I help Terrorists?

[mat69]

That is very laughable.
Me and my friend came up with a lot of actions terrorists could do to create confusion as well as chaos. And those actions would be a lot worse than destroying a track, as that does happen more or less very often if there is a storm (catenary), a landslip or whatever.
But best is they keep up their witchhunt and ignore the real threat while they bug law-abiding citizens.

 

[Deeival]

American media is full of alarmists who try to scare people to increase their viewer ratings. Its retarded.

See Boston and it's inhabitants

 

[{YBBS}Sage]

American media is full of alarmists who try to scare people to increase their viewer ratings. Its retarded. Honestly now, people should really start worrying about a terrorists getting smart and intentionally crashing their car at rush-hour in a major city. Not only do you likely kill people, but you also deprive american companies of valuable man hours while their employees are stuck in traffic. How stupid can people get, sheesh.

Correction, American media is full of alarmists who ring the "OMG, we're all going to die bell" every night for ratings, causing the sheeple to allow -nay, DEMAND our politicians to crap all over our civil liberties.

Any sheeple-types reading this: You're not "safe." You never will be truly "safe." Get over it and quit being so hysterical. It's counter-productive, and if things keep going downhill like this don't worry about the terrorists, cause I'll cap your sorry ass.

What Mat69 said is 100% true. Sit down and think about what could be done sometime. Say "if I was gonna cause mayhem..." and see how much crap is possible. Don't do it if you're the jumpy type, though, or you'll spend the rest of your life in your basement (though, some of you already are on that track, I'm sure. )

 

[PUTZ]

Well, as a member of "the American media" I can tell you that what you say is "for ratings" is a load of crap.

More specifically, NEWS (which this would be classified under) is NOT there to get ratings, it never has and never will. The "ratings" system is used by advertising companies to more-accurately formulate their prices. Not many news shows make money, in fact, most lose money for the TV station.

Under their licenses with the FCC, (specifically TV and Radio) they MUST provide "news" to the general public. ...And anything regarding the possible harm to people is definately news. How could it not be?

It's people who ***** and moan about what they hear is what gets other people in an uproar.

--------

Point One: "Media" is there for information. The people demand it. What you see or hear might not be what you like, BUT it is happening to someone, somewhere. Someone else, maybe no you, cares.

Point Two: They gotta make money because the average beer-swilling TV-viewer isn't going to send a check to the TV station with the memo line saying "What a great story about the Iraq war, bravo!"

Image if TV was just overly-Dramatic cop shows and American Idol...puh-leez.

edit// I am not contradicting the thread's subject, which was supposed to focus on the governments inept actions...NOT the media. I will never understand why people always shoot the messenger.

 

[mat69]

Media is not there for information, media is a dealer. They deal in customers.
Basically most stations live because of the advertising, so what they do is they "sell" viewers.
At time x customers of mostly age-group z are watching...

Media is mostly about sensation but not information, as that is what customers make watch their program.
If you want to be informed the media, or better the mainstream media - so the guys who make big bucks - are the wrong choice.

 

[PUTZ]

S, media's sole purpose is to incite viewers to buy stuff?

Then why do they must provide news?

Get into your mind that viewers create the sensations...if people watch it, then the station must assume that it is popular, so you'll get to see more in the future. If you dont watch it, you most likely wont be seeing it again (read: cancelled TV shows, etc).

And as it applies to this thread, how would the media make money off of this podcast? There are no commercials. No banner adds. NO pop-up ads. No email. No phone calls. Nothing. Just information. Please explain rationally.

 

[Murphy]

Get into your tiny mind that viewers create the sensations...if people watch it, then the station must assume that it is popular, so you'll get to see more in the future. If you dont watch it, you most likely wont be seeing it again (read: cancelled TV shows, etc).

Well, as a member of "the American media" I can tell you that what you say is "for ratings" is a load of crap[...]

