Michael Jackson trail media mega-fail

[Darren Dirt]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-thomson/one-of-the-most-shameful_b_610258.html

sure this article is talking about events of just about 10 years ago, but reading this pissed me off re. how salacious material > FACTS when it comes to the "24 hour media" industry ... and it's only gotten worse since then.


"pajamas" made better headlines than truthfully reporting a cross-examination that crushed the prosecution's case. 

Makes you wonder how many other situations do we the public perceive opposite to reality (or at least slightly skewed) due to neglectful -- if not horribly and intentionally dishonest, profit-motivated -- reporting and mass-repeating of soundbites (instead of ... oh I dunno ... the FACTS?)

[Mr. Analog]

This concept of bread and circuses is new to me

Makes you wonder how many other situations do we the public perceive opposite to reality

What is reality? Only what you can perceive.

Very often I am more interested in the person telling the story than the story itself, there sometimes lies the grey area of truth.

[Darren Dirt]

While I agree that distortions and modifications due to the bias of the reporter is something you just can't avoid since we are human data-gathering machines, I *do* have a problem with blatant omission of relevant facts.

In this specific case, the MJ trail #2, the media circus is a great example of that kind of crap, whether it happened due to profits and producers, or media personalities getting a hate-on for a weird celeb, the fact is that key facts were not shared with the public, as detailed item by item in the HuffPo article.


To be clear, hey I'm human and all that, so a reporter hinting at their personal opinion of a situation during their story, or choosing to repeat again and again the most "juicy" elements of a case, fine I can understand that ... but completely ignoring what is objectively true and contrary to the angle/spin you/your producers are attempting to sell to the audience -- unforgiveable! For it not only sullies "your" credibility in the future, but really the entire Fifth Estate becomes more and more untrustworthy in the eyes and minds of those who find you out. We The People need to be able to trust the "free press" or we're just one step closer to a state-controlled state-puppet media machine :cough:dubyaadministration:cough:

There's a reason so many folks "trust" Jon Stewart et al for the news -- because even when there's satire and irony as the FLAVOURING of the soup, at least its made with a TRUTH base... feeding up viewers a hearty serving of Stuff The "News" Organizations Sometimes Keep Quiet.

[Mr. Analog]

The Fact: A wine glass was dropped

How this is interpreted is going to be biased by your viewpoint no matter how you cut it, as a glassmaker, as a hater of wine glasses, as a hockey player indifferent to wine...

Is there a twisted love/hate relationship between the media and celebrity? I think so.

Does media bias towards celebrities in the United States stem from the dominant Protestant Christian belief in some Western cultures that rewards come to those that work hard and the common stereotype that working in the entertainment industry is not "hard work", so to see one of the glorified elite come tumbling down, particularly one who was eccentric and also a visible minority, not something that the consumers of news are going to have a great deal of interest in selling to John Q. Walletbutt?

It's good to question everything (reminds me of an earlier post...) but it's also good to keep your wits about you as well. Earlier this week I read that the Edmonton Capitals were suspending operations for 2012 because the North American League didn't have enough teams participating to make for viable competition. The way some media outlets sold the information it made it sound like they were "quitting" when in fact they were the 2011 Champions for the inaugural season of the North American League. Why sell it like that? Well in Capital Hockeytown there is no end of schadenfreude in seeing a non-traditional (i.e. not hockey or football) pro sport fail (I don't know why this is, maybe some kind of twisted validation of concentrating on hockey/football rather than other sports?). Again, they made it sound like something was one way but if you listened to the information given it wasn't wrong just sort of incomplete.

Yes these are table flipping moments for some of us but the other side of it is at least we still have the ability to find this stuff out and always be wary of your source and what they have to gain by telling you what you want to hear.

As for Bush's administration "controlling" the media well, I'd be much less worried about which face the Republicrats (or is it the Demopubiclans) put in charge of the armed forces in the US and MORE concerned with the actual lobbyists who control the policy making, the people who lobby policy are also the ones in control of the Media.

Of course it really helps when you have a puppet that wants to finish Daddy's war dancing on invisible strings.

/drinks more wine (didn't actually break glass)

[Darren Dirt]

The Fact: A wine glass was dropped

Well, this is a single fact. If at the same time as the wine glass was dropped your wife screamed and a neighbor heard it and ran in the room and saw red stuff on the floor, and someone in the room didn't mention the wine glass being dropped but acknowledged repeatedly "yes, Mr. Analog was in the room, his wife was screaming, and I saw some red liquid flying" again and again, that's a more similar situation -- the omission of a key detail (whether or not THAT gets reported in a skewed way or not, it's far better than being ignored and the audience not knowing of its existence).

[Mr. Analog]

You kind of missed my point and made your own again

The glassmaker will write about the glass.

The hater of wine will write about the cause.

The hockey player will write about hockey.

The truth is present in all those sources, but it's really up to you to figure out what is "real".

You could rely only on facts, but editorializing paints the picture that makes things interesting and you cannot editorialize without having an opinion which is inherently biased from your point of view.

Whether or not a news source is something you trust is up to you. It's a shame how the media handled the whole MJ affair but, like the man says, that's entertainment.

[Darren Dirt]

The truth is present in all those sources, but it's really up to you to figure out what is "real".

You could rely only on facts, but editorializing paints the picture that makes things interesting and you cannot editorialize without having an opinion which is inherently biased from your point of view.

No, I got your point ... I was just saying that the aspect of the HP article that really clicked with me is not that a biased subjective POV was shared by journalists as "objective reality" with the audience, but that key elements of the reality were omitted. And the audience would have no way of knowing, and thus would think/expect that IF there was something they didn't know then it was inconsequential, and certainly not in direct conflict with what most of the media were presenting as the "complete story". And thus it got me thinking how much worse it is nowadays, with 140-character attention spans etc.


and PS: "that's entertainment" is understandable when "Showbiz Tonight" JJ Hammer etc. are doing the picking and choosing of what they want to report ... but it's certainly not an excuse when it's Wolf Blitzer or any other "News Organization" talking head.

[Mr. Analog]

Ok, we're on the same page then.