[lbo-talk] Glenn Beck breaks down in tears, blubbers on-air AGAIN

[shag]

Carrol Cox wrote:
> Of course it comes from standard sources.  You don't need Pew research
for that. Anyone who thinks  different on such an obvious point is among
those not worth reading. And if you don't read them, you don't get all
hot and bothered about their errors. The world is full of error; you've
got to exercise some judgment over what error is worth chasing and what
error is best ignored.

as SA said yesterday, good thing you weren't around to coach Marx about
Ricardo and Smith. :)

The rest really isn't addressed to you, but more as a general observation
-- since I already know your answer: you don't care. :)

What is puzzling to me about this convo is that everyone seems to be
focusing on the _medium_ of the newspaper, rather than what's really going
on: the death of investigative journalism or some form of what Shirky
naively calls 'truth telling'. I mean, Michael Pollak didn't ignore that
aspect of the press.

Shirky refers to the function of the press as 'truth telling' - though he
never refers to it as the Fourth Estate which was once more common term.

It's not clear why he never brought up the older notion of the press as
the "fourth estate" (well, actually, because it would undermine his
thesis).

anyway, not that investigative journalism was so healthy to begin with,
but without large-scale media organizations that can make money on arts
and leisure section advertising in order to subsidize their less
profitable  political journalism (or what have you), you are left with the
"Third Estate" - millions of people writing 140 character blurbs and
uploading photos and video footage taken with their phone and calling it
"news". What's interesting about that, to me, is the empiricism of it.
There seems to be this idea that if you are just there and report "just
the "facts ma'am" then you're engaged in "truth telling."

shag