Doesn't that contradict your other post appart from the fact that news don't get money for advertising and therefore they aren't directly connected to ratings?
The mainpoint still stands as you posted yourself.
The news show what they think most people like to watch. And that's overly dramatic sensationized horrorscenarios.

Bad news is good news!

Btw.:
To think that the media was just "the messenger" is extremely naive.
There are three forces in a modern state:
Legislative, Judicative, Executive, and the media.

 

[mat69]

You could say that those podcasts are advertisment for their own News. So advertising to get money of the advertising.
A lable is worth nothing if none knows of its existance and if it isn't under discussion.

They may have to provide news to give the illusion of "information". As it stands now you only get what you want to get as you stated yourself and that is per se biased.

Edit: Just looked at their "World News" and frankly the word "World" is used incorrectly there.

 

[PUTZ]

@ Muphy: No. I am merely expanding upon what I wrote earlier. Advertisment dollars earned through commercials run during news shows do not make enough money for the station to consider "the show" (which encompasses any commercials aired within) profitable. The funds go directly towards ancillary items such as the anchors' salaries, equipment & station maintenance, license fees etc etc. Their big dollars are shows taken off of their network feed (ABC, FOX, NBC, CBS, CW, PBS, etc etc). Have a problem with those shows? Complain to the network.

"Ratings" are used primarily for "Prime Time" which is when the most people might be watching and when advertisers can charge the most $$$ to stations for commercials.

The news show what they think most people like to watch. And that's overly dramatic sensationized horrorscenarios.

Dont like it, dont watch it. If you have a problem something you see on a station, send a letter to the Manager and file a complaint against the station. If enough people complain and actually get off their fat asses and DO something about it; until then, they'll keep showing what people watch. It's that simple. I'm not sure how many times I have to keep saying that.

@ matt69

You could say that those podcasts are advertisment for their own News. So advertising to get money of the advertising.
A lable is worth nothing if none knows of its existance and if it isn't under discussion.

They may have to provide news to give the illusion of "information". As it stands now you only get what you want to get as you stated yourself and that is per se biased.

So, in short, the news is lying to you? They "illude" that what they say is noteworthy? All news people are linked together to form some global conspiracy to terrify the masses and make no profit? Makes sense to me.

 

[Murphy]

Dont like it, dont watch it. If you have a problem something you see on a station, send a letter to the Manager and file a complaint against the station. If enough people complain and actually get off their fat asses and DO something about it; until then, they'll keep showing what people watch. It's that simple. I'm not sure how many times I have to keep saying that.

Its not that easy unfortunately. In recent times the German media was obsessed with the "ban the videogames"-debate. People who don't know about these games see the violent images drawn out of context and everyone on this board knows the rest...
Just because one, or ten, or hundred people complain about that kind of portrayal of their favorite (and peacefull, I might add) hobby, doesn't make the news-shows tick any different.
On the contrary, complaints could even be used for the next report. e.g. "Violent gamers stand up against the fair portayal of their blood-sport" etc.
In your case, the next title might be: "trainspotters play down their terrorist-helping acts to make it appear like a mere hobby".

Hundred complaints vs. thousands of watchers
The more complaints there are, the more controversial the news is. And the more controversial it is, the more interesting it is for the public.

The ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, one of the big stations in Germany which are financed by the state) has a forum and after every report about violent videogames it is flooded by complaints. But no one cares, and the subject dissappears from the program as soon as no one wants to watch it anymore. Not a day sooner.

All news people are linked together to form some global conspiracy to terrify the masses

Maybe they don't do it on purpose, but to a certain extent, yes.
"Bowling for Columbine", the "documentary" from our favorite liberal Mr. Moore suggests the same.

 

[PUTZ]

It's different here in the states. I don't expect you to understand how it works here. In order to make legal action against a company, you've got to submit it in WRITING (typewrite...hand written...anything but the internet). If you want to go a step further, write to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and get action taken against their license to broadcast. If they are "inciting mass histeria or a riot" legal action can be taken.

