Your Opinion Counts At CNN — But Should It? 383
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the no-no-no-no-no dept.
from the no-no-no-no-no dept.
theodp writes "Some people love how CNN employs Twitter to engage its audience. Not Steve Dahl. 'I am not interested in the take of @stinky on the Fort Hood shootings or any other current events,' complains Dahl of the access the media gives to Internet know-it-alls. 'I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news, not act as a clearinghouse for any bonehead with a computer, a cable modem and a half-baked opinion.'"
Ironic Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
While I mostly love Slashdot for its comments and the talks between members, it just doesn't work everywhere. If I'm watching CNN from TV, I'm looking for intelligent, fact-checked news and opinions from professionals, not from some mommy who is twittering without understanding any of the issues behind specific things.
Who's Steve Dahl (Score:4, Insightful)
and why should I care...?
A simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
The ironing is delicious (Score:5, Insightful)
How funny is that: A guy airing his opinion on a public medium about how other people's opinions shouldn't be aired on public media...
We need a CNN story on this (complete with tweets) to bring things full circle.
-b
whoops (Score:5, Insightful)
I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news [...]
Yeah, that's definitely where you went wrong.
Re:Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm watching CNN from TV, I'm looking for intelligent, fact-checked news and opinions from professionals
Yes, but unfortunately that's not what you are getting most of the time. CNN is better than most IMO, but what we tend to see is entertainment, not news. How many times do we see these channels making news rather than reporting the news? I'm so sick of seeing this kind of behavior.
A great example was on Fox recently where they were asking people on the street what they thought of Sharon Osbourne's comments on Susan Boyle. Most people hadn't heard it, as it happened on an Sirius radio show, but Fox was constantly reporting on it. Then Fox tracked down Susan Boyle at the airport (at the same time as Entertainment Tonight and a few other programs) and asked her how she felt. This isn't reporting the news, this is making the news.
News organizations should be held to reporting the news, being fair about what they are reporting, and being held to a standard. They are worried about ratings, and unfortunately that affects content.
Re:Yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)
If I want solid information I head over to a site like PhysOrg. If I want to see what others are thinking I head to Slashdot.
News services have become such an opinion mill that it's starting to make it hard to take them seriously. There is a time and place for people to banter on but I don't want it from a news outlet.
I've seen far too many people around here armed with little more than a high school education think that they have a better understanding of the universe than engineers who are in the field. I know the public opinion on just about anything is 10 times worse. We already have a half a million forums for these people to spout their crap on. Do we really need another?
Re:Comments (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing infusing the news with twitter comments and real time viewer feedback does for me on television is anger me by having the typical mouth-breathing idiot's opinion spewed from their trailer to the rest of the world on a massive broadcast when I'd rather just be getting news. I just want to know what events are right now. I don't need to hear @bootycakes (a real twitter name I saw on CNN once) have their uninformed opinion in 65 characters parroted by Don Lemon over live TV.
CNN was the last news I bothered to watch on TV and I haven't even really watched that since just after the election. I'm a bit of a news-hound and a political junkie, but too much of this "ireport" and "udecide" and "twitter" and "facebook" and "call in and share your opinion" and "youtube the news" crap has kind of driven me away entirely. I'll just grab the headlines from google news and skip the commentary.
Irony or hypocracy? (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it amusing that there's an opinion piece that's against opinion pieces. What's Dahl's claim to lipping off "you aren't allowed to lip off?"
This was a gem (emphasis mine): "I was held accountable by management, listeners and, most important, advertisers."
That's the ugly of a Dahl editorial and the beauty of a slashdot comment -- you can voice your opinion here without anybody threatening to fire you because you spoke out against the status quo.
"When did public opinion merit the same amount of airtime as the actual story?"
When we got the internet. It used to be that only the rich could use the freedom of the press, because you had to actually own a press to have freedom of it. Now we, the people, have freedom of the press, too. The rich and the corporatti don't like us unwashed masses having a voice one bit.
Re:A simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
CNN, not CNN.com. They put these comments on the air all the time. When they should be, you know, reporting the news. Or better yet, investigating the news.
CNN STOP IT! (Score:1, Insightful)
I have to agree. When they first started reading net comments it was OK, but they've taken it too far. Every once in a while if there is a really insightful comments it's fine, but it’s starting to seem like they're crowd sourcing journalism. If they're not just reading something off the internet then their fiddling with their latest data visualization tool. They seem to spend more time mucking about with new technology than they do reporting. Anybody else that hologram they used during the campaign coverage? There is something very wrong with special effects on the news!
