Journalists bring us the facts. Not Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and other media celebrities but the journalists who write the stories from which HRC draws information and links for us in Notes after the Letter. Democracy cannot survive without journalists, the Free Press. Trump told Americans how much we need these reporters, “truly t…
Journalists bring us the facts. Not Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and other media celebrities but the journalists who write the stories from which HRC draws information and links for us in Notes after the Letter. Democracy cannot survive without journalists, the Free Press. Trump told Americans how much we need these reporters, “truly the enemy of the people,”.
Americans know what they are paying for food, gas, utilities, rent, repairs....etc.
'Inflation surged 6.8% in November, even more than expected, to fastest rate since 1982
'Excluding food and energy, the CPI(consumer price index) increased 4.9%, in line with expectations.
Surging prices for food, energy and shelter accounted for much of the gains.
Inflation accelerated'
'Excluding food and energy prices, so-called core CPI was up 0.5% for the month and 4.9% from a year ago, which itself was the sharpest pickup since mid-1991.'
'Price increases came from familiar culprits.'
'Energy prices have risen 33.3% since November 2020, including a 3.5% surge in November. Gasoline alone is up 58.1%.'
'Food prices have jumped 6.1% over the year, while used car and truck prices, a major contributor to the inflation burst, are up 31.4%, following a 2.5% increase last month.'
'The Labor Department said the increases for the food and energy components were the fastest 12-month gains in at least 13 years.'
'Shelter costs, which comprise about one-third of the CPI, increased 3.8% on the year, the highest since 2007 as the housing crisis accelerated.'
'The Federal Reserve is watching the data closely ahead of its two-day meeting next week.
Central bank officials have indicated that will begin slowing the help they’re providing in an effort to tamp down inflation.' (cnbc) Link below.
My comment might be better placed slightly above, but I “liked” the rigor of Fern’s comment, so decided to post here.
First point: I think this forum holds journalists to an absurdly high standard, especially since there is no governmentally funded journalistic organization (CBC in Canada, BBC in the UK) with a mandate that makes it hard to interfere with their product.
MSM is entirely corporate with the exception of PBS. Corporations can be expected to want a return on their money. So therefore all journalism will be more or less slanted - to the left or to the right depending on the corporation.
Throw in the “human factor”. It is huge, as it is in every walk of life, including whatever you and I worked in. News flash: people make mistakes. Egregious ones at times. They form cliques and want to be part of the “in” group. They are ambitious and that can drive bad judgment. They deal constantly with the cares of their own life and that can sometimes intrude on their work performance. They have professional rivalries.
Given all this, I think that American journalism is in a golden period. It has had to fight off, in the cases of newspapers, its possible demise in the age of computers. The best can now claim along with Mark Twain, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
The rise of serious alternative journalism (Daily Beast, BuzzFeed, Mother Jones) has driven the standards of MSM up.
I watch CNN, The Rachel Maddow Show, and CBC. I read the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, and the Washington Post daily, as well as the Atlantic, New Yorker, and other what used to be called “periodicals”.
I see the same mistakes, perverse headlines, and false equivalencies that you do. But I don’t take a “throw the baby out with the bath water” stand. I get piqued by some of what I read/see but am informed and sometimes enthralled by what I read - Barton Gellman’s latest article in the Atlantic was a masterpiece, for example.
The Mueller Report, which came out about three centuries ago it seems, landed with a thump, followed by a yawn. (I’m leaving Bill Barr’s machinations out here.) The reason for the yawn was that 90% of what it contained *was already in the public domain*. Dogged reporters had ferreted out every major story. Much as I would have liked a “smoking gun” that swiftly nailed Trump’s sorry ass to the wall, in retrospect my disappointment dimmed. And my respect for the work of (largely) American journalists soared.
Put simply: we live in a golden age of information. (And a shit age of mis(dis)information).
I refuse to get exercised by errors and seeming bias in MSM. Errors should not be the big story in how we evaluate them.
If you want to know what’s happening, you can easily find out. If you want trenchant analysis to help shape your personal position on an issue, it’s there for the taking. When you absorb enough of it, then you can spot journalistic malpractice and work your way around it.
I worked 45 plus years in education and saw first hand human frailty too often. People in institutions screw up - sometimes horribly. And yet I am incredibly proud of my profession. The good outweighs the bad by streets.
You’re in a grave way in the United States now. But your journalists are doing their level best to give democracy a fighting chance.
And beyond all that, if our standards tend to a desire for the superhuman, there is one Professor Heather Richardson Cox.
On Dec. 3, Dana Milbank had a piece in the Washington Post pointing out that journalists' efforts to be evenhanded often betrayed their own beliefs and gave support to the dishonest liars among us.
His research has been challenged by Nate Silver, whose bailiwick lies in that field. I have no opinion of worth to give to that dispute, but again I think it a refreshing example of vigorous intellectual debate.
Evenhandedness is an extremely challenging concept, as slippery as a bar of wet soap. I have noticed over the past ten years a much more nuanced understanding of what it means to be evenhanded.
Thus there can be arguments in perfectly good faith by people of character as to whether MSM’s handling of a particular situation is evenhanded.
The egregious offenders who obtrude upon our consciousness (Fox eg) are called out. It does no good. They are both purposeful and shameless.
Media literacy should be a foundational part of every child’s education. When I left teaching in 2017, lip service was paid to it (maybe 2-3 weeks in a single English course in but one of a student’s years in high school. Much, much more instruction (at least in Canada) should be devoted to it. And professional development time should be mandated so that teachers learn it rigorously, as well as being trained to filter out their own biases as best they can.
