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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 23, 2024 7:55:35 GMT -5
Yesterday Keith Pollard turned 74 and today Klaus Jansen turns 72. Think on that for a minute.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,878
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Post by shaxper on Jan 23, 2024 8:15:27 GMT -5
I tried that. Then I realized how much social media was trying to force its own reality on me, so I've started to treat intelligently consuming the news as my responsibility. I am trying that. I find Reuters to be non-sensationalist, so I do check out their site for news. Hopefully, I’m doing the right thing. Yes. Reuters and the Associated Press are about as unbiased as you can get, though I sometimes find their scope/coverage limited. I also intentionally check out mainstream liberal and conservative leaning news outlets in order to see what everyone else is being told. Usually, this means CNN and FOX.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,222
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Post by Confessor on Jan 23, 2024 8:53:34 GMT -5
I find Reuters to be non-sensationalist, so I do check out their site for news. Hopefully, I’m doing the right thing. If you live in the UK (which I know you do), I think the BBC is still the most reliable source of news by far. I know left-wingers complain that it's biased towards the Conservatives and right-wingers complain that it's just a mouthpiece for the Labour party, but that says to me that they've essentially got the balance about right. They also have a policy of not publishing a story until they've independantly verified its accuracy themselves, which does mean that they lag behind other outlets on occasion when a big story breaks, but it's still better than, say, SkyNews, whose policy is "we're never wrong for more than a day." I do also use Reuters, but like shaxper, I find it's coverage is somewhat limited overall. On the other hand, it doesn't have all the magazine-style non-stories like the BBC News website does, which aren't really news at all in my book. But yeah, in terms of actual news, if you're in the UK, the BBC is still your safest bet, I reckon.
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Post by impulse on Jan 23, 2024 9:29:41 GMT -5
As an American, it's fascinating to lear the Post Office and Royal Mail are different entities. I see there is a reason for it, but I would have never imagined that there would be two separate ones. Here, it's the Post Office or private companies e.g. UPS, FedEx, etc.
Regarding media, yeah, I was going to add AP if Shax hadn't beaten me to it. Them and Reuters are fairly objective. NPR tends to be pretty accurate too despite a bit of a leftward slant.
In theory, I'd like to see what the more conservative outlets here are saying for counter balance, but in practice it's difficult since the majority of the ones we happen to have here are absolute lunatic dumpster fires who abandoned all sense and reason years ago. If there's something like a conservative-leaning but fact-based entity a la NPR I'd be happy to know what it is. Though I suppose the actual news part of Fox isn't egregious. All of the outlets here wear their biases strongly once you're in the editorial slots of course, regardless of alignment.
Though I mostly use aggregates online to get a cross-section of everything. Anecdotally, I find I get more a variety of what's going on this way than relying on any traditional media outlet.
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Post by berkley on Jan 23, 2024 9:42:10 GMT -5
I think the mainstream media is pretty conservative already so I don't feel any need to look at Fox News or what have you for any so-called "balance".
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,878
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Post by shaxper on Jan 23, 2024 9:47:30 GMT -5
NPR tends to be pretty accurate too despite a bit of a leftward slant. I used to rely entirely on NPR, and then their coverage of the 2020 Democratic primaries revealed some really serious bias that made me reconsider. There were "news" stories that were overt propaganda pieces for Biden, and there was shockingly little coverage of rival candidates, even after debates. I'd trusted NPR for years and couldn't believe what I was seeing. I think the mainstream media is pretty conservative already so I don't feel any need to look at Fox News or what have you for any so-called "balance". Oh, it's not about seeking balance. To be clear, I'd say CNN is probably 70% trustworthy and Fox is about 40%. They are not the same. I read in an effort to understand what's being fed to their readers/viewers, not to get any sort of truth out of them.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 23, 2024 11:32:17 GMT -5
I don't trust any news agency for anything more than the bare bones of what's going on, like "there was a bombing in Latveria". Even when just reporting facts objectively, it is so easy to distort what's actually going on.
"Young man who turns his back on his family starts cult; gets in trouble with the law after accusations of planning an insurrection".
For the past 25 years, I've subscribed to Foreign Affairs; it doesn't report news, but presents essays by scholars and/or diplomats (including several foreign ministers). The writers don't pretend to be neutral, but they can explain how they actually view things; that gives us viewers a more nuanced idea of why people are doing what they are. (I disagreed completely with Condoleezza Rice, for example, on the war in Iraq... but after reading her piece, I could at least understand where she came from).
