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Why watch the nightly news that teases a story before a commercial break and then makes you wait now sometimes longer than 3 minutes. I just pull out my phone, and get the information from Twitter, Facebook, Google and I get the information without the talking heads spinning some story that happened ten hours earlier.

I must admit that I have almost stopped using Facebook over the past three months. The amount of fake news that I was seeing on there just got too much for me, and I found I was simply wasting too much time trying to point out to many of my Facebook 'friends' that much of the so-called news that they were insisting on sharing had no basis in fact, if not deliberately false. I still have my Facebook account, and I do check in once in a while, but I am no longer wasting hours of my life trying to respond to all the nonsense that I see on there. (Maybe that's why I'm being seen on GA again...)

The Internet is a wonderful thing, and Social Media can definitely be put to good use. I do sometimes think, however, that the modern younger generation have been somewhat seduced by it. They have become seduced by the idea that news should be available immediately. What does it matter if we sometimes have to wait 'longer than 3 minutes' for a piece of news? What does it matter (unless it's really serious news) if we don't even hear about it until the next day for that matter? I can sometimes go days without even listening to (or reading) the news. It doesn't mean the world is going to end, just because I haven't heard the news. Mostly I catch the news nowadays on the car radio when I am travelling - or someone I meet will tell me about a certain bit of news they found interesting. Maybe I'll even find it interesting myself, in which case I'll look it up when I am next online.

Great piece, though, Jason! And yes, I agree with your comments about how mainstream news channels and papers have become commercialised and/or polarised into differing viewpoints or party ideologies. Although the same was true when I first started reading newspapers in the UK nigh on 60 years ago. Even then most newspapers were known to have an editorial team that leaned either heavily to the right or the left. Few of them were genuinely unbiased.

5 hours ago, Marty said:

 

I must admit that I have almost stopped using Facebook over the past three months. The amount of fake news that I was seeing on there just got too much for me, and I found I was simply wasting too much time trying to point out to many of my Facebook 'friends' that much of the so-called news that they were insisting on sharing had no basis in fact, if not deliberately false. I still have my Facebook account, and I do check in once in a while, but I am no longer wasting hours of my life trying to respond to all the nonsense that I see on there. (Maybe that's why I'm being seen on GA again...)

 

The Internet is a wonderful thing, and Social Media can definitely be put to good use. I do sometimes think, however, that the modern younger generation have been somewhat seduced by it. They have become seduced by the idea that news should be available immediately. What does it matter if we sometimes have to wait 'longer than 3 minutes' for a piece of news? What does it matter (unless it's really serious news) if we don't even hear about it until the next day for that matter? I can sometimes go days without even listening to (or reading) the news. It doesn't mean the world is going to end, just because I haven't heard the news. Mostly I catch the news nowadays on the car radio when I am travelling - or someone I meet will tell me about a certain bit of news they found interesting. Maybe I'll even find it interesting myself, in which case I'll look it up when I am next online.

 

Great piece, though, Jason! And yes, I agree with your comments about how mainstream news channels and papers have become commercialised and/or polarised into differing viewpoints or party ideologies. Although the same was true when I first started reading newspapers in the UK nigh on 60 years ago. Even then most newspapers were known to have an editorial team that leaned either heavily to the right or the left. Few of them were genuinely unbiased.

 

I'm not sure if social media can be put to good use, I rarely use FaceBook, mainly because I don't understand the need to share everything of my life with other people. And I never get my news from Social Media but I do get ideas that cause me to research further into certain narratives.

And I do know that newspaper were also heavily editing to craft narratives, especially with Hearst and his assassination against hemp to protect his paper mills. So I know its not a new thing. Its almost impossible to present an unbiased view, we are all structure from our opinions.