The Hell with Turning Off Cable Shows!

[busterbrown]

I can’t believe that so many around here are suggesting that we turn off all Cable News Stations and perhaps all basic News Stations

This is their continuos message on this site..
Just turn off your T.V. and Trump will eventually disappear.

Well to all of you this a.m.who suggest this? That this is an answer?
What do you think about the new polling results this am concerning Ohio (Trump’s 5 point lead)

My plan is to work the phones even harder
and follow the lead of this Fellow DUer..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512416073

[duncang]

1. I can't look away from it personally.

I know like watching a slow motion train wreck. Just can't help my self.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

11. I agree. If you do look away, you've missed something.

I'm waiting to see what happens when Trump arrives in Flint, MI

[Mika]

2. It's an answer for persons suffering from fatigue and/or mental distress.

Sometimes one has to step away to gather oneself together. Gain a fresh perspective. Take some time for activities healthy for humans. Political obsession, like most obsessions, isn't healthy.

[busterbrown]

4. Not about Political Obsession.

It’s distinctly about calling Donald Trump...”Mr. President"

[world wide wally]

3. Here's an odd suggestion:

If you were to exclusively watch cable news for about 3 days and never went to DU or any other progressive website, or any websit whatsoever, and just absorb what is said on cable news. You would be shocked to find out Hillary is even in this race. It would appear to be a Trump landslide (other than reports on polling).
Cable news is totally slanted toward Trump. His surrogates outnumber Clinton's by at least 2 -1 and they are NEVER pushed back against. Then they show the wall to wall coverage of every lame speech he gives.

[NightWatcher]

5. Cable news networks are echo chambers where you go to confirm your own biases

Fox watcher: Yep, I done knowed Obama was a muslin ursurper and Hillary is crooked.

MSNBC watcher: Why won't Rachel just call the republicans out on their bullshit?

CNN watcher: Where's that damned missing plane? (Or whatever happens to currently be on fire, under water...)

[GeorgeGist]

6. The only listen to their sponsors.

I call them out on their sponsorship of the deplorable media.

[JNelson6563]

7. Yes, I think TV is a waste.

I haven't had TV in several years now. Have Netflix, Youtube, etc. I see everyone scurrying daily, talking about the latest TV bullshit and I smile and feel glad I don't subject myself to that crap anymore.

If we all did it then they would be fucked.

[Egnever]

9. It is crazy liberating isn't it?

I missed it for the first few months. Now ten years later after cutting the cord I can always tell when the TV starts spewing by the plethora of threads regurgitating their noise. It is an amazing thing to watch and sadly many times what the TV is pushing is a complete distortion of reality.

[JNelson6563]

14. Yes, exactly!

[Egnever]

8. I don't think you understand why people advocate turning it off.

In my case there are a couple of reasons.

First and foremost is they are trying to manipulate you and all of their viewers, by reporting the stuff they think you should be concerned about not what is really important. Trump spewing nonsense all day is not news, nor is Hillary's "email scandal". They profit from scandal and a horse race as the polls fluctuate you will see the story trend change from one candidate to the other. This week Trump is up in the polls so low and behold this week they are going after him.

Second turning them off affects their viewership ratings and that in turn forces them to change or die.

Third their viewership is low comparatively. If you add up all the viewers of the news channels they are somewhere in the neighborhood of 3% of all viewers. That is not a huge percentage of the total tv viewing audience so the reach is not nearly as great as many perceive it to be.

Sure they can move the polls but most americans pay little to no attention to them.

So by my thinking by continuing to subject yourself to them you do a few things.

You enable them to continue to play the dangerous game they are playing. You fill your head with nonsense they choose to spew at you regardless of any really factual reporting. As an example weeks and weeks and weeks of the Hillary email scandal yet how many have reported that she was only emailing 13 people or that all 13 of those people worked in the government and had government emails that were archived. Meaning that all of hillary's "deleted emails" could easily be reproduced by using the governments archives. Not much of a scandal when you realize they had access to those emails all along. They are manipulating the story by omitting details. Purposefully.

You also make yourself crazy as you follow their manipulative reporting often stressing you out as you appear to be now over something less than 4% of the nation will ever see. Why subject yourself to that? I suppose you can tell yourself you are keeping an eye on them or something but that is exactly what that want more than anything you keeping your eye on them.