The CBC, meanwhile, is dead to me.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Jan 23, 2024 11:38:28 GMT -5
Yesterday Keith Pollard turned 74 and today Klaus Jansen turns 72. Think on that for a minute. Did Klaus Jensen do some Daredevil or am I just imagining it?
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Post by driver1980 on Jan 23, 2024 11:54:42 GMT -5
As an American, it's fascinating to lear the Post Office and Royal Mail are different entities. I see there is a reason for it, but I would have never imagined that there would be two separate ones. Here, it's the Post Office or private companies e.g. UPS, FedEx, etc. Confessor did a good job of explaining how Royal Mail and the Post Office were once the same thing. We Brits don’t do anything simple, though. We once had something called the GPO (General Post Office), whose roots began in the 17th century. They were also the state telecommunications carrier. The GPO was dissolved in 1969. And in the early 80s, British Telecom was formed, so telecommunications were no longer the remit of our postal service. There’s been so much change since, such as the formation of Parcelforce (who delivered parcels, although I don’t know if they are even technically part of Royal Mail nowadays), privatisation, recent changes, etc. Royal Mail even rebranded as Consignia once (no, me neither). I did visit the Postal Museum in London once, which was quite fascinating - and I got to ride on an underground mail train.
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Post by impulse on Jan 23, 2024 12:08:47 GMT -5
Parcelforce at least sounds cool, like the superhero mail service.
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Post by driver1980 on Jan 23, 2024 13:09:38 GMT -5
Parcelforce at least sounds cool, like the superhero mail service. Here’s a Parcelforce lorry, ready to deliver mail to the Baxter Building:
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Jan 23, 2024 13:32:20 GMT -5
Yesterday Keith Pollard turned 74 and today Klaus Jansen turns 72. Think on that for a minute. Did Klaus Jensen do some Daredevil or am I just imagining it? Yes. He did finishes on a lot of Milller's run and full art for a bit after Miller stopped doing the art and left the book. -M
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 23, 2024 13:42:09 GMT -5
Did Klaus Jensen do some Daredevil or am I just imagining it? Yes. He did finishes on a lot of Milller's run and full art for a bit after Miller stopped doing the art and left the book. -M It should also be noted that Janson did a bang up job on Gil Kane's pencils before Miller came aboard, and even pencilled a fairly recent DD miniseries inked by Bill Sienkiewicz. In The Daredevil Chronicles, he also said that Daredevil was the character he really wanted to work on when he was young. No wonder he was so good at it!
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Post by tartanphantom on Jan 23, 2024 13:56:45 GMT -5
Parcelforce at least sounds cool, like the superhero mail service. Here’s a Parcelforce lorry, ready to deliver mail to the Baxter Building:
Powered by Willy Lumpkin's ear-wiggling powers.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 23, 2024 16:07:42 GMT -5
As an American, it's fascinating to lear the Post Office and Royal Mail are different entities. I see there is a reason for it, but I would have never imagined that there would be two separate ones. Here, it's the Post Office or private companies e.g. UPS, FedEx, etc. Regarding media, yeah, I was going to add AP if Shax hadn't beaten me to it. Them and Reuters are fairly objective. NPR tends to be pretty accurate too despite a bit of a leftward slant.
