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Can we ever trust NBC news again?

Debate Information

The following was posted by NBC news and is suppose to be the vote on the resolution by the House limiting the powers of war.  The problem is not the arguments being presented but the if you scroll to the end and lookk at the overlay that says it is HR 5078 and look at the vote tallies it looks as if it is an overwhelming bi-partisan vote which we all know it was not.



Just for reference:

H.R.5078 - Prison to Proprietorship Act

H.Con.Res.83 - Directing the President pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces to engage in hostilities in or against Iran.

 

How can we trust anything they say or post after they post something like this?



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  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5965 Pts   -  
    If you are "trusting" anything any media says, you are doing it wrong. The right way to obtain information is to look at hard facts and draw conclusions for yourself, and only keep opinion pieces and interpretations as possibilities.

    Being able to trust people is a great trait, and you are going to be very popular and loved if you treat people with trust by default. However, trusting people who explicitly get paid for pushing biased stories - that is going to far and just being naive.
    Happy_KillbotBlastcat
  • all4acttall4actt 305 Pts   -  
    @MayCaesar

    I pay attention to.many news sources.  I also do my own research of subjects that interstest me.  I just thought it needed pointing out that some news sources are completly unreliable.  Which I agree most are. 

    It is a matter of seeing past the bias and litsening to what may be fact and either researching it or watching it play out.  It helps to realize when your watching, reading or listening to be able to decipher whether or not the person speaking is a reporter or a political commentator.
  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @all4actt

    By the same, how can we trust you now??  Did you listen to the actual video? There was 2 separate vote on 2 different issues, at 1:10.30  the chairman announces this new vote and what it's about clearly...  
    AlofRI
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • all4acttall4actt 305 Pts   -  
    @Plaffelvohfen

    You are correct I did not watch the whole video.  Next time I will be more careful.

    This does not change the fact that the better conversation is that NBC and other news organizations do not do their due dilligence anymore to get their stories right before broadcasting or printing them.  It seems that the old journalism rules have been thrown out the window.
  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @all4actt

    I think it's not as bad as most pretend it to be... Most news organizations are biased, yes, the 24h news ones are the worst because there never is enough actual "news" to fill 24h cycles, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, so they have to rely on shock factors, make it appear worst than it is, because it sells...

    But even those are not biased in the way most people would think (that is left or right, republican or democrat), a few are of course (FOX obviously), most of the so called "mainstream" media do not push a actual political agenda, what they do instead is they'll "dress" news, use loaded words and such but in the majority of the time, the facts will be what they are... When you read CNN, MSNBC, and FOX to a lesser extent (because they do push for a political agenda and will outright lie on their "opinion" shows like Hannity), but usually just get rid of any and all qualifier and overblown adjectives in the reporting and what will be left, a vast majority of the time, will be the factual news... 

    Being and staying informed is not a passive activity, one has to work for it, but most people are lazy and just want to be comforted in their prejudices... 

    Anyway, the US have started to be a fantasy land where facts and truth doesn't really matter, since the Mayflower's pilgrims landed. A fantazy land where people think they can create their own realities, a place where the Truth is relative and anything goes... It started with the pilgrims but a balance was maintained until the 60's where things got really out of hand... The rise of "post-truth" and "alternative facts" we see on the right can be blamed on the 60's hippy movement really... This tendency to believe the most outrageous claims is present on both sides of the political spectrum... 

    Read or search for Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland: How America went haywire: A 500-year history, very interesting in this regard...
    piloteer
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • piloteerpiloteer 1577 Pts   -  
    @Plaffelvohfen

    I'd say the philosophy from the 60s that questions information and where it came from and what motives are behind it is postmodernism. But now, nobody questions any information, they just flat out reject its validity and assume the motives are malevolent. I wonder if this propensity to reject information will some day become a rule and only an elite group of rulers will be the only ones who will have access to reliable information. Sometimes our rights are taken away because we want them to be. I will definitely check out that book, so long as it is free on kindle. If it's not, I will steal it online because the first step to reclaiming our rights to reliable information is to steal and infringe on all copyright restrictions.  
    Plaffelvohfen
  • piloteerpiloteer 1577 Pts   -  
    @Plaffelvohfen

    OK. Maybe the "stealing" of intellectual property thing is a tad overboard, but you get the idea. 
    Plaffelvohfen
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5965 Pts   -  
    @all4actt

    People constantly talk about how journalism used to be better in the past, but where do these claims really come from? Journalism is as old as humanity and has always been extremely biased. Accounts of biased journalists come as far back as to the Ancient Greek times.

    To me, it seems that the only thing that changed relatively recently is accessibility of information. Journalists overall have never been particularly impartial people; today it is just easier to see how biased they are, given that a lot of articles exposing journalists' lies are now within just one Google search away.

    There was a funny experiment back in early 90-s in Russia, called "Lenin was a mushroom", and I highly suggest everyone interested in the subject looks up its version with English subtitles. The goal of the experiment was to show that people are willing to believe anything, even the most absurd things. The result of the experiment was that, by the end of the program, many people watching it genuinely believed that Lenin was a mushroom, rather than a human, despite extreme absurdity of the arguments used in support of such an inane claim - because people back then simply could not imagine that someone would lie about such important things in such an outrageous manner.
    Nowadays, within a few minutes of the program being shown there will be multiple articles on the Internet exposing the ridiculousness of the arguments used. We did not have this just a couple decades ago, so, I would say, we are better off in terms of the ability to obtain accurate information than we have ever been before. Does not mean that people are always actually going to do that; people quite often are quite happy with living in their informational echo-chamber and never questioning anything. But even so, on the overall scale, people are far more critical of information they are receiving nowadays than ever before, which is a great thing. It shows that, perhaps, Bradbury and Orwell were wrong, believing that people's willingness to take anything for granted will be their doom.
    Blastcat
  • piloteerpiloteer 1577 Pts   -  
    @all4actt

    Old journalism rules have been thrown out the window and we have only the public to blame. If we are going to demand round the clock saturation coverage of any and all topical issues, we have to understand that deadlines for stories are going to be rushed and not every single detail will be ironed out. In the late eighteen hundreds, newspapers were delivered once a week. Then it was twice a week, then everyday. When the radio and television were created, newspapers needed to compete, which in turn caused a proliferation of news coverage that caused our modern information overload. I feel like the best method for gathering information is by utilizing various different news sources and realizing where they converge on coverage and where they interject. That can help us to build a more informed opinion of topics.      
  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @piloteer

    Regarding Kurt Andersen, there's a good many Youtube videos where he discusses it. 

    Here's a brief 5 min. interview on BBC about it... He's better in interview than on stage (TED style), and at his best when writing... ;) 
    piloteer
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
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