Media

Telling it like it isn’t

by Dave

90-million

How do we get 90 million jobs back?   Labor Participation statistics were dropping during Bush Administration too- but Fox doesn’t mention this.   Labor participation is more a measure of the aging of our population and does  not  correlate with unemployment and  other common measures of our economy.   If more young people are enroll in higher education, the  Labor Participation go down.  They don’t tell you this!.

While housing starts went up during Obama term,  home ownership has declined.   The National Review is a magazine dedicated to conservative and generally conservative  Republican idealogy.   But,  one of their articles takes on Sean Hannity from Fox News on the home ownership statistics, as being meaningful measures because he comparing the situation now to yer 2008, just when the housing bubble burst causing worldwide recession:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443010/sean-hannity-barack-obamas-economic-record-what-his-criticism-gets-wrong

The author makes a real good point- the last thing we need is a return to  2008 and lower lending standards which encourages people to buy houses they can ill afford.  This may not be shared with Donald Trump, as housing busts are  terrific opportunities for people with cash to profit from foreclosures.   Way too early to know Trump’s economic program includes relaxed lending regulations.

My advice to anyone who is struggling to make car,  credit card and student loan payments is to rent.   For those who believe they have extra money, my advice if they are young to invest it in education.

I try not to watch Fox News, as there are much better sources of  solid news reporting.

Stay tuned,

Dave

Fact checkers

by Dave

I use factcheck.org mostly, but politifact.com has nice summaries of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and others.

Other fact checkers are:

Washington Post

snopes.com

Politifact found that on the average 4% of Trump’s facts were true while 19% of Clinton’s were true.  Adding the categories of true, mostly true and half true gets Trump up to 30% while Clinto gets 75%.

Stay tuned,

Dave

 

One American News- Biased Reporting

by Dave

Florida is the largest of the battleground states, in the 2016 election.  One American News reported  Florida’s voters  now  lean more toward Trump following the release of Benghazi reports.   Gravis Marketing did the polling.  I have no reason to believe their  polling was biased.   Their sample size of 1619 registered voters is above average.  The bias is the way the results were reported.

The polls showed in a race between Clinton and Trump,  52% of the respondents favored Clinton verses Trump with 48%.  However, in a three way race,  Trump led with 49% verses  Clinton with 45% and “Other”  with 6%.   So, it really looks like Florida is too close to call or still a toss up state.

There are two Benghazi reports.  The  Democrat’s version, approximately 300 pages,  was released on Monday, July 27 and the official version, backed only by Republican members with 800 pages was  released mid-day on Tuesday, July 28.  The poll took place from July 27 to 28, 2016.   So, how many of the respondents might have  reacted to each report is unknown, but it is likely a wash in the end.

It is unfortunate the biased reporting from OAN.  They said they don’t mix news with commentary like Fox News .  They just did exactly that.

Stay tuned,

Dave

 

http://www.oann.com/pollflorida/

Al Jazeera America – Off the Air

by Dave

Al Jazeera American News ended its broadcast on April 12, 2015.

Al Jazeera America

It provided excellent unbiased, in-depth, accurate   and comprehensive news.  David Cay Johnston wrote a column that sums up my feelings:

The Way News Should Be Done

“Great journalism doesn’t always attract large audiences, ”   as Johnston wrote is the unfortunate truth.  Further he wrote of how AJAM grew as leader in journalism:  “In 2013, when many top television and print journalists were looking for jobs, AJAM snatched up superb talents — including John Seigenthaler, Joie Chen, Antonio Mora, Randall Pinkston and Ali Velshi, the best in his class at explaining personal finance and economics.”

Excellence in journalism gets awards rather than audiences.  Viewer comments mirrored my thoughts – what goes on in the world affects us- so we need to be better informed:

Viewer comments

My favorite by far, is from Jane Smith, who writes, “Please come back AJAM.”

The other major news stations’ problems  are all too obvious- they are more focused on entertainment.  They are obviously pandering to their audience. Republicans like Fox News, and Democrats like MSNBC.    So much “reporting” and so little solid, unbiased reporting.

My favorite news station right now is the BBC.    For finance, Bloomberg and CNBC still lead the pack.

Stay tuned,

Dave

 

 

 

The Media

by Dave

 

laugh fest

Image from Africanews.com on South Sudan Laugh Festival last week.

The  four axioms of media reporting are:

  1. If it bleeds, it leads.*
  2. Incidences closer to the viewing audience are far more important than further away.
  3. The more similar the victims are to the viewing audience, the more likely people will watch
  4. Commentary should  conform to long held beliefs of viewing audience.  Fox has conservative  commentators and MSNBC has liberal commentators.

A terrorist attack in a shopping mall in Iowa.  Hasn’t happened, but if it does,  you will have every reporter in the country swarming down to cover the story.  And every political candidate will have something to say with tweets and text messages flying around within milliseconds.

A 178 people have die from an epidemic of  yellow fever in Angola. Reported last week. It was on BBC, one of my favorite news channels. Relatively unimportant as it is in Africa.

A blend of happy and sad news is nice.  Obama dancing the tango is fine. Of course, if you’re Fox News,  everything can be Obama’s fault.  Instead of dancing the tango, our Chief-in-Commander should be flying to Brussels in Air Force 1 , dressed on combat gear,  on the phone to the Brussels’ police demanding two Muslim terrorists are caught right now.

There is a lot of  election year theatrics.  Interpol exists if  you don’t know.  Fox plays to its audience- like usual. If Obama did try to be involved,   Fox would have come down, full force, that he was grandstanding,  totally superficial and an attempt to score points from a tragic event.  But both Kerry and Biden went to Belgium. and I’m certain discussions are of a longer term strategy for defeating ISIL fanatics.

Reporting from China or Moscow, what six people on the street think about Donald Trump is not international news.

A lot of things happen in the past week.  How many reporters flew to South Sudan to participate in the first Laugh Festival?

South Sudan’s Laugh Festival

From the looks of it, some people were close to dying from laughter.   How in the world do you have a laugh festival in a country beset with so many problems?  South Sudan is one of the world’s newest country,  for 2 years has been in a terrible civil war.

Yes, dear – there are serious events occurring outside of the US – Europe, and the other three “newsworthy” countries Cuba, Canada and Mexico.  The Brazilian Congress has started impeachment proceedings against their president, Dilma Rouseff  this week and over 3 million people protested against the government in Sao Paulo.

And just last week,  South African police launch a graft probe against the President Duduzane Zuma’s son.

Volkswagen and the EPA were supposed to be in court this week to tell the judge if the problems with emissions were fixable.  They got a one month extension.  I think it’s their second extension.

Last week, we learned scientists believe the Zika virus has been around in Brazil for 2 years. To me that’s frightening.

From the country down under, the Great Barrier Reef is disappearing due to climate change:

Great Barrier Reef 

But like the news of South Sudan’s festival, there was plenty of positive news, of which 99% goes unreported.  The new funding for World Health Organization to combat yellow fever in Africa last week has to be one of them.  The agreement signed in Egypt  between defense ministers from 27 African and Arab countries, pledging  information sharing in combating terrorism is another.  Or how women farmers are making a big difference and the great work of the Rainforest Alliance.  Terrific news.

I like to watch BBC  and Al-Jazeera news.   I like One American News, but only for their reporting, not commentary.  They keep them separate.  I like Bloomberg News.   I watch Fareed Zakaria  on CNN which is good,  except he should let others give “their take” as the lead in to the program.

Perhaps, the media could have reported on South Sudan’s laugh fest as kind of a happy news filler.

Stay tuned.

Dave

  • quote from Marshall McCluhen