Your Opinion Counts At CNN — But Should It? 383
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.'"
Re:No it should not matter. (Score:3, Interesting)
picking a station that validate one's political views
This is pretty much the crux of it. People actively seek out the information sources (radio, TV, internet) that support the opinions they already hold. Accuracy of information and facts run a distant second, and meaningful analysis runs an even more distant third.
pot kettle black (Score:3, Interesting)
The way I see it, Steve Dahl is nothing more than a bonehead with a DS-3 connection. What's the difference other than the number of readers and the username? Isn't Steve Dahl voicing his opinion? Isn't he just a person, and doesn't that mean you or I could post our opinions? What makes him so special?
Sure, there are some brain-dead yokels on both sides of the spectrum. There are the idiots who worship trees and think that trees feel and believe the "global warming" er "global climate change" chant without asking for the evidence and the raw data (okay, I admit I'm a skeptic given the revelation of how temperature sensors are installed now vs. 40 years ago and what the guidelines dictate. Too many are installed over or next to heat sinks). Then, there are those on the right who pick and choose what to believe in Christianity, you know, pick the part about man having dominion over the earth but ignore the part about being good stewards, etc.
Both extremes of the spectrum should be totally ignored. Use your brain people, moonbats and neo-cons alike! We each have the biological equivalent of a cluster of supercomputers in our head for a reason: to use it! THINK! However, that still doesn't mean every moron doesn't have the right to voice an opinion.
That is just the reality of it when you open your news site up to comments. You're going to invite the whole spectrum, and the sad thing is both moonbats and neocons are equally stupid in equally loud ways, so their posts stand out.
Including this post. ;)
Re:Yeah! (Score:1, Interesting)
Ironically enough, CNN's "opinion" section offers the chance for "registered members" to discuss/counterpoint the opinion columns. The only problem is that previously they've required moderators to "approve" each individual response (which never happened since their "moderators" were either too busy or too lazy, and articles were automatically flagged to "topic closed" after about 12 hours anyways), and since the site redesign they instead have someone "patrolling" as well as automatic deletion of any comment flagged by other users as supposedly "abusive."
The end result has been a copy of Slashdot's mod system but on steroids, or perhaps of Digg's "Bury Brigades": almost no comment disagreeing with a columnist ever has a shred of a chance of remaining. It's very similar to what happens here - Slashdot's system could be greatly improved by shifting to a 10-point positive scale and eliminating the mod-down option (thus getting rid of the "bury brigade" phenomenon entirely).
The other option is a "see how many positives and negatives a response has without burying anything" format, similar to Slate's forums (although Slate's forums require you to click an extra link in the article just to see responses, so they don't work too well either).
Re:Comments (Score:3, Interesting)
I just saw this on NBC this morning, where they received a lot of comments about a girl who had a repetitive sneezing problem. The comments went like this:
- wash out her nose with salt water
- tell her to see a chiropractor to get rebalanced
- make her jump rope and she'll stop
- feed her lots of vitamin A, just short of an overdose!
And so on. I came to the conclusion that most people are incredibly stupid, and I think NBC should have ignored these opinions, and covered something else instead, like why Obama is asking people for donations to the U.S. Treasury. (That's all I know so far, but it sounds like a story worth covering, not wasting time of dumb emailed suggestions.)
Re:Yeah! (Score:3, Interesting)
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).
So browse at 3 or 4. If we went to a 10-point scale and simply allowed downmods, you'd have the same effect Slashdot tries for (let the best comments rise to the top for easier browsing) while not needing the "OMG THEY SAID SOMETHING I DONT AGREE WITH KILL IT KILL IT" downmod crap that passes for "moderation" these days.
As for the karma thing, alter karma to suit. Make Karma decrease by attrition (old points expire over time) or something. GNAA-types wouldn't have enough karma to stay up because nobody sane would upmod them anyways.
The Slashdot moderation system has one major flaw. Why not fix the flaw, and make the system better?
Re:Comments (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm with you there. I don't know if this applies across the board, since I have neither the time nor inclination to read all the on-line newspapers (I only buy dead-tree papers when I need something to light a fire with), but I am getting a bit tired of endless screen-space devoted to the inarticulate musings of bored housewives and outraged rednecks. And newspapers aren't the only culprits. New Scientist [newscientist.com] used to be quite a useful aggregation for scientific journal content, but it's steadily turning into a soap-box.
In the days of the print media, there was something of a class barrier where contributors were expected to know at least something about a subject before pontificating. This survived for a few years with the on-line versions, but now we are seeing a situation where on slow news days we also seem to be getting lumbered with the above-mentioned kind of rubbish presented in a more fleshed-out form as "real" articles under the masthead of formerly reputable newspapers. The Age [theage.com.au] is a good example of this. I think the editor changed a while ago, and for all the content is now worth, I often feel I might as well be reading Twitter.
