Date: 2024-05-15 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00025076
US POLITICS
THE OBNOXIOUS MTG
MeidasTouch: Hunter Biden STRIKES BACK
at Marjorie Taylor Greene with NEW COMPLAINT
THE OBNOXIOUS MTG
MeidasTouch: Hunter Biden STRIKES BACK
at Marjorie Taylor Greene with NEW COMPLAINT
Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3NKVkslplg
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
There is something seriously wrong with modern news media. It does not seem to matter whether one is my age (presently 83) or any other age, the 'news' system has become problematic.
It is common knowledge that the 'news cycle' has speeded up and 'breaking news' happens very quickly. What used to take a day to get to the news consumer, now gets there in a matter of minutes. And, frankly, it shows. A large amount of the 'news' that is being offered up is simply the 'beginning of a story' and there is little or no follow up to most of these stories. Far too many stories are started, but few go on to be explained and all the important but rather boring follow up that improves (or not) the situation for real people. Context matters, but is rarely part of the story!
I see more serious 'news' than most, and do not engage with social media with anything like the same intensity as younger folk ... but I find myself reading or looking at a lot of questionable information that is a 'waste of time' for many reasons. Why do I know more about Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG) than I do about almost any other Member of Congress? In part, I am to blame, but my guess is that the algorithms used to prioritise the material that is served up to me by Google and others are partly to blame as well.
I am doing my best to sort out the relative importance of the various drivers that impact quality of life for me, my family and everyone else. Almost nothing that appears on the daily 'evening news' is particularly helpful for me ... or anyone else, for that matter. It does, however, have an impact on how I am thinking about the state of quality of life in general, whether of not it truly has any impact. I keep thinking of the saying in the media world '... that if it bleeds, it leads.'. Conversely, good news stories are few and far between, and important long deep stories about complex and difficult 'wins' are more likely to be ignored by the media than reported.
I had reason to collaborate with a UN media initiative in Africa more than 25 years ago (maybe more). I remember asking why they wrote so much about Winnie Mandela and was told it was because the media gatekeepers around the world would publish it, while thousands of much more important stories would get ignored, never to see the light of day.
This problem is bigger now than it was back then. Only a tiny amount of the available news finds its way to being written, read and understood. This is not good for a democracy. A healthy democracy needs a well informed public, and the modern media is less and less capable of serving this fundamental service. In the US founding concepts there is recognition that ideas and knowledge are foundational ... but malicious misinformation is now intruding into this important idea.
While people of good will do exist, they are few relative to those who are driven by other incentives, not always laudable.
I have argued for a long time that the modern 'financialization' of the global socio-enviro-economic system is resulting in more and more undesirable outcomes for most of the world's people, with little or nothing of significance getting done to address the issue. Media misinformation has been an enabler of financialization. How and why this has happened is not easy to understand and explain in a typical media 'sound bite' ... but just maybe there is growing appreciation that financialization is not all its cracked up to be.
When I get beyond the 'easy' media stories, I am actually quite optimistic, because there is a lot of 'good news' in the modern world ... especially in the United States ... that never gets reported, but is real nevertheless. Finding the 'good news' is not easy, but it is quite rewarding!
Peter Burgess
MeidasTouch
Jul 22, 2023
1.38M subscribers ... 105,228 views ... 21K likes
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on a new letter sent by Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell to the Office of Congressional Ethics to lodge a formal complaint against Marjorie Taylor Greene and signaling more legal action will follow.
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