As far as the polling coming out of Ohio who cares? Polling goes up and it goes down. A couple of weeks ago Trump was in danger of a total implosion so the MSM went out of their way to prop him up. Yes it affected the polls of course it did. Try to keep in mind it is in their interest to have a horse race but not in their interest to have a trump presidency. The owners of those stations are all unanimous in their opposition to a trump presidency. They will continue to play people until the election and try to keep it as tight as they can. Mark my words coming into the final weeks they will turn on Trump hard(they are doing it this week). It is a business for them try to keep it tight so people watch but they do not want him to win.

It really all boils down to this. The MSM long ago lost any semblance of objective journalism in favor of sensationalism. If you want to subject yourself to that nonsense that is certainly your prerogative but in my opinion all you do is frustrate yourself and even misinform yourself through either selective journalism or false equivalency or just blatant manipulation of the facts. Why would you do that? As another example most people in the US think the US is more dangerous than ever before despite the fact that violent crime has been declining continuously for decades now. That is because the news shows them violent crimes every day it has nothing to do with actual crime rates.

I have no illusion that turning off the TV will make trump disappear. What I do know is it will stop you from filling your head with BS.

Hell fox news watchers are less informed than people who watch no news at all, and watchers of the other networks don't fare much better.

http://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes-you-less-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5

Media outlets such as Fox News and MSNBC have a negative impact on people’s current events knowledge

What do you think you accomplish by subjecting yourself to that nonsense? You can be better informed reading the latest breaking news section here than the news will ever make you.

Telling you to turn off the news has little or nothing to do with Trump disappearing and everything to do with you subjecting yourself to manipulative programing that actually makes you dumber.

[ananda]

10. Boycott cable news

It's the only answer.

[hunter]

12. I don't have to watch TV to know it's full of shit.

When someone in my personal space (this includes my internet spaces too) starts to spout off like a babbling idiot I can be almost certain they've been sucked into the television or radio bullshit "news" wonderland of horrors.

How I deal with it depends upon my relationship with the person.

Arguing with racists and misogynists fueled by radio and television propaganda is pretty useless. Seriously, how are you going to appeal to anyone who doesn't recognize creatures like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly as dissembling maggots? How do you talk to someone who doesn't immediately associate Roger Ailies with Jabba the Hut?

Trump supporters really are a basket half full of deplorables. The other half are, you know...

My children are in their mid-twenties. It's my personal observation that people this age pay little attention to radio and television news. Judging by radio and television advertising, most of the viewers and listeners are middle aged and older farts suffering the ravages of time, looking for automobiles and other products that will make them look "cool," and remedies for their aches and pains and erectile dysfunctions.

The Trump voters among them are a lost cause at this point.

What we have to do is make certain the same people who voted for Obama vote for Hillary Clinton this time around, that they don't sit out the election. The only reachable people are the disgruntled Sanders supporters and distracted youth. Most of them know Clinton is preferable to a Trump nightmare; they simply have to be encouraged to vote.

There's maybe two groups of people I've entirely alienated in my life -- the Fundamentalist Creationist Christians and the people who think Ronald Reagan was some kind of saint. A few people in my family are among them. They know if they want to talk to me it's best we not talk about religion or politics. I also know I'm not going to change their minds by being polite, because God know's I've tried. (Some on DU might wonder why I don't include gun fetishists in that list, but that doesn't seem to come up in my family; even the gun fetishists agree the gun-grabbing Berserkers among us have mostly had reasonable cause.)

But my point is that if I have no influence over family then what hope do I have influencing strangers?

There's a strong current of anti-intellectualism and fascism in U.S. politics, and there always has been. That's how we end up with Presidents like Reagan or George W. Bush. Trump appeals that group; he claims to be a big man who can fix stuff.

I'd like to believe most U.S. voters know better. We simply have to vote. We elected Obama, we can elect Hillary Clinton.

[mike_c]

13. I turned that noise off 25 years ago...

...and nothing would induce me to turn it back on again. I'm not going to try to list all the ways my life is better when none of it is spent watching the plug in drug other than to say that I cannot image any circumstances that might lead me to turn it back on again. It will be a very cold day in hell when I hook the TV cable up again. Oh, and I don't own a TV anyway.