I take it you buy into Alex Jones' peak oil and global warming denial?

[Pops]

You're right and ranger's sig sums it up but it isn't anything new, do you think?

An ideology is by definition not a search for TRUTH-but a search for PROOF that its point of view is right

Look at a good portion of the links posted in the forums here, by and large they are posted to prove the posters POV and score a point - why else would they post? One would think those ostensibly concerned about PO would be relieved to see a spot of sunshine here and there but that is not the way it is, it's all about which "team" can score a point.

Trying to find a speck of common ground between doomer or corny is as difficult as finding a middle ground in congress, any wonder?

What has happened via the net is not that surprising, it's like otherwise extremely polite and mild-mannered people who become raving, bird-flipping maniacs in the anonymous bubble of their commuter car just because they can.