Hm… how is it that because a person got a story from the Daily Caller does someone know the person does not read other sources as well? Just wondering. Seems a bit like projection or mind reading, i.e., if someone reads a news source I do not like then that person must not read anything else because I practice that behavior.
On the more fundamental note, has it occurred to anyone that the question is not where the news is from, but whether it is correct and accurate?
I just got back from a meeting (cannot state what it was about) but it was agreed that people limiting themselves to the coastal newspapers and MSM sources is unwittingly turning out to be a good thing. This means these people are missing what is happening in most other parts of the country, and it is much easier to get things by them because they are shielded from this info/environment by people who share their viewpoint/narrative.
Therefore, it is much easier to use their ignorance to do things and then they are shellshocked and wonder how somethings happened. The key is it is now easier to get many things done because no is looking and these sources happily shield their own readers. Interesting dynamic to watch.
I completely agree, and I also note that if you’d read all of the posts before commenting, many of your wise suggestions were mentioned already.
Early in the discussion it was suggested that the OP find out the accuracy of the information. At issue was that if something comes from the Daily Caller, it might be accurate, but it also might not be. Daily Caller is not trustworthy, unfortunately, and is more like Breitbart in seeming to have a Professional Right Wing propaganda agenda. It seems to want to sway people to hyperventilate about how terrible non-Ultra-Right-Wing things are. It’s not even attempting to meet the ideal of telling objective news dispassionately. And so the accuracy of any news from Daily Caller usually needs to be checked via multiple sources. It’s just one of many fake news outlets out there with a smidge of truth and so easy to get trapped believing. Completely understandable.
Several other newspapers were mentioned from all parts of the country–all easily accessible with computer–for looking up accurate statistics and other information.
There are certainly more than enough videos circulating to convince me that this hideous behavior is alive and well. We don’t have to read about these accounts to know they happen often, we can view them with our own eyes.
This gem was circulating today. Apparently a woman who was in the process of checking out in a store had a friend with her who ran back to get a few extra shirts. She returned with the shirts before the transaction was completed and put the shirts in with her friend’s remaining items. This was the reaction of one woman to that horrible crime – am supposing this is her idea of holiday spirit: (video contains profanity)
If the perpetrator hadn’t pleaded guilty, and there hadn’t been so many witnesses, I’m sure that the various echo chambers of a certain leaning would be making that claim. Just like they do with respect to every single hate crime against Muslims and/or people of color that isn’t on video – and some that are.
Tell me, zobroward, do you think that 50-70% or more of the cases of swastikas scrawled on synagogues and in Jewish cemeteries, and the Jewish tombstones that get knocked over and vandalized, are hoaxes perpetrated by Jews trying to gain sympathy? How about the tens of thousands of examples of vile anti-Semitic harassment by email and on Twitter against Jewish journalists in the last year? Are those hoaxes too?
Your blanket statement just does not pass the real world test, in my opinion. Trustworthy is only untrustworthy if the information cannot be verified and this applies to the the MSM as well. So to just say untrustworthy means not doing your homework to verify.
I recommend you do a test on accuracy of reporting, not based on narrative, but based on facts of the story. On the facts of a story, the NYT and other MSM often fail miserably, but sound good to many because people agree with the narrative. They are failing now again, and their readers do not even know it.
At my meeting, it was actually funny to read the reporting of this meeting with the NYT and Boston Globe etc. literally getting everything about it wrong. They did not even get the purpose of the meeting correct. It was all their speculation based on who was attending - zero facts - I know because I was part of it. We did not even touch on the topics they mentioned and addressed a totally different set of issues.
Personally, I am thinking that this is now a good thing. The less some people who think they know actually know makes it much easier to to navigate around them. As one meeting participant said, “We could not create a false diversion this effective if we wanted to.” True that!
Therefore, I now do not push back on people who only read the main papers so they continue to only read the MSM and coastal papers. No sense trying to convince the in-convincible why they are wrong on a particular issue. Not wrong on perspective mind you, but wrong on the facts of the matter.
Yes, and the last three hate crime hoaxes this past 2 weeks were all reported as facts by the MSM along with the usual narrative, until they were called out as hoaxes. So, the MSM had no problem making people believing these things were real.