Was it ever any better? (Score:3, Interesting)
I often wonder if the news was ever any better. I read recently in, I think, Time magazine an article about newspapers from the 1920s. They would also back candidates and bad mouth the opponents, take political sides when reporting stories (and which stories to report), etc. Nothing has changed there. I don't imagine papers weren't "making news" back in the day either -- it's hardly a novel idea. They need to sell papers and, just like Slashdot, there are slow news days. So you go and interview a politician or police captain or waitress and you hope that something more interesting comes out of it. If not, you have a nice "people" piece. But there wasn't any news until you started asking.
With the Internet news, it's likely not any different, it's just faster. 24 hour news can't possibly generate enough facts to keep people going, so even the "famous" journalists like Anderson Cooper are left with filling in the gap with their faces and open mouths. "Gosh, I remember when I was sick with the flu. I coughed and coughed. Really hurt. Really hurt my ribs when I coughed like that. With the flu. So...uh...so you don't want it. The flu. Or to cough."
I read Time magazine (paper edition) because they usually have one or two long, decently-researched articles (thrown in between what are essentially headlines for the rest of the "news" and some opinion pieces). Anything online is essentially under-researched nonsense -- I'd rather see constant updates, then, after a week, see a full write-up on the situation with sources, quotes, facts, etc. Let me know what's going on, as you hear it, but give me the NEWS at some point instead of just a bunch of repeated text.
Re:Comments (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Totally agree. The Daily Show makes news entertaining. Fox makes entertaining news.
Re:Comments (Score:5, Interesting)
Insightful? How soon we forget. There's an academic organization that rates the quality of news shows. The Daily Show ranks quite high.
How do I know about it? This obscure little news aggregation website. You may have heard of it. It's called Slashdot.org.
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/2320219 [slashdot.org]
Re:Who again, is watching CNN? (Score:5, Interesting)
CNN siding with democrats?
"I just got back from Washington DC at a huge protest."
A protest engineered and promoted by an ultra-right propaganda network for half a year.
"The lone dissenter to these guys is Fox News; funny how 'the fringe' has a typical FOUR TIMES the ratings of this and other, lesser outlets."
Those ratings are less indicative of the popularity of their viewpoint and more indicative of just how horrible the alternatives are. If I had a choice between a yugo and walking, i'd choose the yugo too!
please go back to your bunker, the rest of us in the real world want the government to step in to put a long overdue stop to the insurance industry's "death panels". According to the dingbat right, apparently corporations can never, ever do harm!
Re:Yeah! (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? I think Slashdot would be greatly improved by adding *more* downmodding as well as increasing the upmod cap. The problem I see is that the people who don't read the articles and have no idea what they're talking about drown out the few people with real expertise. Go to any science article and you'll see this -- "I'm not a physicist or anything, but [three paragraphs of uninformed speculation garbage]" gets heavily upmodded by other people who aren't physicists either. Then you have the issue that any article that can veer off into politics will, and political discussions are even worse about uninformed speculation. But the worst has to be when the summary has nothing to do with the article. You can immediately tell which third of the commenters read the article and which two thirds didn't.
I'd like to see the mod options revamped as follows, with the scale ranging from -1 to +10:
-1, Did not read the article
-1, Wrong (wipes out all political discussions)
-1, Unqualified to make this comment
-1, Causing trouble (why bother with the distinction between Troll and Flamebait?)
-1, Adds nothing to the discussion
-1, Overrated
+1, Provides expert information relevant to the article
+1, Provides informed analysis relevant to the article
+1, Asks an interesting question relevant to the article
[Maybe one more?]
Some of the options are similar to the current scheme, but mine are more specific. I left Funny out since it's so heavily abused, but it's easy to filter so you can add it back in if you want. Everything else can stay at the default score. The new scheme encourages what's good about Slashdot (highly technical people commenting on technical issues) and discourages what's bad about internet discussions (uninformed people inflating their egos and drowning everyone else out).
Re:Comments (Score:2, Interesting)
To augment skgrey's posts, which I totally agree on. Fox, for this example, should have had a one or two sentence section on this "small" bit of news. If they tracked down Susan Boyle or Sharon Osbourne for a comment, that is due diligence. Anything beyond that falls into making news, entertaining the public, or being the news, not actually reporting it.
All these channels should really either get out of the news reporting business and show basically opinion/gossip/commentary/soap, OR provide news hour segments. And this is important, they really need to try hard to create clear, obvious distinctions between the news reporting section and the public entertainment section.
