Michael Jackson Madness

[3113]

What? Shouldn't news services be private enterprises and make a profit? They aren't subject to the economy, they're subject to the whims of their readers and subscribers.

Well, that's just it. In the best of all possible worlds YES, they should be private enterprises to a point, but NO, they should not make a profit. Private enterprise is important because it's a bad idea to have a government run a newspaper and maybe use it as a propaganda rag and nothing else. Also good to have competing points of view.

BUT, if the newspaper is run for profit, then there is no earthly reason why it should be offering real news rather than entertainment. Didn't you ever watch Citizen Kane? That marvelous moment where Kane sends a reporter out to a non-news story of some guy's missing wife, telling him to inform the husband "We're going to search for your wife, interview the neighbors, and find out what you've done to her!"

Marvelous scene. At that point, Kane presents the idea that the newspapers can MAKE what news they like and so get subscribers and money. That they don't have to follow any code, ethics or rules, they can print whatever they like, with whatever slant they like in order to get that profit. And profit is all that really matters.

If we want news to be like science, based on evidence and facts, based on honest journalism not sensationalism, rumors, gossip or entertainment, then sorry, no, it can't make a profit. It has to be, if you will, news for news sake. Which isn't to say that a journalist shouldn't be paid for doing it and paid well, it should be able to sustain itself. But anything that goes purely for profit is going to go in the direction of junk food, asking itself: "How can I sell a lot of this with the cheapest ingredients so I make the most amount of money?" Rather than "How can I make this the most nutritional thing with the best ingredients?"

 

[sr71plt]

What private investor in their right mind would set up a nonprofit business? Even if news services were all government or nonprofit run, which is the only option you are giving them, they have biases, and those biases will creep into their reporting. Once you start deciding what to report--or even what to see in the events you are reporting--you are operating from personal bias. Whether or not you are in the business for profit doesn't effect any of that.

It's the receiver of the new services' products who need to become more sophisticated in assessing what they are receiving (which then runs up against their own natural biases).

 

[3113]

What private investor in their right mind would set up a nonprofit business?

Hmm. You're right. No private investors have ever done that. In the whole history of the world, such a thing has never, ever happened

Edited to add: PLEASE read what I write, SR. I said "In the best of all possible worlds." I didn't say it was gonna ever happen in this world.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I don't believe I have ever seen such extensive media coverage of ANYBODY. And I include Elvis, Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., all of whom were better entertainers than MJ. I even include Stalin, Princess Di, Reagan and almost anybody else. JFK would probably be comparable, but nobody else would be. It is ridiculous.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

What private investor in their right mind would set up a nonprofit business? Even if news services were all government or nonprofit run, which is the only option you are giving them, they have biases, and those biases will creep into their reporting. Once you start deciding what to report--or even what to see in the events you are reporting--you are operating from personal bias. Whether or not you are in the business for profit doesn't effect any of that.

It's the receiver of the new services' products who need to become more sophisticated in assessing what they are receiving (which then runs up against their own natural biases).

Youre correct.

But the personal bias can kill you.

About two years ago one of the local papers fired the editorial crew and replaced these neo-con mossbacks with centrist soccer moms. George Will and Krauthammer and William Kristol went bye-bye. They were replaced by COMMUNITY COLUMNISTS. "Red and yellow, black, and white, they are precious in her sight!" And we got a heapin helpin of multicultural views.

Shit like Granny's reunion with her friends from Germany. Teeny bopper prom angst. White people eat shit and suppress people of color. School teachers are starving. Literacy is racist. Pistol Whip Unbuckled Drivers. And subscribers bailed and the new crew was sacked. The present regime features a blend of pundits, right & left. And both local papers are warm to the idea of taxpayer funds like NPR gets.

 

[sr71plt]

Hmm. You're right. No private investors have ever done that. In the whole history of the world, such a thing has never, ever happened

Edited to add: PLEASE read what I write, SR. I said "In the best of all possible worlds." I didn't say it was gonna ever happen in this world.

Sounds like a great thing you could do yourself for the good of the community. Working at making it completely unbiased in the process. Good luck with that.

 

[trysail]

"The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high-school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer."

-H. L. Mencken

 

[Boxlicker101]

"The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high-school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer."

-H. L. Mencken

I would be inclined to agree, except I don't know what a prohibitionist boob-jumper is and I believe some janitors are quite intelligent and well-read.

 

[sr71plt]

I think a prohibitionist boob-jumper might be fun too. Are they in the Yellow Book?

 

[Boxlicker101]

I think a prohibitionist boob-jumper might be fun too. Are they in the Yellow Book?

I know what a prohibitionist is, and I would suppose a boob-jumper is either a person who has a great affinity for breasts, and cops a feel whenever possible or a person who physically attacks stupid people. Either way, it would not be a person noted for fairness, and being a prohibitionist would make him or her even less fair.