The news companies and the gov't are serparate...neither finances the other.

Mr. Moore is NOT a news person at all. His investigative techniques are full of holes and are very invasive. He can go f**k himself.

 

[{YBBS}Sage]

Well, as a member of "the American media" I can tell you that what you say is "for ratings" is a load of crap.

More specifically, NEWS (which this would be classified under) is NOT there to get ratings, it never has and never will. The "ratings" system is used by advertising companies to more-accurately formulate their prices. Not many news shows make money, in fact, most lose money for the TV station.

Under their licenses with the FCC, (specifically TV and Radio) they MUST provide "news" to the general public. ...And anything regarding the possible harm to people is definately news. How could it not be?

It's people who ***** and moan about what they hear is what gets other people in an uproar.

--------

Point One: "Media" is there for information. The people demand it. What you see or hear might not be what you like, BUT it is happening to someone, somewhere. Someone else, maybe no you, cares.

Point Two: They gotta make money because the average beer-swilling TV-viewer isn't going to send a check to the TV station with the memo line saying "What a great story about the Iraq war, bravo!"

Image if TV was just overly-Dramatic cop shows and American Idol...puh-leez.

edit// I am not contradicting the thread's subject, which was supposed to focus on the governments inept actions...NOT the media. I will never understand why people always shoot the messenger.

Oh, puh-lease. If they're there to inform, then why, in the San Francisco area, do they consistently mis-identify SKS rifles as (illegal) AK47s? Could it be to sell more papers/get more viewers?

Where does the term "it bleeds, it leads" come from?

Why focus on the misinformation commonly spread by the media?

One: They spread misinformation given to them by the government in many cases (one case here: media referring to a gun as a "40 mm Glock." Two seconds of digging would show how ridiculous calling a handgun a 40 mm is...) without checking the facts first. Nothing like being a propaganda arm. I'll admit, SOME media don't do that, but a lot do.

Two: The misinformation spread by media, whether it's done on purpose (it happens, I can find some if you want), through laziness, or by honest mistake winds up being sited as a "good reason" for politicians to take rights away.

Example: Here, the media loooooves to focus on "gun violence" when the overall violent crime rates are high. Politicians use this to convince the sheeple that guns are bad and need to be banned.

 

[PUTZ]

Well, first off, go tell the people who are mis-identifying those rifles how to get it right...instead of sitting on your duff and complaining. Mis-information and simply getting something wrong is different. Again, send a letter and get your buddies to do the same, to the writer/editor/manager of whatever firm is mis-identifying the rifles and get the problem fixed.

Again, the media can only report on what is available to them...if the government says "blah blah...blah blah guns **** blah blah" they will report on it for the sake of reporting on what the government has to say about it! If you dont like it, TOUGH ****.

Gun law is something completely different than media law and is also irrelevant to this conversaton. Hell if I know anything about gun laws...

 

[BuddyLee]

Fresno has the worst News cast evar, last year a plane was landing, and its' front gear was stuck sideways (the wheel was perpendicular to the runway).

The anchorman was narrating as the plane was circling the airport. I quote... "ZOMG!! people, the plane can explode at any moment ZOMG!!" as if it would explode in midair. Ten minutes later it landed without incident... I hate that guy.POS

 

[Murphy]

It's different here in the states. I don't expect you to understand how it works here. In order to make legal action against a company, you've got to submit it in WRITING (typewrite...hand written...anything but the internet).

I think an e-mail would count too in Germany, but I'm not sure and I don't know much about laws other than every-day-laws.
Of course, if you can make a valid complaint about something the station reported you can write a letter to them and insist on them stopping their reports. If they are responsible for mass-hysteria for no reason or something as crazy as that I'm sure you'd have good chances with a letter.

What we were complaining about is not that you can't stop the media if it delivers mis-information. I guess you could do that in every democratic state.
What we were complaining about, is that the media plays down certain things while it "over-hypes" other things, based on what the masses want to see.
You can't do much about that as a single person, or as a group of persons. To simply stop watching it isn't going to cut it because there are enough people who still watch it.