Re:Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Most web commenting is pretty ridiculous amateur-hour nonsense. Its housewives and teens giving us their "wisdom." Web forums have been politicized by partisans. Fringe nutters have turned everything into their own PR outlets.
Slashdot is slightly better than the youtube/twitter rabble because its a site focused on technology (usually) and has a moderation system. A general news site with any sort of moderation? Madness. I can tolerate slashdot, metafilter, and most of reddit. Everything else is so terrible it makes you realize that crap like "OMG Ghost hunters is the REALZ" or "Vaccines cause autism!!!" is how a lot of people think and critical thinking and a little literacy are the exception, not the norm.
Dahl is right. While the media needs a check agaisnt bias and poor reporting, I doubt these twitter comments are helping. Looks like they are just lowing the signal to noise ratio even more. I guess anything to help make Wolf Blitzer look smart. I guess Neil Postman has finally been proved right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death [wikipedia.org]
Re:It's the economy stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, the BBC are prime offenders at this vox populi crap too. Quite apart from the prime idiocy on display on their "Have Your Say" comments pages, they practically plead for viewers to text or email their views which they then proceed to display and read out live on air. Obivously this is driven by their need for content, any content to fill airtime on their 24-hour news channel, but it is ridiculous that they stoop to parroting some randomly selected half-wit's opinion on complex issues.
Re:Yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting rid of downmods on Slashdot sounds great in theory but it would just result in GNAA posts lingering at 1 (or 2 if the guy doing it has good karma). Which means I'd have to set my threshhold even higher to avoid seeing them, which would bury comments that are actually useful.
The Slashdot moderation system has its flaws, but it seems to work better than most of the alternatives out there.
People like yelling at the news. (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember my Dad Yelling at the TV for whenever those Darn Democrats did A n y t h i n g . And if the news covered too much positive that those darn Democrats did he would change the channel. Hence why like only watches Fox news now... However with CNN just posting the comments from other people it allows think their views have meaning and they may get 2 seconds of fame if they actually read them on the air. They will probably still stick to the station and watch it.
Just like in the old Roman Days right before the collapse lets hide all the problems of the world and give them a good show. As long as they are kept entertained they wont revolt.
Re:Who's Steve Dahl (Score:3, Insightful)
He failed. Disco never died-out. It was replaced with freestyle, then dance-rap in the 90s, and now we have Rhianna and Lady Gaga creating songs that sound very similar to the old 70s stuff, just with better synthesizers.
Re:The ironing is delicious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sort of random:
I read at 0 because I have found that this gives me the best overview. Things seem to only end up at -1 if they really deserve it (copy paste stuff), however things will sit at 0 even though they are reasonable comments, or at least as reasonable as some of the +5, insightful stuff. So I don't think that the slashdot system is bad, just that you need to read at 0 to get the best use out of it, after all, every so often AC says something worth reading, which is why we are supposed to focus on modding things up instead of down.
Bad Expectation (Score:3, Insightful)
I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news
That is his first problem right there. They don't gather news, they gather entertainment and they present that entertainment with whatever spin they feel will best cause the effect they're looking for whether that be sympathy, outrage, shock, etc.
Don't get me wrong either, I'm not saying CNN is the only one like this and this isn't a political viewpoint where I'm categorizing news media into good, bad, left, or right. I'm saying all "news" programs are like this and have been this way for a while.
As for the public interaction via Twitter I don't see how that is a bad thing. In fact I think its a great way for them to keep in contact with their audience, live, and get the pulse of the public. I think it's great that someone at CNN is at least making an attempt at keeping up with some current technology trends and have found a way to use it as a possibly useful communication tool.
Re:Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Go watch The Daily Shows [thedailyshow.com] with Jon Stewart. You'd be surprised just how well they actually cover the news in 20 minutes.
Three words (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah! (Score:1, Insightful)
I was thinking "Yeah! Because the reporters already do that! Unfortunately they cost more too."
Why on Earth are they wasting airtime putting twitter on TV? Answer: Because it's cheaper than making informed commentary. We've gone from "Reality TV" to "Reality TV News".
I'm starting to think the "news" networks should just set up a camera at the local grocery store and post a sign saying "What's your opinion on issue X? Look this way (arrow) into camera and speak your mind." Change the sign once a week and set up 20 of them with different questions. Imagine the savings when they can fire their whole newsroom and investigative journalism staff!
Opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah! Leave those discussion to those of us who have PhDs in Universal Engineering!
Re:Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
>they just helped get the word out about what other people were doing (eg, reporting the news).
When you call an event with 10k people to have 40k people, when your producers are getting the crowd to shout for the cameras, and your opinion shows are showing footage of larger crowds from months ago, then guess what, YOU ARE MANUFACTURING THE NEWS.
