This is not necessarily news, but it is relevant to news so I thought I would type this up. It is something I have been thinking of a great deal and I wanted to share my thoughts.
It will be impossible to explain the difficulties of American News fully but I will try my best. In American News, it is a very common custom for them to be for-profit or for non-profit newspapers to be sponsored entirely by ads. In America we are having a phenomenon where large companies have bought out the media- every news channel is owned by a super power corporation and therefore you're going to see a lot of bias when reading the news. Newspapers in general, it isn't that the people writing the articles want to be inaccurate, it's that they are so connected with companies to the point that the companies will plant articles in favor of their companies inside of the newspapers. Even if you are online, if you're reading a review written supposedly by a person, these companies, mainly American, will hire people to falsify reviews...these are usually just regular people and they are paid a certain amount and they go online and write favorable reviews and nasty comments on things that are in disfavor of this company. This is called "Astroturfing".
So it gets to the point that if you have a story that is not in the best interest of your company in some way or the other, or you have some information you don't want getting out to the public because it might effect a political campaign that you are supporting as a company (For, face it, in American politician are now commodities that are bought and sold like the fruit at stores), you will hire someone with a respected name to write an article in your favor and plant that on the front page of The New York times. The reality is that the top stories in American newspaper are not the top stories elsewhere and you will find that when you actually begin to investigate it.
I also want to talk about celebrity news. This is something that I personally believe is a tactic of distraction and ignorance. Media companies, owned now by the biggest corporations in the country, have discovered one of mankind's most natural weaknesses: our curiosity into other people's lives. I do not think that being curious about other people is something that is bad nor is it something that can be stopped. The best example I use to put in perspective is that, if you find someone you've just met and you have added them to Facebook or something and you find them interesting or maybe you don't know a lot about them, you will began to "stalk" them online and find things out about them. It is natural curiosity, I believe most people have done this and I don't think it's bad, a lot of the time it has to do with even protecting ourselves. It is a good thing to look up if someone has a criminal record or to try to figure out their reputation or if we stumble upon something that ends up making this person we are interacting with harmful, it is ideal to know these things ahead of time.
So if you take our natural curiosity into other people's lives on the most basic level- people that we know in real life but not very well- and we exploit it to an unimaginable degree, we find that what has happened is the media's celebrity obsession. They say that there is demand and supply- that people want to know this much about celebrities and so that demand causes there to be a lot of information about it. But I believe that the demand is not as high as the supply- you will find that although there is a large percentage of the population interested in that sort of thing, that a lot of these people have been raised on it like cattle. Their curiosity is being fed by these glamorous people and in the end the media succeeds at what they wanted- people are too busy thinking about their favorite music artists and movie stars to worry about what news is being censored and how they are being fed lies throughout the entire American News Industry. Not only are they consumed by curiosity, but the new brand of people being marketed "American Idol" and other shows which say "You too can be a celebrity, you too can be famous" seem to feed to this frenzy and take people further away from caring about News.
Look at this logically: there are about 6 billion people on the surface of the planet. Statistics right now say that if you were to try to count to a billion, it would take you the rest of your life and you still would not reach a billion, this assuming you did nothing else but count, no sleeping no eating, nothing. So keep that in perspective...everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame. Let's say that we just give all of the people of New York 15 minutes of fame each. There are about 8 million people who live there. There are 525,948.766 minutes in a year, so let's round that to about 525,000 minutes a year. Per year if nothing else was done there could be 35,000 people who got their fifteen minutes of fame. Now remember, we're trying to give the entire city of New York every person 15 minutes of fame. If we calculate all of this together, in conclusion, it would take about 229.5 years to give everyone in New York City 15 minutes of fame. Hopefully this illustrates my point.
There is something called the "Freedom of Press Index" that I believe is a very useful tool. Obviously it is not something that should be believed blindly, but I have recently taken it upon myself to use it and try to consume news from the freest press countries. The USA is the 20th freest press in the world and our island countries that are part of the USA are 99th. There are a lot of countries, mostly Scandinavian, that are tied for the position of the freest press in the world right now.
