I'm reading Spin Sisters by Myrna Blyth and you realize the fear mongering is relentless--mattresses, nail polish, paint, plastic, vaccines--all are killing us on a regular basis on GMA and Good Housekeeping.
Norma | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 10:00 am | #

I worry about this crap. I worry about how suseptible folks are to the lies of the press - it was the worry that got me thinking about coups, and it is real.

This is a good piece. Now, the question is, why isn't a big voice like DRUDGE shouting out the good economic news? When did he become such a sensationalist?
theanchoress | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 10:15 am | #

i've been calling the big 3 TV news
programs "Doom Central"
for a few years now.

to be fair,the networks still field
(or fund) the reporters(or stringers) who feed stories into the hopper that
the blogosphere then comments on.

but selling eyeballs and seats
via disaster and terror has become very big bizz.

and the jihadis know it too.
gumshoe | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 11:15 am | #

"It is very rare for such voices to say anything at all positive. They have a specific goal--and that goal is the distortion of reality."

actually Pat,
while they clearly relish
the political influence they wield,
(your "the distortion of reality"),
i think selling advertizing time is still their biggest motivator
(and specific goal).
gumshoe | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 11:22 am | #

Oh, I think that if that were the goal they would be much more positive towards business, wouldn't they. They actually hate capitalism--while at the same time they want to make huge profits. Hence they must distort the entire process. FoxNews is doing much better than they are, yet they don't adopt their market strategy to get a bigger market share.
Dr. Sanity | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 11:35 am | #

some of that is BDS,
don't ya think?
gumshoe | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 11:47 am | #

Boy, did you ever hit this one out of the park. Wow.

Anchoress got her data from my earlier post. I just did a post on this post, added a thought or tow, TB'd to you, and gave you a blogroll.:

Dr. Sanity Nails the Psychological Impact of MSM Business Misreporting
http://www.bizzyblog.com/?p=755
Tom Blumer | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 11:54 am | #

Most people I know seem to think that all the good paying jobs have gone to Mexico and they are left with nothing.

It does not matter what I say to counter this. Such as 'if all the good paying jobs are in Mexico why are all the Mexicans coming here'? they just keep saying it.
Terrye | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 12:31 pm | #

Thanks, Tom. Gumshoe--yes I think some of it is BDS--but they also did the same thing with Reagan. The issue here is a hypocrisy so fundamental the Left is completely blind to it. They HATE capitalism, yet they WANT to be wealthy (e.g., Hollywood; Soros, etc. etc. etc.). This causes a severe cognitive dissonance--almost a psychosis. They latch onto leftist ideologies but they can't escape the fact that they are human--they just want to to pretend they are superior to all other humans. The election of Bush/Republicans; the improvement in the economy--all these things are BAD because they threaten their ideology and their superiority complex.
Dr. Sanity | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 1:48 pm | #

Pat -

re: superiority complex...
...you'll love this:

What's a Modern Girl to Do?
Mo Dowd
NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/3...gewanted=1& 8dpc

_________________
Roger has a thread running on it
also:

October 30, 2005: Dowd's Apologia Pro Vita Sola
http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt- ar...ds_apologia.php
gumshoe | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 1:55 pm | #

Dr. Santy:

In 2004, the main stream media was so intent on perpetrating the hallucination that the economy was improving, they neglected to report that the hundredweight price of steel nearly doubled. The change in the cost of steel was primarily due to the effects of PRC in the raw materials market.

You allege that the voices of the mainstream media "are completely and totally untrue". This is a categorically untrue statement. I am suprised to encounter rhetoric like this from a Board Certified Psychiatrist.

The economy is neither as good as you believe it to be, or as bad as you portray the media to have presented it.

I am sure that your professional credentials are impeccable, and that you are respected and accomplished. May I suggest you widen your reality beyond academia and medical practice to business people and manufacturers.

Find out how China is affecting the US
economy from those who have encountered it firsthand.
Jack Haley | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 2:12 pm | #

As far as China--they said the same thing about Japan now didn't they? Or are you too young to remember that? We'll see if a basically totalitarian state can overtake the US economy. I don't think it can without completely transforming itself into something more closely resembling a free country.

As for everything else you say, I respectfully disagree. The Media are intent on gloom and doom not only in the economy, but in every other aspect of American life. I'm sorry you don't see it. But its part of my job to observe and that's what I do.
Dr. Sanity | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 2:46 pm | #

Mr. Haley- please please stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Its sweet, but toxic.
Jan | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 3:41 pm | #

The problem isn't so much MSM "lies", is it? The problem is the pinhole view of reality that excludes a wider range of detailed information. Call it, news by anecdote.

