Palin rally fan on CNN doesn't listen to media but "goes by the facts"

[Tallison]

Gary Tuchman: "How do you find out the facts, by the way, if you don't listen to the media?"

Loooooong pause.

Fan: "Ummmm...I think there's certain...I think there's certain media, but, ummm, that you can trust, but most media you...you can't trust."

Critical thinking, meet parallel universe.

[Kingofalldems]

1. Pigboy facts

[TheCowsCameHome]

2. I'll bet he has nude pix of the Squealer in his bedroom

[YDogg]

4. I LOLd.

[BayouBengal07]

3. Aren't we kind of doing the same though?

Aren't there people here who refuse to listen to the "Mainstream media," and instead just confine themselves to the echo chamber?

[emilyg]

5. Yes..

[BayouBengal07]

6. Woah look

A Saints fan and a Falcons fan agreeing with each other...!

[tom_paine]

16. You bring up a very valid point here, but I believe there is a key distinction.

Self-awareness

You are correct, I believe, and all things being equal and taking place against the backdrop of a strong healthy Republic with trustworthy, inspectable voting systems, and a strong, vigorous, independent, investigative-minded press.

Unfortunately, this is not taking place in anything like what I just described.

Under the conditions of this basically new form of government, the Bushies, Putin, and Commie China have morphed into, Inverted Totalitarianism

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20080515_chalmers_johnson_on_our_managed_democracy

all legitimate channels of information are clogged, poisoned, and neutralized in terms of relaying an accurate, or even close to accurate, picture of the citizenry.

Google "Samizdat" and read up as to how it applied to Soviet Russia to understand where I am coming from. The same basic concept as Samizdat, except with the Internet instead of smuggled mimeograph machines in Renegade Russian Basements and the like.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=samizdat&aq=1&oq=Samiz

OK, now comes the hard part, where the correctness of the point you made runs smack dab into the new order of things, the reality of Inverted Totalitarianism.

To try to boil it down: In Free Societies, of which our country can no longer be said to full be, though are lives are still largely unchanged by this reality, for now... in Free Societies it is much more often (almost always) a complex situation in "shades of grey".

In such societies, what you say is 100% true. If America was in such a positive condition, I would not even be at DU for that reason. I am only here (in the news sense, at least) because traditional media is breaking down and thus I am forced to turn to Samizdat, as if I lived in 1978 Russia, reading the badly mimeographed sheets about what the Commies were REALLY up to, when all there was was Commie FOX and Commie Sean Hannity to watch and listen to.

See where I am going with this? If this was America 1977 or even as late as 1983, you would have been 100% correct and as I said I would not even be a DUer (had the Internet existed at that time).

In many ways, in such a society which we do not have currently, it would be unhealthy as you say, and much more of a he-said/she-said, as you imply.

Instead, because Inverted Totalitarianism is still Totalitarianism, even if it is so comparatively pleasant still to live in, we are in the Samizdat vs. Commies situation.

One side IS 99% objectively wrong. The tyranny side. Always. Whichever direction it comes from, and it can come from any political direction, it is wrong.

Or, to take the example to an even more extreme, but just to thoroughly illustrate my rhetorical point: The Nazis say the Jews are serial-liars and propagandists who want to take over the world. The Nazis say the Jews are serial-liars and propagandists who want to take over the world.

Which brings us full circle again to WHY I think, in the end, THIS is one of those times: Self-awareness

It's what DUers typically have in abundance and Freepers not at all. Call it hubris. Dismiss me if you wish, and disagree, but it is how I feel and I have been watching this thing unfold with weather eye, really for 20 years now (though I did not know what I was looking at until 2000 shocked me awake).

So it is my view. I stand behind it 100%. It's been vetted every which way by me and by the passage of time confirming most of what I already knew had occurred.

Self-awareness. The knowledge, at any given time, that there is always a chance, however small, that we could be wrong about things.

Think about it.
==========================================

E!!!!!!!!!!! A!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! G!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! L!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! E!!!!!!!!!!! S!!!!!!!!!!!

EAGLES!

[Tallison]

18. The awareness that we could be wrong...

and the courage to expose ourselves to opinion and facts that may undermine our ideology. Sounds like the super-framework of progressive ideology to me!

[tom_paine]

28. Yep, all the way back to the Founding Fathers at the pinnacle of The Age of Englihtenment.

We are them and they are us.

And the Freepers, Hannidiots, Dittoheads, and Savage Weiner's?

I'd like to let the man whom I am honor to homage by using his august name, say it for me.