Journalists bring us the facts. Not Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and other media celebrities but the journalists who write the stories from which HRC draws information and links for us in Notes after the Letter. Democracy cannot survive without journalists, the Free Press. Trump told Americans how much we need these reporters, “truly the enemy of the people,”.
Americans know what they are paying for food, gas, utilities, rent, repairs....etc.
'Inflation surged 6.8% in November, even more than expected, to fastest rate since 1982
'Excluding food and energy, the CPI(consumer price index) increased 4.9%, in line with expectations.
Surging prices for food, energy and shelter accounted for much of the gains.
Inflation accelerated'
'Excluding food and energy prices, so-called core CPI was up 0.5% for the month and 4.9% from a year ago, which itself was the sharpest pickup since mid-1991.'
'Price increases came from familiar culprits.'
'Energy prices have risen 33.3% since November 2020, including a 3.5% surge in November. Gasoline alone is up 58.1%.'
'Food prices have jumped 6.1% over the year, while used car and truck prices, a major contributor to the inflation burst, are up 31.4%, following a 2.5% increase last month.'
'The Labor Department said the increases for the food and energy components were the fastest 12-month gains in at least 13 years.'
'Shelter costs, which comprise about one-third of the CPI, increased 3.8% on the year, the highest since 2007 as the housing crisis accelerated.'
'The Federal Reserve is watching the data closely ahead of its two-day meeting next week.
Central bank officials have indicated that will begin slowing the help they’re providing in an effort to tamp down inflation.' (cnbc) Link below.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/10/consumer-price-index-november-2021.html
My comment might be better placed slightly above, but I “liked” the rigor of Fern’s comment, so decided to post here.
First point: I think this forum holds journalists to an absurdly high standard, especially since there is no governmentally funded journalistic organization (CBC in Canada, BBC in the UK) with a mandate that makes it hard to interfere with their product.
MSM is entirely corporate with the exception of PBS. Corporations can be expected to want a return on their money. So therefore all journalism will be more or less slanted - to the left or to the right depending on the corporation.
Throw in the “human factor”. It is huge, as it is in every walk of life, including whatever you and I worked in. News flash: people make mistakes. Egregious ones at times. They form cliques and want to be part of the “in” group. They are ambitious and that can drive bad judgment. They deal constantly with the cares of their own life and that can sometimes intrude on their work performance. They have professional rivalries.
Given all this, I think that American journalism is in a golden period. It has had to fight off, in the cases of newspapers, its possible demise in the age of computers. The best can now claim along with Mark Twain, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
The rise of serious alternative journalism (Daily Beast, BuzzFeed, Mother Jones) has driven the standards of MSM up.
I watch CNN, The Rachel Maddow Show, and CBC. I read the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, and the Washington Post daily, as well as the Atlantic, New Yorker, and other what used to be called “periodicals”.
I see the same mistakes, perverse headlines, and false equivalencies that you do. But I don’t take a “throw the baby out with the bath water” stand. I get piqued by some of what I read/see but am informed and sometimes enthralled by what I read - Barton Gellman’s latest article in the Atlantic was a masterpiece, for example.
The Mueller Report, which came out about three centuries ago it seems, landed with a thump, followed by a yawn. (I’m leaving Bill Barr’s machinations out here.) The reason for the yawn was that 90% of what it contained *was already in the public domain*. Dogged reporters had ferreted out every major story. Much as I would have liked a “smoking gun” that swiftly nailed Trump’s sorry ass to the wall, in retrospect my disappointment dimmed. And my respect for the work of (largely) American journalists soared.
Put simply: we live in a golden age of information. (And a shit age of mis(dis)information).
I refuse to get exercised by errors and seeming bias in MSM. Errors should not be the big story in how we evaluate them.
If you want to know what’s happening, you can easily find out. If you want trenchant analysis to help shape your personal position on an issue, it’s there for the taking. When you absorb enough of it, then you can spot journalistic malpractice and work your way around it.
I worked 45 plus years in education and saw first hand human frailty too often. People in institutions screw up - sometimes horribly. And yet I am incredibly proud of my profession. The good outweighs the bad by streets.
You’re in a grave way in the United States now. But your journalists are doing their level best to give democracy a fighting chance.
And beyond all that, if our standards tend to a desire for the superhuman, there is one Professor Heather Richardson Cox.
On Dec. 3, Dana Milbank had a piece in the Washington Post pointing out that journalists' efforts to be evenhanded often betrayed their own beliefs and gave support to the dishonest liars among us.
His research has been challenged by Nate Silver, whose bailiwick lies in that field. I have no opinion of worth to give to that dispute, but again I think it a refreshing example of vigorous intellectual debate.
Evenhandedness is an extremely challenging concept, as slippery as a bar of wet soap. I have noticed over the past ten years a much more nuanced understanding of what it means to be evenhanded.
Thus there can be arguments in perfectly good faith by people of character as to whether MSM’s handling of a particular situation is evenhanded.
The egregious offenders who obtrude upon our consciousness (Fox eg) are called out. It does no good. They are both purposeful and shameless.
Media literacy should be a foundational part of every child’s education. When I left teaching in 2017, lip service was paid to it (maybe 2-3 weeks in a single English course in but one of a student’s years in high school. Much, much more instruction (at least in Canada) should be devoted to it. And professional development time should be mandated so that teachers learn it rigorously, as well as being trained to filter out their own biases as best they can.