I'm reminded of the episode of CBS Sunday Morning that I watched today. A show that I enjoy, but for the past few years has become "gloom and doom Sunday Morning". A haven for head-tilts and sonorous tones.

1. There was a segment from Bagdad in which the entire piece comprised of a sit-down interview with a very well dressed Iraqi who spoke very good English, talking about how there is "no hope" in Iraq, and how Iraq today is no different from Iraq four years ago. The difference between "cancer and death" was his analogy. The entire segment took the opinions of one man in Bagdad (presumably two men if you include the reporter)and extrapolated that opinion to a nation of 26 million people! The only mention and footage of American soldiers was how they accidentially drove a vehicle into the wall of a school (How did this happen exactly? We were never told.), and were now trying to console a terrified Iraqi child. *Bad old, reckless, scary American's* Reporters like this have the gall to talk about nuance?!

2. There was a segment on the writer/cartoonist of "The Boondocks" in which it's posited by the creator(via his characters) that "The world would be a lot safer if Condi Rice would just date more." Also, a clip was shown of the upcoming Adult Swim animated Boondocks adaptation in which the main character stands at a microphone in front of alot of blue-blood-looking people and says "Jesus was black" (Whatever.) "Ronald Reagan was the devil" (Jackass.) and some comment about the government having a hand in 9-11 (Predictable.)

3. Bill Geist had a segment on the market for extravagent doggie products, and slips in a comment about the "current administration" and how THE DOGS are better off now than they were four years ago. Geist was so much more enjoyable when he just stuck to trying to find the largest ball of twine, or the Reno striptease museum.

To be fair, they also had an opinion piece by Ben Stein talking about how people shouldn't depend on the Government to take care of their retirement, and they should instead save and invest the old fashioned way...on their own. The main difference was that this was actually labelled as an OPINION.
Daniel | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 5:32 pm | #

"The problem isn't so much MSM "lies", is it? The problem is the pinhole view of reality that excludes a wider range of detailed information. Call it, news by anecdote."


great description of TV news,Daniel,
but Pat has a point that the anecdotes are consistenly panic/fear/gloom oriented.

most people that don't mind reading and have access to the Net
know they can get background info to understand the story(s).

how many do is another Q altogether.
gumshoe | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 6:06 pm | #

You know Dr. Sanity, I'm really beginning to like you. You say such amazing things.

Unquestionably, if you are employed in an important job, investing in good common stocks, with a vision of a relatively secure future ahead of you no matter what happens to the general economy (short of complete collapse) these economic figures are very good indeed. Particularly if your portfolio has been heavy in petroleum.

On the other hand, if you are not all of these, and have other considerations to mind, such as two hours of auto commute daily to work for $11.50 an hour, figures like this will mean relatively little that is positive for your actual economic life. Certainly much less than the figures on your local gas pump.

Particularly since you are working as much for Enron, and its investors, as you are for your real job.

Be that as it may, your views on news are even more entertaining:

"simply because life has become too complicated and overwhelming, that the use of our ordinary senses is insufficient in the modern world.In other words, we rely on the media in the same way we rely on our own senses to provide us with the information necessary to make decisions and judgements in the real world."

We have never been able to rely on our "ordinary senses" further than about 150 feet in all directions, and this undoubtedly ceased to be adequate sometime in the Bronze Age.

All the rest is, and always has been, "news". As "news" it has always been suspect, and subject to incredible distortions--"here be dragons and other strange beasts."

What has really changed, and changed in my lifetime, is that you can actually GET alternative information about anything you think has been distorted, and you can get it quickly, easily, and cheaply.

The view of the world that you wish your television, or your magazines, or your newspaper to reflect is perfectly well obtainable: on Fox News, in the Weekly Standard, and in the Wall Street Journal.

These folks are as "MSM" as anybody else.

Moreover, you can do something unheard of when I was growing up. You can get breaking news fed directly off the wire as it happens, and you even have multiple wire services you can get it from if you want a particular flavor. I'm partial to Reuters.

Further, with things like Google News you can get the same information filtered through the lens of any news media on the planet--Nairobi as easily as Knoxville, Paris as easily as Peoria.

This is the Golden Age of being able to tailor your news to your political prejudices.