 

[rgraham666]

I would be inclined to agree, except I don't know what a prohibitionist boob-jumper is and I believe some janitors are quite intelligent and well-read.

I was a janitor once.

Of course as a 'liberal' some might argue against my intelligence.

 

[TE999]

Well, that's just it. In the best of all possible worlds YES, they should be private enterprises to a point, but NO, they should not make a profit. Private enterprise is important because it's a bad idea to have a government run a newspaper and maybe use it as a propaganda rag and nothing else. Also good to have competing points of view.

BUT, if the newspaper is run for profit, then there is no earthly reason why it should be offering real news rather than entertainment. Didn't you ever watch Citizen Kane? That marvelous moment where Kane sends a reporter out to a non-news story of some guy's missing wife, telling him to inform the husband "We're going to search for your wife, interview the neighbors, and find out what you've done to her!"

Marvelous scene. At that point, Kane presents the idea that the newspapers can MAKE what news they like and so get subscribers and money. That they don't have to follow any code, ethics or rules, they can print whatever they like, with whatever slant they like in order to get that profit. And profit is all that really matters.

If we want news to be like science, based on evidence and facts, based on honest journalism not sensationalism, rumors, gossip or entertainment, then sorry, no, it can't make a profit. It has to be, if you will, news for news sake. Which isn't to say that a journalist shouldn't be paid for doing it and paid well, it should be able to sustain itself. But anything that goes purely for profit is going to go in the direction of junk food, asking itself: "How can I sell a lot of this with the cheapest ingredients so I make the most amount of money?" Rather than "How can I make this the most nutritional thing with the best ingredients?"

Ideally, news should be informative, free of bias, above the fray and present the facts clearly and intelligently. In a perfect world this would be an achiveable goal.
Unfortunately the world and it's people are not perfect, nor will they ever be.

Reporting on such things as science is relatively easy...there are immutable laws of nature that leave no room for real opinion...except whether an experiment would work or not.

Reporting on things such as politics and human frailties opens the door for differences of opinion...no matter how dispassionate and factual the reporting is, it's bound to be accused of bias or favoritisim by someone. That's human nature.

Removing the profit motive from any enterprise discourages ambition, innovation and motivation. Then you have government.

The media is dependent on readers and viewers so they can tell advertisers their ads will be before a huge chunk of the public and they'll buy column space or screen time. Profits from subscribers, paid viewers and such are but a fraction of media income.

Soooo...it's MJ instead of G8 making headlines..."If it bleeds, it leads."

 

[WRJames]

Ideally, news should be informative, free of bias, above the fray and present the facts clearly and intelligently. In a perfect world this would be an achiveable goal.
Unfortunately the world and it's people are not perfect, nor will they ever be.

Reporting on such things as science is relatively easy...there are immutable laws of nature that leave no room for real opinion...except whether an experiment would work or not.

Reporting on things such as politics and human frailties opens the door for differences of opinion...no matter how dispassionate and factual the reporting is, it's bound to be accused of bias or favoritisim by someone. That's human nature.

Removing the profit motive from any enterprise discourages ambition, innovation and motivation. Then you have government.

The media is dependent on readers and viewers so they can tell advertisers their ads will be before a huge chunk of the public and they'll buy column space or screen time. Profits from subscribers, paid viewers and such are but a fraction of media income.

Soooo...it's MJ instead of G8 making headlines..."If it bleeds, it leads."

Well, I think this is characteristic of the "we're in business to make money" attitude that has become so corrosive.

Of, making money is an important part of running a business. But if it becomes the ONLY objective, things start to fall apart.

Do you think that people went to journalism school with the hope of covering MJ and OJ and the latest car chase down an LA freeway?

The other side of the coin is that very few of our so called citizens could give a shit about the G8. Maybe if we made them pass a competency test before we let them vote that would change some attitudes.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

"The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high-school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer."

-H. L. Mencken

And, if H. L. Mencken, an unjustified ego the size of a medium planet. I really wish people would quit quoting the closet Nazi. Take a look at his (finally) published diary some time. So he was a great stylist. That does not in any way indicate a great intellect or any wisdom whatever.

 

[trysail]

And, if H. L. Mencken, an unjustified ego the size of a medium planet. I really wish people would quit quoting the closet Nazi. Take a look at his (finally) published diary some time. So he was a great stylist. That does not in any way indicate a great intellect or any wisdom whatever.

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/mencken.htm

From Gore Vidal's introduction to Marion Elizabeth Rodger's The Impossible Mencken:

"... A babble of words that no one understands now fills the airwaves, and language loses all meaning as we sink slowly, mindlessly, into herstory rather than history because most rapists are men, aren't they?

