John Stewart, in the short video clip shown in class, brought to my attention a lot of important flaws in the way that the news presents information to the public. First off, when they talk to government officials about important issues and statistics are used, the numbers that are given are very vague, always given as a large range. What seemed to be the worst part is that no one bothers to comment on the wide range or even ask from what source the numbers come from. The main topic I understood from all his jokes teasing CNN is that they don't focus on the important issues. For instance, they allow a person from each political party to come on a show and debate or argue about an issue currently needing a resolution. The host, which is suppose to move the debate along just sits back and lets the argument go on without any direction and after about 5 minutes the host says that they don't have any time left and the debate comes to an end without any type of resolution. But, the most confusing part is that they have enough time to show a Youtube video that is irrelevant to the subject that the opposite parties are discussing. Lastly, the part that really got to me was watching the short segment where the reporters from CNN put in so much effort to prove that the "Saturday Night Live" skit of Obama's agenda, where they state that he has accomplished nothing, was false because they "fact checked" it. It really got me thinking as to why they can't but that much effort to "fact check" other issues so that when they are reported, they don't throw out such a large range of numbers, when giving statistics.
I do agree on the fact that they don't mention many important issues anymore. They focus on what the audience wants to see. So it could be our main faults for producing such a fallacy-full show. But, yes, their show is full of unreliable sources. What other examples can be used to prove CNN isn't focusing on important problems?
ReplyDeletePolitics in general is vague, but i do agree that if they are given statistics, they should be able to fact check those numbers. The point of numbers is to be accurate and statistics just does not always do that for us, because they can be swayed too easily. I very much agree that they should not, however, make room for a Youtube video that is irrelevant to important matters by prematurely ending important discussions. I am curious though, how would anyone do a better job if they were on such a large media crew?
ReplyDeleteThe news stations are guided by their ratings. The problem is that these news stations do not provide all the information for each case. Unfortunately, since politics is a sensitive topic, people will not take into consideration both sides of the arguments. But that is what one needs to do to provide a good paragraph. If you had done this then your paragraph would have been just fine.
ReplyDeletei agree that the news channel just throws information at us and never really names or gives us the source it came from. And I also totally agree that whenever an important issue comes up there is always a commercial break!! Great post :)
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