Unquestionably, you do have to work for it, and most of us are as lazy as sin. But that's really not the "MSM's" problem, now is it?

What you are really asking for is not news sources which reflect your views. You are asking for all news sources to reflect nothing BUT your views.

The news business, however, is as much a free market as anything else. Sorry.
Joseph Marshall | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 8:32 pm | #

There is a perfect example of "news by anecdote ", aka. propaganda by ancedote, over at timblair.net in his recent posts category. Under the heading "editor asked to explain editing" is the story of the NYT's editing a dead soldier's last letter home to suite their purposes. To hell with the fact that the editing was utter betrayal of the soldiers sentiments about GIVING HIS LIFE in the service of this country. I think it is a must read and very possibly a final gift to his country from Cpl. Starr with which to expose the depths that the press is willing to sink to in order to "lead" the masses into their way of thinking. Finally, I agree with the Anchoress COMPLTELY on her sense of a coup and on her awarenes that now, like never before, is the time for those who pray, to do so with fervor and focus and faith.
jess1dering | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 8:37 pm | #

What, specifically, did I say about China, and who was it that said the same thing about Japan?

Re-read my post. I did not attempt to tell you what to believe - I invited you to widen your reality.

And, I'm probably as old as you are.
Jack Haley | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 10:30 pm | #

A statement that the US economy is doing well does not mean that there are no problems for individuals (Mr. Marshall) or single industries (Mr. Haley). All thinking people recognise that a faltering economy nonetheless includes many individuals and industries that are getting rich; a booming economy includes many individuals and industries that are hurting or stagnant.

So what's your point?

In both cases, your criticism seems to be "screw whatever is happening in general, what about ME?"
Assistant Village Idiot | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 11:38 pm | #

> So despite being at war, despite devastating storms, and despite legislative and regulatory drags on the economy like Sarbanes-Oxley, this has been most consistently growing economy in almost 20 years.

Doc, Doc, Doc!!!

What are you trying to do?

Make Mitzell's head explode?

I mean, isn't that contrary to your Hippocratic Oath?

(:-9
Inferno Sanguinante Dell 'OH | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 2:31 am | #

LOL, I just posted something similar to this as an example of the influence of the intellectual class on modern society in a more recent thread.

I'll repeat it here -- it bears repeating, as anyone who wants to study the insanity behind doom-and-gloom should do a search on Julian Simon's writings.
=========================
The wager between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich

... but everyone still buys this doom-and-gloom BS. The papers print nothing else. Kids get raised on this crap, and it's like pulling teeth to get them straight, that humans are, on the whole, better off than they have ever been -- and that goes even for the poorest nations, all of whose AVERAGE life expectancy and infant mortality rates are better than that of the richest nations as of 1901.

Life expectancy and infant mortality are the truest signs of improving living conditions.
Inferno Sanguinante Dell 'OH | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 2:39 am | #

> Certainly much less than the figures on your local gas pump.

Heading downward as you speak. Dropped at the local pumps from $3.05 for SU to $2.80, a 10% decrease.

> We have never been able to rely on our "ordinary senses" further than about 150 feet in all directions, and this undoubtedly ceased to be adequate sometime in the Bronze Age.

Ignores the issue by focusing on trivial meanings. She's saying, of course, that there is always obviously available, trustworthy data to call into question the claims of the DnGers. You just have to not take the DnG crowd at their word, it's worthless, they are selling a pig in a poke... and I mean selling. It's how these charlatans make their living.

> The view of the world that you wish your television, or your magazines, or your newspaper to reflect is perfectly well obtainable: on Fox News, in the Weekly Standard, and in the Wall Street Journal.

These folks are as "MSM" as anybody else.

Not at all. Fox and WSJ are far more responsible than most of the MSMs in the matter of not being shills for the mouthpieces of one side or the other.

You'll hear someone evoking the Left's positions in either location -- you just won't hear them doing it without any critical observation as to its validity or reasonability... and if an Army colonel in charge of recruiting says, for example, "Morale amongst the troops in Iraq is fairly high", the commentator won't subtley say the troops are flat out stupid (how the F*** would he know?).

> I'm partial to Reuters.

"Al-Reuters"? LOL. Could you give a more obvious inclination of your political leanings? -- yeah, I guess: "I voted for Dennis Kucinich!"

> This is the Golden Age of being able to tailor your news to your political prejudices.

Some of us don't want it tailored to our prejudice. We'd actually like to know what is going on.

Sorta helps with making valid decisions.

