Comment Re:Why would news outlets CARE if it's manipulated (Score 1) 86
engage in actual journalism or something, instead of echoing press releases
It's far worse than that. Almost all "news" is worthless, speculative, time-wasting trivia. Either that, or poorly-informed, badly thought out "opinion pieces". If you're bored on a weekend, try buying a "quality" newspaper, and cut out every article in it that you might honestly be able to say is important for you to know about or that contains reasoned argument supported by verifiable facts. Years of worthless "news" indoctrination makes this a tricky exercise. You might be tempted to think that knowing whether Michelle Obama has visited a school in the Bronx is important, or that a man who got drunk on board a flight to Norway is "news." No. It isn't. It's useless trivia. So friggin' what if Vladimir Putin is riding a quadbike? Why should I care? A self-important "editorial journalist" thinks family life has been eroded by video gaming because a single study funded by Families Against Video Games says it does. Are they proposing any further research on the subject to further test this hypothesis? Are they themselves an expert in the field? No? Then why the hell should I care about their personal opinion? Really - they should just fuck right off and the fact that they are even in print is an insult to anyone buying the paper.
I guarantee you that you will not be able to cut out more than five articles in any newspaper that actually answer the description of informative, actionable, relevant information about things that directly affect your life, or things that you might be able to affect should you choose.Yet we have conditioned ourselves to treat things like who wins an Olympic medal as more important than welfare reform. We're mesmerised by shit like whether Sylvester Stallone's son was a drug addict or not - as if it were something even remotely worthy of our attention. It's not - it's garbage. A total distraction. And a lot of storied that should be in the news aren't because of that.