Saturday, July 16, 2016

Paul Jay — What Do We Mean By "Real" News?


Very short. 

Someone should tell economists that there is a real world.

Over the past several decades, news has morphed into infotainment if not outright entertainment in the quests for more eyeballs, since advertisers pay based on the number of viewers and the categories into which they fall.

Most large news organizations maintained news departments that were not only domestic but also international. Very expensive. And it didn't seem tomato that much difference with respect to eyeballs. 

So news departments were cut back and now news consists largely of news people reading off teleprompters scripts that were often prepared by agents with an interest in the angle of spin of the presentation. The objective is more persuasion than information.

Real News Network
What Do We Mean By "Real" News?
Paul Jay

2 comments:

Ryan Harris said...

"The main idea behind it is that there is a real world. There's an objective world. And it can be known. It can't be known in any absolute way. Our knowledge is always approximate based on the stage of human development, what's possible to know at any given time, and of course our own ability to grapple with facts and get to know it. But there is an it. There's a real thing there. It's not just a matter of opinion, what the world is."

But sometimes it isn't enough. We know there was a coup. But we don't know why. We know Erdogan sees Gülen. We know the Russians think it was the Americans (they see Americans everywhere). We know the opposition think it was a false flag by Erdogan. We know the americans and europeans see the military as responsible. We'll probably never know, because Erdogan's government will make facts fit their narrative. I don't think understanding reality is enough to have an useful understanding of the world. It is only by studying peoples motives, ambitions, lies and exaggerations that we can understand and speculate a bit about possibilities.

Six said...

True, and people can describe the exact same thing very differently based on differing perspectives and yet both be completely honest.