Paul Ryan booed at AARP event in New Orleans

[Guest EXPAT]

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-paul-ryan-booed-aarp-20120921,0,6615741.story

[Guest hitoallusa]

Well he also made some good points as the article points out.. The best thing is for Obama to finish what he started in his second term and see what happens. The problem is that not all democrats are ideal as it is the case for republicans.. As long as we have compassion for one another and have sound thinking ability we will profess. I think we do. I hate when the media feeding information with their own perspective own things but that is the reality that we have to deal with..

[AdamSmith]

I hate when the media feeding information with their own perspective own things but that is the reality that we have to deal with..

You might do well to recall what Jefferson said:

"Had I to choose between a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to choose the latter.

As Sen. Sam Ervin observed during the Nixon administration's efforts to quash publication of the Pentagon Papers and otherwise muzzle the press, "That is an eloquent and wise statement. You either have a free press, or you don't. In order to secure the inestimable good a free press brings, it is necessary to put up with its inevitable evils."

[JKane]

My problem is that we don't have a free and unfettered mainstream press anymore, we have an entirely corporate dominated one. Favorite description of Fox "News" I've ever seen:

"Fox News: Billionaires paying millionaires to tell the middle class to blame the poor."

So I think we desperately need to re-introduce media ownership, media market domination, and "equal time" types of regulations RFN!

In the internet age I don't believe complete censorship can ever be a problem again. Wikileaks makes the Pentagon Papers look like nothing!

At the same time we have bullshit like Infowars getting gullible people riled up about inconsequential stuff, instead of the things that affect them which they could actually influence...

How'd we get on this topic though?

[JKane]

Oh yeah,

I hate when the media feeding information with their own perspective own things but that is the reality that we have to deal with..

I didn't seen anything objectionable in that account. The media holding somebody accountable and pointing out inconsistencies in their claims is journalism, and it's been sorely missed!

And it's about fucking time seniors realize they're the majority of Romney's 47% of tax scoffing deadbeats and Ryan especially has Social Security and Medicare targeted for destruction!

[AdamSmith]

We got onto the topic from my responding to hitoall's repeated theme that the media distort, play favorites, ride their hobbyhorses, etc., etc.

My point being, well, yes, all that is endemic to the media being the media.

Question is, in the current political climate, do you dare to advocate today's pols putting their hands back into media regulation, without throwing out the baby with the bath? Or, rather, drowning it?

Viz. e.g. the British press laws, and how far they have IMO trampled speech rights in the name of strengthening libel protection.

[JKane]

We got onto the topic from my responding to hitoall's repeated theme that the media distort, play favorites, ride their hobbyhorses, etc., etc.

My point being, well, yes, all that is endemic to the media being the media.

Question is, in the current political climate, do you dare to advocate today's pols putting their hands back into media regulation, without throwing out the baby with the bath? Or, rather, drowning it?

Viz. e.g. the British press laws, and how far they have IMO trampled speech rights in the name of strengthening libel protection.

I'm entirely against regulating the content in any way, other than perhaps requiring a huge flashing fucking EDITORIAL Chyron across the screen when the show in question on a "News" channel is not actually fact-based...

What I'm suggesting is attacking it from the business side. In the America we all grew up in one senile old coot (a foreign-born one at that) would never be allowed to own a major network, local broadcast stations, many cable networks, (formerly) a chief way of distributing cable (DirectTV), a major film studio, and several newspapers in a single media market... let alone almost all of the markets!

[AdamSmith]

I didn't seen anything objectionable in that account. The media holding somebody accountable and pointing out inconsistencies in their claims is journalism, and it's been sorely missed!

To loop back in this thread -- there it is. To hitoall: there ain't no such thing as purely objective journalism. Can't exist.

First sentence of the first article of the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics says:

Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

Note the word interpreting. That is a central, essential, inescapable component of the value of good (repeat: good) reporting. J-School 101 hammers over and over that even the straightest news reporters and editors, intrinsically and of necessity, exercise judgment in deciding what to cover, how to cover it, what facts to empasize, in what relation to other facts. Good hard-news reporting cannot escape the newspaper's responsibly deciding on and imparting an implicit point of view and set of judgments about what is really happening.

Point is, to be good, it must be done with the highest self-awareness and self-criticality, and public honesty about this. There is the difference between Murrow, Cronkite et al., and today's Murdoch stable among many others.

Separate point: Back to JKane's advocacy of reinstituting common-sense regulation to prevent media monopolies. I agree, but as I said, today's pols, when trying to reform banking, cannot even just say, OK, we will just go back part and parcel to Glass-Steagall; instead we get this tortuous thing we have now, which only quarter-fixes the mess, if that. What gives you hope they would be any more capable or willing to fix media ownership law any more intelligently?

My fear is that if the current Congress gets anywhere near media law, they will make it an even worse bungle than it is now -- ending up ignoring the ownership problems, and instead veering down the rathole of content control. As they showed themselves sorely tempted to do -- under cover of purporting to do the opposite -- with Internet regulation.