In theory, I'd like to see what the more conservative outlets here are saying for counter balance, but in practice it's difficult since the majority of the ones we happen to have here are absolute lunatic dumpster fires who abandoned all sense and reason years ago. If there's something like a conservative-leaning but fact-based entity a la NPR I'd be happy to know what it is. Though I suppose the actual news part of Fox isn't egregious. All of the outlets here wear their biases strongly once you're in the editorial slots of course, regardless of alignment. Though I mostly use aggregates online to get a cross-section of everything. Anecdotally, I find I get more a variety of what's going on this way than relying on any traditional media outlet. That's counter-balanced by the fact that 99% of their business and economic coverage comes from the Wall Street Journal and other pro-Corporate news sources. I used to read some of FAIR's (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) publications and the network and cable news outlets tended to fall in the middle on national reporting, pro-business in reporting on labor disputes (if at all) and middle to Center-Left on social issues. However, the real biases came in what they didn't report. Every year, Project CENSORED puts out a review of the Top 10 under-reported news stories and the subjects are alarming, quite often. Through the 90s, one of the key under-reported stories was the CIA's links to drug trafficking, to fund covert operations in Latin America and Central Asia. Labor was also a big one, as was the nuclear power industry and a few others. A Couple of FAIR correspondents, way back in the early-mid 90s, had a book, called Through The Media Looking Glass, which explored how corporate biases influenced not only how they covered a story; but if. For instance, Decatur, IL, which is close to my boyhood home town, had three factories on strike: Caterpillar, Bridgestone and ADM. On Labor Day, there was a massive demonstration march between the three plants, to illustrate the fight for fair wages. Bridgestone had been using scab labor, which was in place when defective tires were produced at their plant, for SUVs, which they ultimately used as an excuse to shut the plant down and offshore it. Anyway, the only media coverage was a local WAND news crew, who were booed away from the scene, because the station was perceived as completely pro-management, as their biggest advertisers were ADM, Caterpillar and other large businesses in the area and their reporting routinely used phrases like "union demands," and "management concessions" which made it sound like the unions were greedy and management was accommodating, rather than they were negotiating back and forth. No national news organizations deemed it worthy of coverage.. All three networks and CNN were owned by corporate entities. ABC News magazine program, 20/20 routinely turned down stories related to the nuclear power industry and safety concerns. One of the producers of the show was married to a legal representative or lobbyist (I forget which) for the nuclear power industry. The regular use of Conservative pundits or politicians and counter views was examined and it was noted that they often featured an ultra-Conservative rep, a Center Right and a Center-Left, but no hard Left or Progressive voice, let alone any talk of socialist POV. Before them all getting jobs with FOX, several Conservative pundits, like Pat Buchanan and George Will were brought on news programs to debate issues; but never hard Left pundits, like Noam Chomsky. Shows like CNN's Crossfire were circuses orchestrated to have hard Right battle, at best, Center, until John Stewart made a mockery of them, to their face, and the show was soon cancelled. All of these kinds of biases were strong through the media and they argued there was little or no Left Media, apart from things like The Nation, since other groups, like NPR and McNeil-Lehrer received corporate funding and reported Wall Street Journal business stories and did not investigate them independently. In the contested 2000 election, an American freelance reporter, working for The Guardian, in the UK, uncovered massive irregularities in the Felon List that the state of Florida used to block former convicted felons from voting. He received copies of the actual contract with the private firm that generated the list and it revealed that the contract required 100% verification of the names on the list and criminal records. The list featured first and last names, with no middle names or initials and no social security numbers. The contract required total verification and greater than 90% accuracy. Independent investigations of the list found it to be 70% or higher inaccurate with a sitting judges name on it and more than one election official, with no criminal records. Two counties threw out the list, during voting. The company that was awarded the contract was a major Republican Party donor and the CEO had close ties with the Reagan and Bush Administrations. The Secretary of State was George W Bush's campaign manager, in Florida and she certified the election, despite the disputes in several counties. of course, it eventually went to the Supreme Court for final decision. However, the reporter shared information he had uncovered with major American news organizations, who all refused to pursue the story, then said it was over when the court decision came down. The reporter was involved in a BBC investigative story of the election and a Florida official walked out of the interview when presented copies of the contract, requiring 100% verification. Even if the list was 90% accurate, 10 % was enough to tilt the election in either direction. Again, no one but the Guardian and the BBC reported the story and that was only in the UK, until the reporter wrote a book about it, which was published in the US, by a small press. These are the elements that people miss when they discuss media bias; it's not just the actual on-air and in-print reporting, it is the editing and decisions to cover a story or not, let alone verifying sources and having investigative staffs to do the legwork. The major trend for more than a decade is corporate ownership of media outlets, coupled with slashed budgets for investigative reporting. The end result is too small of a crew to follow up stories, especially when they involve corporate negligence and malfeasance. That is why I have always looked to multiple sources for news and find that print tends to be better for investigative work. Beyond that, you have to identify the biases within the organizations you use and find alternate reporting, to give a better picture, assuming you care about the story or issue. Social media algorithms are not designed to lead you to those sources and more often designed to hide them. That's part of why my boss and I cringe when one of our youngsters asks us about a news story he read, since his main source of news is TikTok, despite our advice to check out anything that sounds fishy with a reputable news source, like the wire services. He is pretty typical of what I see, culturally, of getting "news" from one very filtered source and only paying attention to either sensationalistic headlines, or complimentary newsfeeds.
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