Are facts obsolete? Media pushes the growing lynch-mob mentality

Thomas Sowell is one of the wisest men of this or any other time.

That he's black makes him merely dangerous to liberals.


I am proud that at least one black man cares for the truth. Good for him. ;)
I like it when Sowell sticks to economics. When he wanders outside his area of expertise, he makes a fool of himself at times.

Like this one.
 
We have a free media. In fact, the very wild and crazy media we have today is the result of the freedom of the press that was expounded by the man whose chair Sowell now occupies at Stanford; Milton Friedman.

I will link below to a clip which features Friedman on the Phil Donahue talk show. During that era, the media burdened under the Fairness Doctrine. Friedman advocated genuine freedom of the press. When you listen to him, you will see how something like Fox News came about after the Fairness Doctrine died an overdue death and we returned to freedom of the press. He specifically mentions that each tv station would only support the candidates they like on their shows.

The thing about a truly free press is that the last thing you will get out of it is objectivity. Instead, you get what Alexis de Tocqueville observed about our free press in the early part of the 19th century, and what we see today:

In America there is scarcely a hamlet that has not its newspaper. It may readily be imagined that neither discipline nor unity of action can be established among so many combatants, and each one consequently fights under his own standard. All the political journals of the United States are, indeed, arrayed on the side of the administration or against it; but they attack and defend it in a thousand different ways.

And look how he describes our journalists:

The characteristics of the American journalist consist in an open and coarse appeal to the passions of his readers; he abandons principles to assail the characters of individuals, to track them into private life and disclose all their weaknesses and vices.

Still true today.

So you see, Sowell is saying nothing new, except that he only points out the mote in the other guy's eye and ignores the beam in his own side's eye.


I love what Friedman says about freedom over fairness. It is awesome.

"Fairness means somebody has to decide what's fair." POW!!!

 
Last edited:
The irony of the OP is just too much to bear.

Fox News and the other hack media outlets have been shoveling so much manufactured bullshit out their doors they would not know a fact if it ran up their ass and gutted them from the inside out.
^^
Perfect example of the OP!
 
The UVA frat "rape" was another example. The Left thinks that just because it didnt happen doesnt make it untrue.
 
The UVA frat "rape" was another example. The Left thinks that just because it didnt happen doesnt make it untrue.
And just because there was no stand down order, the right wing whackjobs still believe it.

I am constantly pointing out the power of the desire to believe, and how rubes keep lining up for refills of their piss cups even after being shown their sources are flat out lying to them.

The desire to believe clogs people's logic filters. It is an incredibly powerful phenomenon which the Left and Right hack media outlets exploit to the fullest.

You are a perfect example of someone who can identify a lie from the Left but is completely blind to those coming from the Right, all because of that partisan desire to believe your own hack sources.
 
I've never used my BS in journalism for much other than advertising copy for my various businesses over the years and of course enlightening folks here. I was taught the inverted pyramid style of print news writing with the most salient issues at the top, less important information diminishing down the sides. That's because in print media the advertising goes in first (other than the front page) and then the news fits in around it as space allows. But that's just technique....not content.

The internet bloggers have removed the fear of being inaccurate for all but the major players. It's who gets it out there first now.....rumor, innuendo, gossip have replaced the who, what, when, where, with the "why" which can never really be known. Look at the myth of "hands up, don't shoot" still being repeated and believed by thousands of idiots when it never happened that way. Who got there first satisfied those who wanted to believe that beforehand and it won't be replaced with the facts.
 
We have a free media. In fact, the very wild and crazy media we have today is the result of the freedom of the press that was expounded by the man whose chair Sowell now occupies at Stanford; Milton Friedman.

I will link below to a clip which features Friedman on the Phil Donahue talk show. During that era, the media burdened under the Fairness Doctrine. Friedman advocated genuine freedom of the press. When you listen to him, you will see how something like Fox News came about after the Fairness Doctrine died an overdue death and we returned to freedom of the press. He specifically mentions that each tv station would only support the candidates they like on their shows.

The thing about a truly free press is that the last thing you will get out of it is objectivity. Instead, you get what Alexis de Tocqueville observed about our free press in the early part of the 19th century, and what we see today:

In America there is scarcely a hamlet that has not its newspaper. It may readily be imagined that neither discipline nor unity of action can be established among so many combatants, and each one consequently fights under his own standard. All the political journals of the United States are, indeed, arrayed on the side of the administration or against it; but they attack and defend it in a thousand different ways.

And look how he describes our journalists:

The characteristics of the American journalist consist in an open and coarse appeal to the passions of his readers; he abandons principles to assail the characters of individuals, to track them into private life and disclose all their weaknesses and vices.

Still true today.

So you see, Sowell is saying nothing new, except that he only points out the mote in the other guy's eye and ignores the beam in his own side's eye.


I love what Friedman says about freedom over fairness. It is awesome.

"Fairness means somebody has to decide what's fair." POW!!!



The Fairness Doctrine only applied to Broadcast TV and Radio Networks. The objective was to not allow a powerful conglomerate to monopolize and fill the airwaves with one political perspective. It never constrained print media or cable television.
 
The UVA frat "rape" was another example. The Left thinks that just because it didnt happen doesnt make it untrue.
And just because there was no stand down order, the right wing whackjobs still believe it.

I am constantly pointing out the power of the desire to believe, and how rubes keep lining up for refills of their piss cups even after being shown their sources are flat out lying to them.

The desire to believe clogs people's logic filters. It is an incredibly powerful phenomenon which the Left and Right hack media outlets exploit to the fullest.

You are a perfect example of someone who can identify a lie from the Left but is completely blind to those coming from the Right, all because of that partisan desire to believe your own hack sources.
Deflection.
We dont know there was no stand down order. We just havent found one. Yet.
We know there was no rape at UVa.
 

Forum List

Back
Top