The 2016 election.

I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff while floating in the ocean now-a-days. 

I've carved out a bit of a niche as the News Literacy guy. I teach a big 100-seat lecture that all the incoming journalism students have to take, but a bunch of other people take it as an elective as well. It's called News Literacy, because we're not real creative with names. 

But it's all about how journalism functions, what its role in society is, and where the problems arise in how it's consumed and produced based on the massive amount of information we have readily available all the time. The main purpose of the course is to have students be able to diagnose the quality of a piece of news in a number of different ways. 

I have the students buy this book, which if you're interested in this kind of thing, I'd suggest it to you too. It's like $10 on Amazon, it's a quick read: 

Click-bait headlines are the new yellow journalism.

I have no use for Hillary Clinton, and I don't make that a secret.
But I get a massive charge out of these people that are freaking out about the amount of negative press handed to Trump over Clinton.

The greatest way I heard it explained was that you don't send firefighters to houses that aren't burning. Trump's a house that's always on fire in terms of news-worthiness.

Bias. Big damn deal. That's why we don't draw our information from a single source anymore. That's why we put in a little bit of actual effort to figure out what the truth is, or at least what the 'other side' of things are, then do math and figure out that the actual score is. This day and age, if you're looking for any single media outlet to give you 50/50, even-stevens coverage of anything at all from a car accident to the Presidential election, you get what you deserve.

Journalism in America is propaganda. 

Edited by FreeEnterprise - 25 October 2016 at 2:34pm

Edited by agentwhale007 - 25 October 2016 at 6:17pm

Whoa, the forum still exists.

This election is awful. Trump just became the conservative candidate he claims to be in the last few years and I can't believe anyone claiming conservatism would actually vote for him.

The lesser of two evils argument isn't working for me this time. Neither of them represent anything I even remotely believe in but I believe that Hillary is the only "actual" candidate in the run. It was always going to end one way.

I early voted: 

Anyone have any interesting local propositions? Arizona's is 205, which would make marijuana legal.

Single payer, are you kidding? Look at the Veterans Administration Healthcare Network. Approximately 6 million veterans enrolled, and a complete failure in many areas. Obamacare ACA, not even close to 'the promise' nor affordable. And we are going to trust the same government essentially who designed, maintain and run both of these fiascos to provide 'good' healthcare to 390million American's, too many polititians in the net for that ever to happen. And putting HRH Hillary in charge will just compound the problem, rather than address or even try to 'fix' both of the current fiascos.

Still find it difficult to understand the I as a Veteran have to 'wait' on even the simplest health care need from the VA, yet an illegal crosses the border and somehow is eligible for free and immediate health care. For example, diagnosed with cateract in Left eye early August, finally got surgery date of 16 Nov today.

As for our 'info-tainment' media and journalists, all media has a targeted for ratings and money audience, and each create their stories to fit that targeted audience. Journalism is DEAD, and just directs their bias to which ever side of the political spectrum they 'support'.

The old joke- "George Bush was out on a lake in Texas fishing. He spots another small boat sinking and an old man on board. He puts down his fishing pole and walks on water over to the man and saves him. The Right leaning media goes "Bush walks on water", the Left leaning media goes "Bush can not swim", .... the fact the old man was saved is not even mentioned or of priority to either.

And journalists anymore state their opinion on any story and expect you to have the same opinion. No longer, this is the news, now decide what you yourself think. What is that called again Whale?

Edited by oldsoldier - 27 October 2016 at 2:25pm

That's the problem you get when you try to do an economical single payer system inside of a capitalist environment.  Go to full single payer and instead of the government paying $15 for a single Tylenol or $53 for a pair of latex gloves, they can hire more providers and take care of more patients.  The multiple insurance model only favors the upper class which is not you, and likely will not be your children or grandchildren.  You claim to be voting in the interest of them, but the policies you support only leave them worse off.