We've seen it before with Fox with the elementary school kids who sang a song about Obama. Fox airs it, says "people are talking," and then their opinion shows say the same thing. This is creating controversy and promoting Rupert Murdoch's views. Its not reporting. Its laughable to think it is.
Re:Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
If you consider "The Daily Show" a news source and not purely entertainment... well, I doubt you'd understand what I was going to say next anyway.
It's a modern "Not Necessarily The News".
Re:Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much. I always thought that the idiocy I saw on gaming forums in the 90s was harmless because it was contained in videogame forums. I mean, things as stupid as platform wars would go away once people would discuss serious things like the federal budget, right? The yahoos going "Nintendo 4eva!" would disappear, right?
I'm pretty convinced now that I was wrong on that. The political discourse I'm seeing now uses the same terminology and rhetorical constructs as those used in the platform wars. It's all hot air, partisanship and arguing by putting others down. Using twitter comments on the air is worsening the discourse because it merely gives an official outlet to a lot of people who really have no clue, don't know they have no clue, and don't even care they have no clue. But they are now convinced that because they either got on the air or someone they agree with got on the air means that this is the same as Kissinger agreeing with them.
I'm not saying that Twitter can't be used to send interesting comments. I'm saying, however, that Twitter is used by the media in the worst possible way right now: to further turn news into entertainment of the worst kind: reality TV.
Re:Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
Then your opinions will be just as knee-jerk and uninformed as those of the people you're berating. The only difference is that you're keeping them to yourself instead of inflicting them on everyone else.
It takes work to keep yourself informed, and since the news media is more interested in advertising revenue than informing the public, that work now has to be done by you (and me, and anyone else who wants to know more than the superficialities of an issue). Sure it's hard and sometimes depressing to wade through the all crap from @bootycakes and friends, but you will almost always find a point or two that you hadn't considered before, or a link to an analysis piece on another site, or maybe a post from an expert in the field that backs up or refutes a claim from the original piece. These are the things that help you understand the nuances of a story, which is what you need before you can claim that you're actually informed.
The flip side to this whole thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Eliminate the weapon, and you make it a choice: either mod 500 posts in a 1000-message thread up, or all 500 posters' signals are lost in 500 posts of GNAA noise.
Because it takes less effort to downmod a post to -1 than it does to post at 0 or +1, Slashdot's actually readable, even at 0 or -1.
Taking away downmoderation would require work on the part of every legitimate reader. Most legitimate readers aren't willing to work if they have to click/mod to make everything readable (on a large thread, you'd wind up with carpal tunnel syndrome after the first hour), but the trolls are more than willing to put the time in to make everything unreadable.
If you want a system where only the "blessed" are heard and the moderation system goes out of its way to emphasize the article and de-emphasize the comments (even to the point of requiring Javascript and multiple mouseclicks to read anything, and putting the comments in the wrong chronological order so that only the most recent few are ever visible), there's Gawker. It makes Digg look useful. Me? I come to Slashdot (albeit in classic mode :) to get away from that sort of thing.
Re:Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Except by every means, The Daily Show covers more news than the typical mouth-breathing news casters, and does so in a funny way. They don't lie, make shit up, or spend thirty minutes covering Madonna's booger incident via twitter: they show news footage, give a quick 60 second real news blurb, then make a joke.
Watch Fox News, the real Fox News and not their commentators, and then watch The Daily Show. Report back with which one gave you more information.
Re:Comments (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that I am endorsing Fox's sensationalism - but it is only fair to point out that all of the television news media giants are guilty of this sort of thing today. The networks have two choices - either rerun the same stories every few hours while just sticking to the news-worthy facts (which has a tenancy to drop ratings since viewers feel like they are watching 'old news') or manufacture news via sensationalism to keep people watching.
Fox takes a lot of flack for not being a "real" news station... but I'd argue that they are at least as real as the so-called "network news" stations. The only thing different about them is the spin you get from them. And let's face it - journalism will never be free of spin, intentional or not - it will always be there. The person(s) authoring the news have a particular viewpoint that is influencing their presentation of said news.
It seems today we want a news devoid of reporters. This - is a very difficult thing to do - let me know if you come up with a way to do it!
Re:Comments (Score:2, Insightful)
IMO the news is supposed to be fact, not commentary, and the way the news is reported is just as important as what is reported. Fox (and CNN, MSNBC, etc) don't deliver just facts, they deliver "human interest stories" and news item from a slanted perspective. I don't like being told how to feel on things, but there are so many people that do like being told. The news should absolutely be reporting on anything and everything; that is their job.