Mencken is a nice antidote. Politically, he is often right but seldom correct by today's stern standards. In a cheery way, he dislikes most minorities and if he ever had a good word to say about the majority of his countrymen, I have yet to come across it. Recently, when his letters were published, it was discovered that He Did Not Like the Jews, and that he had said unpleasant things about them not only as individuals but In General, plainly the sign of a Hitler-Holocaust enthusiast. So shocked was everyone that even the New York Review of Books' unofficial de-anti-Semitiser, Garry Wills (he salvaged Dickens, barely), has yet to come to his aid with An Explanation. But in Mencken's private correspondence, he also snarls at black Americans, Orientals, Britons, women, and WASPs, particularly the clay-eating Appalachians, whom he regarded as subhuman. But private irritability is of no consequence when compared to what really matters, public action...

******​

... Matthew Arnold wrote that a "style is the saying in the best way what you have to say. The what you have to say depends on your age." Mencken certainly said what he had to say about the age that he had been assigned to. When asked why, if he could find nothing to "revere" in the United States, he lived there, he replied, "Why do men go to zoos?"

Religion as generally practiced by the Americans of his day, he saw as a Great Wall of China designed to keep civilization out while barbarism might flourish within the gates. He himself was a resolute breacher of the Great Wall, and to the extent that some civilization has got through, he is one of the few Americans that we can thank. Plainly, so clear and hard a writer would not be allowed in the mainstream press of today, and those who think that they would like him back would be the first to censor and censure him.

As for Mencken himself, he wrote his own epitaph in 1921 for The Smart Set: "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl." I realize that he has, viciously, used the G-word and, even worse, the long-since-banned H-word. But there he is. And there we are, lucky we."

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencken





Vidal

 

[voluptuary_manque]

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/mencken.htm

From Gore Vidal's introduction to Marion Elizabeth Rodger's The Impossible Mencken:

"... A babble of words that no one understands now fills the airwaves, and language loses all meaning as we sink slowly, mindlessly, into herstory rather than history because most rapists are men, aren't they?

Mencken is a nice antidote. Politically, he is often right but seldom correct by today's stern standards. In a cheery way, he dislikes most minorities and if he ever had a good word to say about the majority of his countrymen, I have yet to come across it. Recently, when his letters were published, it was discovered that He Did Not Like the Jews, and that he had said unpleasant things about them not only as individuals but In General, plainly the sign of a Hitler-Holocaust enthusiast. So shocked was everyone that even the New York Review of Books' unofficial de-anti-Semitiser, Garry Wills (he salvaged Dickens, barely), has yet to come to his aid with An Explanation. But in Mencken's private correspondence, he also snarls at black Americans, Orientals, Britons, women, and WASPs, particularly the clay-eating Appalachians, whom he regarded as subhuman. But private irritability is of no consequence when compared to what really matters, public action...

******​

... Matthew Arnold wrote that a "style is the saying in the best way what you have to say. The what you have to say depends on your age." Mencken certainly said what he had to say about the age that he had been assigned to. When asked why, if he could find nothing to "revere" in the United States, he lived there, he replied, "Why do men go to zoos?"

Religion as generally practiced by the Americans of his day, he saw as a Great Wall of China designed to keep civilization out while barbarism might flourish within the gates. He himself was a resolute breacher of the Great Wall, and to the extent that some civilization has got through, he is one of the few Americans that we can thank. Plainly, so clear and hard a writer would not be allowed in the mainstream press of today, and those who think that they would like him back would be the first to censor and censure him.

As for Mencken himself, he wrote his own epitaph in 1921 for The Smart Set: "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl." I realize that he has, viciously, used the G-word and, even worse, the long-since-banned H-word. But there he is. And there we are, lucky we."

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencken

Your point being?

 

[trysail]

Your point being?

He was anything but a "closet Nazi;" he was, in fact, the antithesis of that description.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

He was anything but a "closet Nazi;" he was, in fact, the antithesis of that description.

An anti-closet Nazi? I can accept that.

 

[trysail]

An anti-closet Nazi? I can accept that.

I have expressed myself poorly.

To be clear, Mencken thought Hitler was a buffoon and repeatedly said and wrote as much. That fact classifies him as an anti-Nazi.

 

[sr71plt]

"Ideally, news should be informative, free of bias, above the fray and present the facts clearly and intelligently. In a perfect world this would be an achiveable goal."

*Sigh* I thought we covered this. In a human world, unbiased "news" cannot be achieved. It's physically impossible--unless every human (reporter) in that world has had exactly the same history of experience in exactly the same order--which is physically impossible.

Nothing is seen and/or described separate from the prior experience and unique, existing biases of the one doing the seeing and describing. That's physically impossible. In the current world and in the perfect world. Nope, can't happen.

Might turn your attention to some that has some chance of being doable.