Mr. Moore is NOT a news person at all. His investigative techniques are full of holes and are very invasive.

I know, but he made a film which is partly aboutnews, which is what I was referring to, and as one-sided his explanations and examples are, he still has a point.
And that point is, that the media, with all their extra-dramatic crime-shows inject fear in the public.

EDIT:
We are pretty off-topic here, and I would suggest that, in order to protect your topic, to get back to it.
I await your response and I will read it, but I will most likely not respond to it. Is that ok?

 

[mat69]

[...]
@ matt69

So, in short, the news is lying to you? They "illude" that what they say is noteworthy? All news people are linked together to form some global conspiracy to terrify the masses and make no profit? Makes sense to me.

I'm not one of those conspiracy guys, but as others have outlined and what I experience myself on a daily (!) basis is that news are filled with a lot of crap that is simply not true or incorrect to say the least.
Like the news papers here keep printing misinformation on the "Erfurt massacre" like the shooter liked CS - and yes I contacted them and linked them to the official report, but well they did not change.
That shows how much they research.
Also looking on the main sources like AP, Reuters ... shows that they often add non-confirmed stuff (in those cases it is impossible to investigate) or simply change the text. But more often the text is complelty the same, without a comment.
It gets worse on technical stuff where news tend to look like advertisers of big brands instead of questioning many parts or compareing it.

Look at those news pages, what topics do they cover or better what topics do they not cover? On what topics is the focus?
You'll experiment that stories are repeated all the time in bold letters, while others that have an impact on a lot people (like the news of probably 90% decrease of fish in the Indian Ocean) are only mentioned in a small collumn, if they are even mentioned.

And yes news stations are mostly "linked" together. They all work after the same mechanisms marekt-economy tells them. It is naive to believe that between them is a big difference, mostly that are only nuances as they try to reach a lot of people and by that tend to the mainstream (same as the Median Voter Theory).

For me media should not only report the things governments tell them, but also use their own brain, try to research, write comments on the credibility of different official transmissions ...

 

[Tripper]

-IMHO-

In the US, the news used to be exactly as Putz defined it. It was financially and editorially detached from the company which owned it, and was a loss leader for the company in that they spent more money than they made almost as a point of pride. Each of the three major US networks had bureaus all across the globe, the major newspapers as well.

The news was dry, deadly boring, but mostly factual.

This changed in the 80's. Corporations were allowed to purchase media in an unlimited fashion where once they were restricted, and these new conglomerations demanded that their news divisions become profit centers. NBC (owned by GE under Jack Welch) was one of the leaders in this movement.

The spiffy graffix and ominous music increased exponentially, as did the tendency to "editorialize." This is the big problem, IMHO. Editorials on TV used to be the geeky station manager in a bad suit talking about local issues, behind which was a giant backdrop with the word "Editorial" emblazoned upon it. Pretty straight forward.

Nowadays, entire "News" networks exist solely around editorializing, spending a vast amount of every newsday giving the audience their opinions. You can watch these channels for hours and never hear a single supported fact, yet the nonsense is being presented in a "News environment" (the desk, the suits, the monitors, basically a movie set) which implies that what you are watching is news, when in fact it is not.

Opinion and fact are now given equal weight, which IMHO, is a deriliction of duty and has contributed to the low level of public discourse in these United States.

Again, this is one old fart's opinion.

 

[Wolfstuka]

Anyways.... airliners.net also says they have the most detailed information on planes which must mean how to fly them!

 

[PUTZ]

Onoes!

 

[WickedPenguin]

For those looking to see how much control there is over what we watch - at least in terms of movies - watch Kirby Dick's documentary This Film is not yet Rated. It's an expose' on how corrupt and and corporate the supposedly family-oriented Motion Picture Association of America actually is. It's basically a form of legalized censorship, since by rating certain films certain ways they can guarantee they won't be seen by many.