And to the people that think that no one cares, people do and that's why we can't have nice things. The amount of made-up outrage out there is ridiculous; people love to feel outraged. That's why radio and TV content have both gone to hell IMO.
Re:Yeah! (Score:3, Insightful)
There are times when it's interesting to see the reaction of the populace, but I'm looking for insightful commentary, not trite catch phrases and indignant attempts at cleverness. To make things worse, most of the newscasts that use social media as part of their show will pose their question and pick two respondents as follows:
Do you agree with Proposition 782?
I appreciate that news outlets want to show all sides of the debate, but typically they display two polarized responses, which basically cancel out any sort of rational discourse. It seems to be there only so that you can agree with A/B and shout "Damn right!" at your TV.
Re:Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. When you find any, let me know, will you?
Know-it-alls & Bone-heads (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes the know-it-alls and bone-heads that work in the news any better than know-it-alls and bone-heads who don't?
Most media people you see day-to-day have the mistaken impression that they actually know WTF they're talking about. Unfortunately, they don't.
Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with removing down modding is that there is then no way of filtering out the actual spam, aside from setting your reading level above the default which then means that you miss the ACs with good comments that don't get modded up.
I still think that the slashdot system is the best I have seen, I just wish there was some more stringent way of knocking people out of the moderating system, and that up mods counted for a lot more than down mods.
One of the interesting effects of down modding a good comment is that they CAN'T down mod all of the replies that it garners, and there are enough people that read at -1 that there will be comments.
Re:Comments (Score:1, Insightful)
[caranalogy]That's like bragging a Yugo can beat a bicycle in a drag race: it doesn't mean the Yugo is a racer.[/caranalogy] If you're going to talk about news, then compare The Daily Show to an actual news show (e.g. The Newshour with Jim Lehrer) instead of strawmen.
Ok, so that was a little unfair: you just used the worst of news -- so bad that people often call it "news" in quotes -- in your example, and then I just used the best for my example. Which brings us to:
What's "typical" for news? Wait, are we pre-selecting the worst of them, by your use of "mouth-breathing news casters?" How are we going to seriously talk about The Daily Show if as news, you don't want to compare it any real news show?
Maybe, for all your cynicism, you actually drank the Fox kool-aide. You are calling them news, dude.
Re:Know-it-alls & Bone-heads (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes the know-it-alls and bone-heads that work in the news any better than know-it-alls and bone-heads who don't?
Most media people you see day-to-day have the mistaken impression that they actually know WTF they're talking about. Unfortunately, they don't.
Those know-it-alls and bone-heads have research teams backing them up.. oh wait a minute they fired those guys and either regugitate press releases or just make crap up.. carry on!
Re:Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a modern "Not Necessarily The News".
Not really, the modern "Not Necessarily The News" is The Onion News Network [theonion.com].
Craig Ferguson seems like a better source of news than most "news" shows...
Re:Yeah! (Score:1, Insightful)
No it doesn't. It encourages the public opinion. Unlike with CNN's forum, there are no "overlord" journalists for people to echo. It is whatever people think after reading the 10-30 words in the summary (and MAYBE TFA) that usually doesn't have opinion attached! Oh, and when they do, God help the poster of that summary.
No, I like slashdot because the modders here generally see through the bullshit people think they are passing as genuine opinion. In other words, the honest thoughts of people shine and all the propaganda people think are their thoughts gets flushed.
Re:Yeah! (Score:3, Insightful)
No it doesn't. It encourages the public opinion.
It shapes the public opinion. "I don't know what I'm talking about, so I'm going to go with whatever public opinion says and get that word 'Informative' next to my name!" "Oh, look, BSOD jokes get modded up!" "Chair throwing!" "I've never used an iPhone but it sucks!" "I'm glad I don't own a TV anymore!" "Save Farscape!"
No, I like slashdot because the modders here generally see through the bullshit people think they are passing as genuine opinion.
Oh, please. The modders are people who have had good karma for a while. They're not trained staff. They mod up or down based on their opinion. It's like being back in grade school at recess.
Re:A simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee, I guess that when you personally are no longer watching CNN, then its shoddy reporting and "advocacy journalism" like Lou Dobbs has no remaining effect on the voting public, and thus you should no longer have any right to complain about it!
I bet you think that you strike a huge blow against a company when you boycott their products without any coordination with other potential buyers.
Re:Three words (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of folks consider NPR to be a tool of the liberals.
A lot of folks are ignorant paranoids who think ALL media is a "tool of the liberals" save Fox News and insurgent independent voices like Glenn Beck.
I doubt you'd won't find many Liberals who are content with NPR's efforts to provide liberal perspectives.