In fact, one alternative media source showed how the MSM never used the world “alleged” for the crimes, but when the it was found to be a hoaxes, the same papers called a couple people “alleged” hoaxers. It was funny to see.
You can tell the difference between the MSM and so called news sources like the Daily Caller and many other so called news sources of its type, when a story in the MSM is found to be factually incorrect they will issue a retraction and explain what the facts are, whereas sites like the Daily Caller, even when their stuff is called on being inaccurate, will simply keep peddling the same bogus crap, or worse, will claim the fact checkers are agents of the liberal elites and other crap. Sites like the Daily Caller are putting out the ultimate canard, about “shariah law being in 23 states”, then when called on it claim those who say otherwise are covering for those who implement it. Journalism is about attempting to find the facts of something that has happened and report it, and if found wrong there is a duty to correct it. If a reported on a paper is found to have deliberately made things up or claimed to have witness testimony that didn’t exist or reported the statement of someone they knew was suspect, they will be fired, on a site like the Daily Caller they would likely get a bonus for ‘reporting what the people know is true’. If a paper like the NY Times or the Washington post when fact checked routinely showed their articles were false, they would lose readership; when a website like the Daily Caller gets fact checked, the people reading it don’t even shrug and ignore it, they don’t even know that it has ben fact checked because they don’t ready anything else…
Fox News isn’t quite that bad, they knew even under Ailes that if their reporting was the right wing equivalent of the Weekly World News they would be in trouble because they at least claim to be journalists.
As far as people reading sites like the Daily Caller, or people who watch Fox News, there have been studies done on those kind of news sites, and a large percentage of those who watch Fox News or read websites like the Daily Caller and the like get almost all their news from those sources only, while people who read and watch MSM for their news tend to rely on a variety of sources.
I don’t doubt what @awcntdb says, that people who read the MSM only don’t know what people in other parts of the country are thinking, but there is a very good reason for that. Websites like the Daily Caller, Breitbart and the like aren’t reporting facts or news, what they are doing is reporting what people already believe is fact (specifically, people from 'flyover territory", rather than trying to deliver to those people what the facts really are. For example, I read recently that people who read such sites and are anti ACA believe that the number of uninsured people in this country is greater since the ACA came about (which is an outright falsehood), and they also believe that health insurance rates have soared at 2 or three times the rate they were before ACA (they haven’t, they are increasing actually at a rate less than before ACA), and something like 75% of them belive that Shariah law already has been imposed in many states in this country (it hasn’t).
Great - retractions on page one zillion where few people ever see them. Retractions are PURPOSELY not front and center on page 1 like the original factually false/fake story. Pretty much tells you everything about bias and motive, does it not?! The only time I see easy to find retractions when the egg is so heavy they have no choice.
On a more pertinent point, just because the MSM issues unseeable retractions in tiny print, then they are absolved and given the right to peddle their nonsense facts and narratives to people? Hmm…How about this ulterior motive - they use this supposed professional out of possible retraction to peddle their narratives and false facts as long as they can then issue the unseen retractions. Sorry, too lame an excuse for me to allow them to present false/unverified stories.
I am not defending Daily Caller or any other source. I am simply pointing out that the Daily Caller does not hide behind some sense of false objectivity and Breitbart et al are pretty upfront about their bias.
It is the MSM that lies to people that it is objective and unbiased and the fact people believe that after all what they have seen lately tells me people are choosing to be deceived in order to read narratives they agree with. People do not go to the MSM for facts anymore; they go because they agree with their story lines. That is obvious.
Called being inaccurate by whom or what? The MSM and others who disagree with it? Who made them king? That is a joke, right?
So, what you are saying is you are a sheeple of the fact checkers and you do not check them. Got it! You are ripe for being led like sheep because all that is necessary is for you to think fact checkers are unbiased. Yes, and I have beach front property in Iowa to sell you.
Here is a simple novel solution - check everyone and everything. It is not too hard to deduce across several sources when something does not add up. And when there are conflicting stories, believe nothing until the dust dies down.