For the longest time it seems that American Colleges have switched from recommending American economic magazines and whatnot for class purpose to British news; and that may be because British press is freer than us (at rank 19th) but currently only by one ranking which is still poor if you consider yourself someone who wants to be getting the 'full' uncensored scoop.
I found in my research that a lot of places like Sweden and Finland and Switzerland actually distribute newspapers for free as a sort of public service. I guess the closest I can relate to this is National Public Radio. But besides a language barrier (Which is easily solved by using google chrome 'google translate' extensions) I have been able to see that then news I get from these sources, often Americans have never heard of and I learn about things much faster than I would if only consuming American news (and more accurately). For those of you who would still like to read in English, New Zealand is available and 8th freest press which is more than half a higher score.
The reason I find Sweden so interesting is that at Sundance this year I watched the film "Big Boys Gone Bananas", which you should watch if you're interested in this sort of thing, which is all about how a Swedish film maker was trying to get out a film about Dole, the fruit company, and some injustices they did to Latin American workers that resulted in death and illness because of illegal pesticides used on crops. This film almost was not shown at the film festival they were planning for it to be shown at because even before the film had been shown anywhere, Dole sued the film maker for defamation. There were a lot of hoops to jump through and I believe it has only recently become available in American availability. However, most pressing of this is that the Swedish Parliament actually stepped in to defend the film maker, Fredrik Gertten, and his right to freedom of speech. Sweden has a history of being skeptical of American News companies and I believe this is the case for a lot of Europe. As I read more and more into Swedish culture I am reading that most of Europe has had a lot of cultural shock when American customs and and American media and things of that nature leaked into Europe.
So I suppose the point I am trying to make here is that prior to some critical thinking, I thought that if I read The New York times a generally liberal newspaper, and if I watched news other than Fox, etc....that I would be getting accurate news. This is not so...and I suggest that if you are going to go to other countries to get news, you look at more than one country that are also in different geographic location. For example a lot of the freest press countries are right next to each other in Scandinavia. They are going to have a perspective that may be influenced by this...so this is why I go to New Zealand and other countries from different areas that are rated higher than the United States.
It will be impossible to explain the difficulties of American News fully but I will try my best. In American News, it is a very common custom for them to be for-profit or for non-profit newspapers to be sponsored entirely by ads. In America we are having a phenomenon where large companies have bought out the media- every news channel is owned by a super power corporation and therefore you're going to see a lot of bias when reading the news. Newspapers in general, it isn't that the people writing the articles want to be inaccurate, it's that they are so connected with companies to the point that the companies will plant articles in favor of their companies inside of the newspapers. Even if you are online, if you're reading a review written supposedly by a person, these companies, mainly American, will hire people to falsify reviews...these are usually just regular people and they are paid a certain amount and they go online and write favorable reviews and nasty comments on things that are in disfavor of this company. This is called "Astroturfing".
So it gets to the point that if you have a story that is not in the best interest of your company in some way or the other, or you have some information you don't want getting out to the public because it might effect a political campaign that you are supporting as a company (For, face it, in American politician are now commodities that are bought and sold like the fruit at stores), you will hire someone with a respected name to write an article in your favor and plant that on the front page of The New York times. The reality is that the top stories in American newspaper are not the top stories elsewhere and you will find that when you actually begin to investigate it.
I also want to talk about celebrity news. This is something that I personally believe is a tactic of distraction and ignorance. Media companies, owned now by the biggest corporations in the country, have discovered one of mankind's most natural weaknesses: our curiosity into other people's lives. I do not think that being curious about other people is something that is bad nor is it something that can be stopped. The best example I use to put in perspective is that, if you find someone you've just met and you have added them to Facebook or something and you find them interesting or maybe you don't know a lot about them, you will began to "stalk" them online and find things out about them. It is natural curiosity, I believe most people have done this and I don't think it's bad, a lot of the time it has to do with even protecting ourselves. It is a good thing to look up if someone has a criminal record or to try to figure out their reputation or if we stumble upon something that ends up making this person we are interacting with harmful, it is ideal to know these things ahead of time.