> The news business, however, is as much a free market as anything else. Sorry.

Yep, that's why the newspapers are losing money left and right but still spouting the same BS lies even though it costs them readers. (I've got a friend who delivers papers. I've seen his sheets, which often include a "reason for dropping". I've seen "tired of leftist BS" -- I've never seen "tired of conservative BS").
Inferno Sanguinante Dell 'OH | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 3:09 am | #

> single industries (Mr. Haley)

Actually, the real problem here is probably friggin' steel tariffs.

We don't even really have a steel industry any more (not profitable enough at local labor prices) and haven't yet seen a need to produce a fully roboticized steel industry at this point (why screw up the Japanese, anyway?), and yet we still charge Americans big time for the "privelege" of buying foreign steel. (Let's point out, but not focus on, the effect this has on steel-based industries like the automotive industry, as well, going overseas or to Mexico).
Inferno Sanguinante Dell 'OH | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 3:20 am | #

> What's a Modern Girl to Do?

LOL:

I didn't fit in with the brazen new world of hard-charging feminists. I was more of a...

MoDo -- eternally out of touch.

At a party for the Broadway opening of "Sweet Smell of Success," a top New York producer...
An almost certain leftist weenie...
...gave me a lecture on the price of female success that was anything but sweet. He confessed that he had wanted to ask me out on a date [snip] Men, he explained, prefer women who seem malleable and awed.
Yes, we are ALL as wimpy and unconfident as this idiot, and all the other lefty twits MoDo surrounds herself with...
He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties.
...spoken by a woman who has never used her critical faculties...

The woman just does NOT grasp the difference between correlation and cause-and-effect. She constantly presumes they are the same.
Inferno Sanguinante Dell 'OH | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 4:20 am | #

The politically correct Cultural Establishment is Big Brother determining what and how to think and feel. The Cultural Establishment is suffocating us under the heavy weight of Serfdom.
susan | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 8:24 am | #

"So what's your point?"

I don't think very many here remember an America BEFORE our only serious economic activities were stock speculation and purchasing consumer goods made abroad. I am not so young, and I remember it clearly.

In that America there was not only the possiblity of doing better for yourself in the future than in the past, there was the likelihood of it. The possiblity is still there. The likelihood has vanished.

Twenty-five years ago that America was sacrificed to stock speculation. It no longer exists. The only ones (besides, of course, the stock speculators) now likely to do better are the Mexican illegals, and that only in the short run--the market will glut there sooner or later, too.

The overwhelming majority of us have only two real economic possibilites depending on circumstances: very bad and more or less ok. Not better. So even the best news for most of us is more or less ok.

More or less ok is not such good news that it need take precedence over other things. So it can go to the top of the business pages, where the stock speculators look first.



"> I'm partial to Reuters. LOL. Could you give a more obvious inclination of your political leanings?"

Well, ISDO I don't think I've ever hidden them.

This may come as a surprise to you, but those of us who have other political leanings than yours actually like having them.

And we have enough sense to understand that you like having yours, too.

Speaking personally, I rather like you having your views as well. It makes for a more interesting world.
Joseph Marshall | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 9:24 pm | #

>This is the Golden Age of being able to tailor your news to your political prejudices.

This leads me to great insight; If you care about them (your own views) your going to lean no matter what, it’s inevitable. That is the whole trouble of the system- everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Haven’t you ever heard the saying opinions are like A-holes, everyones got em, and they all stink

Wipe the slate clean, but with history as we know it hanging in the balance (do not think I am not aware of everyone's differing opinion on HISTORY).

Start from scratch and never put anything in complete concrete or stone, just writing that can be changed, via public courts(make everyone become more in tune with what's going on. i.e. - WORLD VOTE, just like jury duty but everyone's a judge under certain circumstances), the world changes around us daily and even faster most of the time, if we grow and make progress together, the pages cannot be blurred or DISTORTED. That is the only way to 100% prosperity.

I’m sure most of you will not understand where I am going with this or where I am coming from, but understand that however we came to be on this planet, it was not to be by imaginary lines on a map that dictate what laws are applicable in this or that region, but that there is only one region.

Perfect example:
I lived in Nebraska where the marijuana laws are not strict, I think an ounce or less is not criminal. Now I live in Arizona where possession of a gram+ is automatic jail time for 30 days. WHY is my whole point to this.

Why do we have a system that is designed to tear itself apart from the inside out?
Tanner | Email | Homepage | 07.26.08 - 10:14 pm | #