This is the perfect example of how the MSM sells a statistical hoax. Readers get sold a bill of goods via a well-structured narrative using selectively chosen facts, while leaving out the most relevant information. The result is literally readers miss the forest for the trees and a lot of people are duped.
This post illustrates why saying a news source is trustworthy is not enough. The real question is, “Is the source parsing the story to feed a narrative, while only using the facts it wants to divulge and conveniently hiding others?”
Let’s parse the above:
A true statement ONLY if you count dependence and reduction of choice as benefits.
The sleight of hand in the above statement is that ACA did four things not mentioned that are devastating to people in the workforce: 1) out of the gate, it raised family premiums by 3 to 4 times out what they were paying and added correspondingly higher deductibles - thus effectively taxing families out of actually using their insurance unless they got really sick and spent some $7,000 to $18,000 annually before their insurance kicked in.
For the less skilled workers, it reduced hours from 40 to 29, kicked them off of their private insurance and now they have 65% of the income they had before and no insurance - a double whammy. This was said to be fine because they then qualified for Medicaid and subsidies - not good, independent people now are made dependent on others. That is not a benefit in the real world of people who want to be responsible.
The increase in Medicaid users (16+ million) are counted as insured people even though they are paying nothing to be “insured.” It is a welfare program. So 100% dependent people are counted as responsibly insured even though they pay nothing. See point #1 above.
What is the point of insurance when you are stuck with whatever there is and it may not help you? The average consumer went from 3 to 5 choices of insurers to 1. A slew of them now have zero.
So great - more dependence and less choice - I did not grow up in a family where these were thought to be good things.
Again, true but note the missing two bits of information: 1) the starting point of the rate hike. Insurance rates may have been rising at a higher rate, but the starting point of the increase was 1/4 to 1/3 what the premiums are now. Thus, it is possible to have a higher percentage rate increase and not be as hard a hit. A 25% rate hike on a $300 premium is much easier to absorb than a 15% rate hike on a $750 premium because the base premiums are different. Specifically, this sleight of hand does not account for the initial drastic premium hikes in the first year of ACA, which are conveniently not mentioned in the rate hike disparity.
Therefore. they sell people the narrative the rate of increase is lower, when in fact the real effect is the premiums are 3 to 4 times higher as a starting point and each increase even if at a lower rate percentage ends up being more/higher in real dollars.
This is called selling the narrative to the innumerate because one can say “they are increasing actually at a rate less than before ACA” knowing most people do not know what starting points are being used and what is truly being compared to what.
Bottom-line - the rate percentage increases are lower, but that says zilch about the real dollar increase, which are actually higher for paying people.
Also missing is that this rate hike is averaged in with people who get healthcare free via medicaid, which was greatly expanded. And since the greatest expansion of newly uninsured is from people who are on Medicaid, and they pay ZERO. This makes it easy to divide rate hikes by a larger population of “insured” and say the rate hike is not that bad.
A complete lie using statistics that they know most people would not have a clue how to deduce the true numbers. Add enough zero payers in there and miraculously the rate hikes are all affordable and no big deal, while the real dollar increase for actual payers is more than before ACA.
So, what does the increase in the insured population really mean in the real world for people who had health insurance before ACA? It means that some 3.8 million less people (and climbing) have private health insurance.
Now how is this possible if there are more people insured? Well, the trick is the quotes above are really counting and merging two different populations of people and pretending that hey were the same from before - or at least not telling you that they are not.
What happened was many productive, working people LOST their private health insurance that they were dutifully paying for because they: 1) lost their 40-hour job and/or 2) could not afford the initial dramatically increased premiums of ACA.
However, these people were “magically” replaced on the “insured” roles by dependents of government because of the expanded Medicaid of 16+ million people who are not paying anything for health issurance - they are getting health insurance free based on the high premiums charged to paying customers. And they have no deductibles so they have better access to healthcare since they never have to come up with out-of-pocket costs.
Therefore, someone can say there are technically more insured under ACA, but they do not tell you it is really more insured via a welfare program (Medicaid), not more independent, working people who are actually paying for their insurance. Hence, the trick is they are using one population to cover for the loss in the other population. But it is fiscally ruinous because they exchanged a paying population for a non-paying population.