So if you take our natural curiosity into other people's lives on the most basic level- people that we know in real life but not very well- and we exploit it to an unimaginable degree, we find that what has happened is the media's celebrity obsession. They say that there is demand and supply- that people want to know this much about celebrities and so that demand causes there to be a lot of information about it. But I believe that the demand is not as high as the supply- you will find that although there is a large percentage of the population interested in that sort of thing, that a lot of these people have been raised on it like cattle. Their curiosity is being fed by these glamorous people and in the end the media succeeds at what they wanted- people are too busy thinking about their favorite music artists and movie stars to worry about what news is being censored and how they are being fed lies throughout the entire American News Industry. Not only are they consumed by curiosity, but the new brand of people being marketed "American Idol" and other shows which say "You too can be a celebrity, you too can be famous" seem to feed to this frenzy and take people further away from caring about News.
Look at this logically: there are about 6 billion people on the surface of the planet. Statistics right now say that if you were to try to count to a billion, it would take you the rest of your life and you still would not reach a billion, this assuming you did nothing else but count, no sleeping no eating, nothing. So keep that in perspective...everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame. Let's say that we just give all of the people of New York 15 minutes of fame each. There are about 8 million people who live there. There are 525,948.766 minutes in a year, so let's round that to about 525,000 minutes a year. Per year if nothing else was done there could be 35,000 people who got their fifteen minutes of fame. Now remember, we're trying to give the entire city of New York every person 15 minutes of fame. If we calculate all of this together, in conclusion, it would take about 229.5 years to give everyone in New York City 15 minutes of fame. Hopefully this illustrates my point.
There is something called the "Freedom of Press Index" that I believe is a very useful tool. Obviously it is not something that should be believed blindly, but I have recently taken it upon myself to use it and try to consume news from the freest press countries. The USA is the 20th freest press in the world and our island countries that are part of the USA are 99th. There are a lot of countries, mostly Scandinavian, that are tied for the position of the freest press in the world right now.
For the longest time it seems that American Colleges have switched from recommending American economic magazines and whatnot for class purpose to British news; and that may be because British press is freer than us (at rank 19th) but currently only by one ranking which is still poor if you consider yourself someone who wants to be getting the 'full' uncensored scoop.
I found in my research that a lot of places like Sweden and Finland and Switzerland actually distribute newspapers for free as a sort of public service. I guess the closest I can relate to this is National Public Radio. But besides a language barrier (Which is easily solved by using google chrome 'google translate' extensions) I have been able to see that then news I get from these sources, often Americans have never heard of and I learn about things much faster than I would if only consuming American news (and more accurately). For those of you who would still like to read in English, New Zealand is available and 8th freest press which is more than half a higher score.
The reason I find Sweden so interesting is that at Sundance this year I watched the film "Big Boys Gone Bananas", which you should watch if you're interested in this sort of thing, which is all about how a Swedish film maker was trying to get out a film about Dole, the fruit company, and some injustices they did to Latin American workers that resulted in death and illness because of illegal pesticides used on crops. This film almost was not shown at the film festival they were planning for it to be shown at because even before the film had been shown anywhere, Dole sued the film maker for defamation. There were a lot of hoops to jump through and I believe it has only recently become available in American availability. However, most pressing of this is that the Swedish Parliament actually stepped in to defend the film maker, Fredrik Gertten, and his right to freedom of speech. Sweden has a history of being skeptical of American News companies and I believe this is the case for a lot of Europe. As I read more and more into Swedish culture I am reading that most of Europe has had a lot of cultural shock when American customs and and American media and things of that nature leaked into Europe.
So I suppose the point I am trying to make here is that prior to some critical thinking, I thought that if I read The New York times a generally liberal newspaper, and if I watched news other than Fox, etc....that I would be getting accurate news. This is not so...and I suggest that if you are going to go to other countries to get news, you look at more than one country that are also in different geographic location. For example a lot of the freest press countries are right next to each other in Scandinavia. They are going to have a perspective that may be influenced by this...so this is why I go to New Zealand and other countries from different areas that are rated higher than the United States.