Re:Three words (Score:4, Insightful)
You're conflating two separate issues. NPR has a measurable liberal bias, but it's still generally quality, educated news. They don't tend to make shit up, or have a "youtube comments" equivalent section.
Publications like NPR or Reason are intentionally biased - but they're at least generally well-informed and factual, it's the base premise the authors are using and the conclusions they draw from the facts that is biased. It'd be awesome to have a source that is both quality and unbiased.. but I haven't found one.
CNN's twitter segments aren't usually particularly biased... but that doesn't make them any higher quality.
Re:Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
How on God's Earth do you manage to tolerate "most of Reddit"?
Re:Comments (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm familiar with Stewart's own impression of his show. He got interviewed by some of the news commentators on one of the major networks during the campaign season, where they tried to accuse him of being a poor reporter. His come-back was to point out that his show follows another show about muppets making prank phone calls.
The point is that even though he's on the Comedy Central network, and has had such luminary lead-in pieces as the Crank Yankers, he STILL has nearly as much actual news on his segment as an alleged news segment on an actual news network. They too fill up their time with meaningless interviews from know-nothings, social commentary, and irrelevancies. The fact that the Daily Show actually does come close stands as its own very sad commentary on the state of television news. It is lowest common denominator info-tainment, not news, and calling any of them news is like calling Fox News fair and balanced. Just because it's repeated a lot doesn't make it true.
Another poster pointed out a 1985 book decrying television news, making the case that the medium by its very nature isn't capable of thoughtful analysis, and I have to agree with it. TV is a game of telephone played among people sitting around a campfire, blown up to global proportions and broadcast 24 hours a day. It's ephemeral, ghostly, unaccountable. Even in this day of wide-spread recording devices, it's still difficult to challenge statements made on TV in any sort of seriousness. The medium and its audience don't want analysis like that, and actively object to it. On the rare occasions that a news network tries it, they get shouted down by the people they are questioning, with statements like, "Why are we going over old ground? We need to progress forward!" The questioner never seems to have an answer for that, and they're left looking dim and obstructionist, when really the only way to get at the truth is precisely that back and forth process.
So it's left to a comedy show to point out the absurdities posing as statistics that our sober-sided politicians spout on a daily basis. And, incidentally, to other mediums, like say, the Internet, which to this day is largely made up of the written word. It's here, on the Internet, that we can have the necessary back and forth discussion to actually get at the truth.
You say the Daily Show is crap, I say it's not, you quote detailed samples, I use your own samples to point out the equivalent dearth of fact on other shows, and the people reading this thread will probably be left with an impression that more closely approximates reality than they possibly could have by watching a TV show about it.
And they can read the whole thread without commercial interruption.
Sometimes I think broadband is the last thing we need. It kept video out for decades, which was all to the good.
Re:Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
>Watch the coverage of any "demonstration" shown on any news show.
Bullshit. FOX didnt even cover the big gay rights event in DC a couple of weeks ago. I dont know why some people just cant accept FOX as the partisan outlet they are. Incredible.
Re:Yeah! (Score:3, Insightful)
You've got your perspective upside-down and inside-out is all.
Digg has ceased to be relevant precisely because of "bury brigades" - organized groups of people who mod down anything they disagree with. Digg is where the term originated, though it fits well for a good number of Slashdot's abusive modpoint users as well (on multiple sides of any issue; look how many posts get downmodded because they discuss the good and bad of Linux or Microsoft for another example).
The purpose of Slashdot's moderation as stated is NOT to "see things gone", it's to see things rise to the top. The most insightful comments are supposed to rise. The -1 moderation options were only provided to be a last resort against truly ridiculous abuses such as GNAA trolling. Unfortunately, once you have bury brigades, this model ceases to work correctly. Organized groups work out how to use and abuse the system, create multiple accounts to game the modpoint lottery, target individuals over and over, and engage in their own brand of trolling along with modpoint abuse, the goal of which is to eliminate all thoughts but their own from view.
If you really want to see the cream rise to the crop, then give more room on the top and don't worry so much about pushing things down. And remember, what you (personally) feel is "off-topic" is relevant and even insightful to other people, which is another reason why giving out weapons is a bad thought.
Looking at your posting history is seems like many of your comments are exactly what I would like to see gone
Funny, looking at your posting history I feel the same about your comments - boring, mostly off-topic or highly redundant. The difference is that I don't want to see them "gone." I'd be perfectly content leaving them alone. If one or two of yours rose to a 6+ on the 10 scale, fine. If not, no big deal to me.
Re:Who's Steve Dahl (Score:3, Insightful)
... just with better synthesizers.
Define better.
Peace,
The Analog Snob