Waayyy OT: For Bill, Billy, Steve (if he's around) and others of a similar bent...Ignore If You Expect Garden Related Stuff - Page 4

 
<Charlie> wrote in message

   This is kinda related; a news story, a couple of good citizens, and only
if a few more would give back a little of their good fortune, even if it's
something as seemingly insignificant as a chance to play baseball...
A Career and a Calling
Marquis Grissom Made a Living Playing Baseball. Now It's His Life's Work.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/17/AR2009031703579.html

 wrote:


Kinda related, my ass!  Fits well with my daily
self-inflicted-butt-kickings.  And........is pertinent to Bill W's
post.......thanks for the hint  :-)  Point taken.

This was a wonderful slice of life story and I thank you for it, not
only for the content, but for the perspective shift that I often need,
on account of (Bill W'S post included) my propensity towards reading
what suits my oftimes negative attitude towards society in general.

Thanks, my ethereal friend
Charlie, who will likely revert to his curmudgeonly ways...often

"If we're all down trying to unclog the sewer,
 who's gonna smell the flowers?"  ~  Billy Rose

 
  Worth a gander.

Bill

  <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/opinion/19kristof.html?_r=1>


   Small taste.



 "When we go online, each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper.
We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about.
Nicholas Negroponte of M.I.T. has called this emerging news product The
Daily Me. And if that's the trend, God save us from ourselves.
That's because there's pretty good evidence that we generally don't
truly want good information -- but rather information that confirms our
prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but
in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo
chamber."

--
Garden in shade zone 5 S Jersey USA





 

 

I like the columnist Nicholas Kristof even though I often find his
articles, especially on the horrors of Darfur, and human trafficking,
painful to read.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res ˜00E7DE1730F936A2575BC0A9
659C8B63&scp=1&sq=Believe%20It,%20or%20Not&st=cse

The problem is that most bloggers write about derivatives of mass media
reporting. Media initiates and bloggers respond. If the media sends the
wrong message, the manager, the editor, the columnist, and/or the
reporter can be sacked by the owners, or at the request of the
advertisers, if, indeed, they aren't the same. Disney, "New" Viacom (and
its former parent CBS Corporation, the former "Old" Viacom), TimeWarner,
News Corporation, Bertelsmann AG, and General Electric together own more
than 90% of the media holdings in the United States.

In the United States at the end of 2001, the top 1% controlled 38% of
the nation's wealth. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than
1% of the nation's wealth.

Presumably the top 1% own the above media outlets (not to mention their
advertisers) as well as Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrup Grumman,
Halliburton, and Bechtel.

So it is all well and good to say that the "consumers" of media ought to
be more open-minded, the reality of the situation is that the owners of
the corporate press have their own self-interest agenda that they are
pushing. This explains why newspapers aren't truly newspaper, but
infortainment. To amuse, but certainly not inform, unless you mean the
latest sale at the mall.

"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public
papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army
of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be
like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the
ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means
of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper."
--Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181,
Papers 8:632

If anyone wants to know more than "who and where", they need to turn to
the non-corporate press like Pacifica (http://www.pacifica.org/ ) or to
the academic based "Project Censored"
(http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009/ ).

I do subscribe to a newspaper, the black and white pages are useful to
cover and block the weeds in my garden, before I mulch in the spring.
During winter, the whole paper is useful for starting the kindling in
the wood stove. Then there is the cat box, on rainy nights, when they
won't go out.
--

Billy
"For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is
now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of
conception until death."  - Rachel Carson

 In article


 Thanks Billy for the summation concerning media.  Reminds me of
"Manufacturing Consent".  There lots of  books dealing with the topic
but not much in video.  Again Thanks for the Pacifica remind I'll look
if the audio is still about.

 This is on TV about these parts and  your computer.

<http://www.democracynow.org/>



Bill

--
Garden in shade zone 5 S Jersey USA