The American Freedom Alliance Asks: Is Real News Dead?
Is the real news dead?
Some might declare it a superfluous question: they say the news is long dead, already a rotting corpse with very little left to remind us of its earthly existence.
Certainly the last decade has seen very significant changes in the way we hear, read, and see the news. But while the rise of internet sources and the development of social media might be transforming the way we receive information, the question remains: is any of it making the news more reliable or believable?
That is exactly the issue that will be addressed at the American Freedom Alliance’s upcoming conference, Is the Real News Dead?, taking place at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, on June 13 and 14. Over one and half days, panelists drawn from a variety of media and political perspectives will discuss and debate vital questions about the reliability of the news we receive from all sources.
The conference topics themselves are provocative and demanding: Are news organizations in crisis? Who owns the media? Who owns or will own the alternative media? What is the role of celebrity in shaping or influencing the news? What are news services’ true priorities?
The panels will be composed of bloggers, journalists, newscasters, and commentators drawn from all political orientations, and will feature film screenings as well as keynote presentations.
Among the 30 participating speakers and presenters will be commentator Hugh Hewitt, filmmaker Robert Greenwald, talk show host John Ziegler, and blogger Brad Friedman. Several Pajamas Media personalities will also be on hand, including Roger Simon, Ed Driscoll, Stephen Green, Owen Brennan, and Sonja Schmidt.
Registration is $200 for a full day of panels and activities, and includes lunch and a 200-page source book. The books of many of the participating speakers will be available for sale.
Whether you believe that the news is dead, on life support, or a throbbing, thriving powerhouse of truth and veracity, this is a conference you will not want to miss.
Find details here, or call the AFA office at (310) 444-3085.
If it isn’t dead it is at least on life support. Better get a candle and check for respiration.
Even Fox News isn’t immune. Saudi investment money (IIRC 7-8%) with Murdock have ensured there will be few stories about Saudi Arabia or islam – and none of them in a negative light.
‘Is Real News Dead’?
OH YEAH! A large number of the population (sadly) gets its news from titillating nonsense like ‘The TODAY show’, ‘Good Morning America’ and other like minded dumbing down programs.
These same people have enabled people like Oprah, Maury Povich, Jerry Springer, Janine Garafalo, Rush Limbaugh, Hannity and other self-serving folks to be multi-millionaires/ billionaires.
Just about, and the corresponding rise in disinformational rubbish mills like Fox News and most of the blogosphere hasn’t exactly helped. Imagine a world in which even getting an accurate sports score means having to be highly skilled at Internet searches — that’s where we’re heading towards at the moment.
Yes, better to have MSNBC give you the wrong scores because they feel the actual results were not “fair” or politically correct.
The Italian Tea Party is now discovering the poor quality of event reporting from their elite media: http://templeofmut.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/dutch-tea-party-report-japan-and-england-host-events-too/
The MSM is not only not dead, heck, it can’t die. It’s too big to fail!
As a last resort, good ‘ol Uncle Sam, aka: Uncle Obama, will step in and “save” all the news that’s fit to print (guess what news that is). After all, along with the push for net neutrality, it just makes sense to have the government operate, regulate, and regurgitate the political spin filtered in advance to ensure that no one’s feelings get hurt (read: Muslims) and that only “fair and balanced” coverage (FNC won’t be around to claim copywrite infringement) is provided (fair and balanced defined as far-far-left on one side and far-left on the other).
what is “real news” ? What you are looking for is the “unvarnished” truth although at times it is hard to come by
the one thing that the Internet has done for us is to breakup the academic/media monopoly over the presentation channels
and this is critical
I was discussing this one night with my dearly beloved mother, professor emeritus of English at WMU and special ed instructor for remedial reading
“Oh! the Internet is awful!” she exclaimed, “anyone can say anything he wants!”
I had been using bulletin boards for some time by that time and I had already learned: on a good BBS service: if you make an incorrect or incomplete statement you are going to get yourself corrected, and usually promptly. You can’t float any “bull”.
I tried to explain this but my mother didn’t want to accept it.
this brouhaha over the Israeli blockade is and example of specious news reporting as good as they come
on the one hand you have the major news trying to show Israel as a tyrant, suppressing humanitarian aid, and killing people in the process
on the other hand the truth is that humanitarian aid is not suppressed; it just needs to go through inspection. The reason for the inspection being that the thugs in Gaza want rockets to fire at Israel and with bigger rockets they could hit more targets.
But the “mainstream” news continues to push the specious argument regarding the humanitarian aid.
What everyone here should remember: specious arguments like this are preferred as a pretext for war
News is not dead and never will be. Even in the old Soviet Union news traveled by samizdat and most people knew that whatever Pravda and Izvestia printed was a lie. Thus the saying, “In the Truth there is no news, and in the News there is no truth”. (If you don’t know what the quote means do some research.)
So, the real problem that ABC, CBS, NBC and the rest of the left wing press has is that I, along with lots of others, no longer believe that they are telling us the truth. They have become as Pravda and Izvestia, media organs of the state. Lots of Americans simply don’t watch their news programs or read their papers and that means that there are fewer eyes on the commercials they run and their corporate sponsors know that. Is it any wonder that the Obama administration wants to prop them up with federal money and tax the new media to do it?
TV news was the beginning of the end. I used to read the Washington Post. The paper had a bias, but the bias showed itself in which facts were deemed important enough to be at the beginning of the story. The headlines were often misleading. *But* if you read to the end of the article, you would eventually read aspects that showed reality to be much more complex than the headline would imply.
TV news is another matter. There simply isn’t enough time to do a real story, so all you get is the headline version – i.e. all bias. Part of the problem is that people are addicted to the headline version. They want sound bites, not too many facts which get more and more confusing as they pile up. TV news still sells, print does not. The alternative media gives you more choice in which kind of bias you get, but it doesn’t give you the whole story either.
The article and discussion format of pajamasmedia is better than most. But the articles are too short. And the site has to make money. An idea – take a tip from the old newspapers. Give authors/editors a way to pick the split for the “rest of the story”. Put the facts most relevant to the concerns in the first page. On subsequent pages, details that are more difficult to chew because they don’t fit precisely with the narrative can be revealed.
Hey – sometimes I’m too tired and stop at the first page too.
THe mainstream media is dead and dying because it’s no longer FREE.
Witness the Thomas lynching…. traditional media marches in lockstep behind anything Israel does. Step out of line and your career is over.
America is under occupation by a foreign nation and the 2% of the population that advocates for that countries interests – even when those interests harm America.
THAT is NOT a national press corp… its Zionist propaganda.
The internet is still a place where people who disagree can find like minded others… until of course the 2% majority gets control of websites… kind of like this one.
Re: #7′s comment.
Right on. In my wanderings around the globe I’ve found that what I witnessed was quite different than what was reported in the Main Stream Media. I have no faith in the major US networks so-called journalism. They are a bloody joke.
Unbiased reporting is an oxymoron equivalent to ethical lawyer, and honest politician.
It has seemed transparently obvious to me that the American MSM has been pathologically lying, on a daily basis, for years.
They almost universally see their main responsibility as forcing liberalism and Marxist Socialism onto the nation, while destroying any information, ideas and people that might conflict with that.
As part of their zealous mission, they abandoned truth, fairness, and even rational thought long ago. They no longer really have anything to do with gathering and presenting news. That is merely the most convenient cover.