"And what is a Tory? Good God! what is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms. Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave."
--Thomas Paine

[amdezurik]

8. a very Dkos kind of thing to do

[NMDemDist2]

9. I read the MSM

I just make sure I vette it

[Tallison]

11. Short of those who have personally met the candidates

anyone with an opinion derives it from media. DU, for that matter, is a form of media. The more important question is how you evaluate your sources.

[Ichingcarpenter]

12. What a bunch of crap n/t

[stillcool]

13. There is television..

and then there is media. There is lots of great reporting being done, albeit many times not in this country, or not by a major media outlet. We are more fortunate that at any other time that we have access to it.

[Tallison]

14. Yes, and there are good television sources, too

Take 'The News Hour.' Among my standards is whether the content is selected for ratings vs. newsworthiness. Public sources are likelier to feature the latter.

What scares me about the RW generalizations against the The Media is how close it comes to identifying free speech part of the problem. Yes, free speech is responsible for a lot of gas in our culture., which is why critical thought is the essential complement of a free press to healthy democracy.

[JonLP24]

17. CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS are alright, not the best but they try

Fox News however deliberately invokes RW talking points without presenting the other side.

[Ichingcarpenter]

21. None of you guys are watching Rachel that are commenting on this thread

I know two that don't.

In fact neither chose to watch Keith either
but bring in right wing crap here all the time
that is debunked as lies.

[JonLP24]

30. I watch Keith and Maddow every weekday

I don't understand what I said to make you believe that? :shrug:

All those TV news sources do present the other side to most stories. Fox News doesn't however. Keith and Maddow are excellent though in presenting stories and facts that the other TV news sources neglects.

[Ichingcarpenter]

31. Sorry, it wasn't directed to you

I just see the usual clowns here.
I apologize.

[Marr]

26. It's always tempting to draw equivalencies like that.

Makes the world seem balanced and fair. I'm sure there are people around here like those you describe-- but here's the thing. The corporate media these people dismiss as pro-Republican actually *is*. Or at least, pro-corporate, which is almost the same thing.

People watching our media in Europe in laugh in disbelief that any of it is regarded as news. CNN seems like Fox News. For someone to look at CNN, ABC, CBS, etc., and see *left wing* bias is absurd, and it shows just how far out on the right-wing fringe that person is.

[Tallison]

29. I like reading foreign coverage of this election

Without a dog in the fight, it's so much more critical of the RW than American MSM dares.

[ShenandoahAspen]

7. He probably thinks..

...Fox News is "media you can trust". :eyes:

[tom_paine]

10. LOL. The Nazi-Bushie mind on display.

One at a time, they are funny in their arrogant ignorance, amusing in the many "does not compute" moments someone with the tiniest bit of logic and rhetoric skills can create as easily as debating with a toddler.

Together, marshalled by a Fuhrer and propganda apparatus, these unlovable "German" right-wing goofballs become the SS.

It's a puzzling dichotomy, and of course like any generalized statements, numerous exceptions exist as life and humanity are too complex to boil down into sweeping statements.

But, by and large, the first two paragraph are true, whether German or Bushmerica or Russia or Cambodia or wherever,

The Pandora's Box opens. God Help Us, the Bushies are opening it up again just like they and their German Allies did in 1933-34.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

[bigtree]

15. jebus tells him the facts

[applegrove]

19. I saw that. I hope the MSM doesn't bend to threats from people on the right

like they have in the past.

[Tallison]

22. I suspect that happens

In reaction to RW charges, the MSM plays more gently with them, as if Palin might give them the time of day in exchange. It's why the Ayers accusation commanded an entire news cycle, while the Branchflower Report has barely surfaced.

[applegrove]

32. What is the branchflower report?

[Tallison]

33. The Troopergate Report released Friday

Steve Branchflower is the indie investigator hired by the Alaska legislature to write it.

[applegrove]

34. Thanks.

[joe711]

20. I'd run if my resume was as thin as hers n/t

[Diogenes2]

23. Let me see... this guy gets his facts...

by listening only to the media that tell him not to listen to any other media except those media telling him not to believe the others. His media tell him they are giving him "the facts", and that all other media are lying. So that's how he knows what he's being told are "the facts", because the only media he listens to told him they are. Did I get that straight?

[Tallison]

27. Deft analysis

It's the circular thing, which is bad, unless you're talking geology.

[Marr]

24. In other words, right-wing hate radio.

This is the crowd McCain draws. It's why they sound like a lynch mob.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

25. Sounds like human morse code.