To pick on Fox again, I think the "Fox News" channel is a complete misnomer and does a huge disservice to the public. If it was the "Fox" channel, no problem, but once you attach News to it, the ballgame should change. You shouldn't have commentary, opinion, and discussion as the presentation to the public. I can understand reporting on the commentary, opinion, and discussion already done by the _parties_ involved, but you should NOT be generating that content, and in some cases having others reporting on it.
Re:Yeah! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
First of all the Greater Nashville Apartment Association has a right to their opinion like everyone else. ;)
But seriously, in case you haven't noticed there are a lot of legitimate posts buried by moderators who simply can't stand reading something they disagree with. Especially when the topic is political or similarly divisive topic. So that's already going on. Slashdot has never been particularly fair and balanced. Of course, neither is the news media these days.
There's a bit of tongue in cheek there in Steve Dahl's piece, but yes, he's riled because he's getting competition from "amateurs." (To be fair, I'm sure he doesn't consider them actual competition.) He has the opinion, similar to many of his fellow journalists, that they're an exclusive group who somehow has more rights than other people (i.e., "boneheads") to decide and report on what is news or give an opinion. The complaining started when people started building web pages and then, heaven forbid, started to BLOG. Now they tweet and Facebook--OMG!!! Tweeters have even scooped the MSM getting news to their followers from places of government oppression (Iran) or a news story (bombing in Pakistan). That is a good thing. Yes, some mistakes are made, but look at the number of times the media has either been punked or simply printed bad information.
The MSM does not have control of the news anymore and they don't like that. Newspapers are failing because people can go online and get free news from around the world and (heaven forbid) opinions other than what the NYT, Chicago Tribune or LA Times print.
Sorry, the genie isn't going back in the bottle. You'll have to adapt or die like the rest of us. No matter if Murdoch wants to get rid of the "fair use clause" and newspapers want to start charging for online content. That will only make a lot of them fail faster while others will flourish. The days of the good ol' boys (and business) controlling what news is fit to print is going away. And I welcome that.
Re:Comments (Score:3, Interesting)
They've done studies on comparing those who watch The Daily Show with those who watch news on Fox, CNN, and NBC. Those who watch The Daily Show are better informed.
The interesting thing is that they often tell a very serious story in a funny way. For example, Jason Jones was in Iran during the electoral turmoil, but was (in addition to covering the election) having lots of discussions with ordinary Iranians which were countering the whole "all Iranians hate America" propaganda. By contrasting the very reasonable Iranians he was talking to with a voice over of "These people are evil", not only was he reporting a story but also making a point about US news coverage of Iran.
To quote Jon Stewart on Crossfire: ... is that the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity. ... But my point is this. If your idea of confronting me is that I don't ask hard-hitting enough news questions, we're in bad shape, fellows."
"You know, it's interesting to hear you [Tucker Carlson] talk about my responsibility. I didn't realize that -- and maybe this explains quite a bit
So whether or not the general public thinks of The Daily Show as doing roughly the same thing as a standard news broadcast, CNN apparently does.
Re:Yeah! (Score:3, Interesting)
Its about Content (Score:2, Interesting)
Modern news agencies are strapped to find unique 24/7 content so they air this crap to fill up space between real events. its just the new version of showing the same damn Iraq vase being looted on a 24 hour loop.
The news isn't news any more. its 100% biased opinionated crap with economic and political motives. By acting like the tweets are valid content, the media will be able to say , "See - we want a completely unqualified yahoo in office. This is progress."
Informative and unilateral news in print, television, and radio is dead. To get that content, Google-it form the source. VIVA Idiocracy!
Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Interesting)
I have one other question - in a debate a while back, I posted a link to two Youtube videos about why you should never agree to be "interviewed" by the cops. For the discussion it was on-topic, relevant, and a serious point to be made. Because I'm willing to actually speak my mind on occasion and say the occasional uncomfortable truth in the face of the various bury-brigaders here, I saw at least one downmod of "troll" and two "overrateds"; it was briefly sitting at -1 before someone with half a brain saw it and the trend reversed.
The surest sign for me that there are bury-brigaders at work on Slashdot, however, is the number of times I've seen old posts (as in 2+ weeks) suddenly drop from 5 down to 4, 3, or in a few cases all the way to -1. What made them 5's two weeks ago and -1's today? Nothing save for the the fact that organized bury-brigaders were launching an attack on my karma because something else I said was antithetical to their warped worldview. They can't downmod you more than once per comment on a given account, but they can find older posts to dishonestly downmod just to get at your karma.
Hell, I've been downmodded "troll" for correcting someone's bad math before thanks to the bury-brigaders.
So tell me - how does your "pass the guns and shoot to kill" solution fix these problems?
Re:Yeah! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Yeah! That's why I'll only watch Fox News!