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It makes it easier to run a society when you can get the poor people to fight amongst themselves rather than organize against the real problem.
Modern Journalism sucks.
The idea that the there are plucky reporters casting a critical eye toward the power structures in society is a process that resides firmly outside what is considered the mainstream media. Consider what Journalism could be like by looking at reporter I.F Stone and his practices and attitudes when reporting on political issues.
From an interview on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.
AMY GOODMAN: And the issue, what many will call a false dichotomy between advocacy and journalism, his views on this?
D.D. GUTTENPLAN: Well, his views were that you can either be — he said two things that I think are important. He didn’t believe in objective journalism. He said people who talk about objective journalism are basically just trying to make you say the same things that everybody else says to enforce a consensus.
He did say, though, that journalists have a choice to be either consistent or honest, that if you’re worried about what you reported last week and whether what you’re reporting now is consistent with it, you’re going to end up distorting what you say in order to maintain consistency. So he felt you needed to be prepared to be, and allow yourself to be, surprised by facts. And it was Stone’s willingness to be surprised by facts that, in a way, makes him such a good read.
But he certainly believed in and was part of a tradition that is much older than the tradition of objective journalism, and that’s the muckraking tradition, the tradition that if you tell people the truth, then they’ll be able to take action.
“When we see the expansion of the dependency class in America and you add this to the 79 other means tested programs that we have in the United States, each time you add another brick to that wall, it’s a barrier to people that might go out and succeed. ” – Steve King Idaho (R).
The idea that is represented above is exactly what is wrong with the political climate in United States. This bullcookery is debunked handily at 3:15 of the video by Greg Kaufmann who uses empirical fact as opposed to ideological mantras to describe the poverty situation in the US.
If you give people the basics of survival, they will prosper and return more to the society and the economy then simply letting them become destitute.
Sometimes “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” just isn’t strong enough. In one of my recent youtube sessions I ran quite the emotional gamut. Let’s start on a high note, shall we?
The Fantastic
First we have a long overdue “Hero of the Day”. For quite some time, the youtuber Vihart has been producing superb content that celebrates the wonders and joys of math. Irresistibly fun, endlessly charming, and mind-blowingly wondrous, Vihart’s videos present math in a delightful and accessible manner. I recommend that everyone take the time to watch as much Vihart as they can, especially educators. This is how math class ought to be. How marvellous it would be if more children played with mobius strips and wanted Mexa-hexa-flexa-gons for supper.
In her latest video, Vihart expands on one of her previous videos and makes a 3D audio braid. You’ll need earphones for this one, or surround sound. Watch, be amazed, delight in the sonic wonders of math.
The Wretched and The “Oh F*ck, No”
Whilst riding this emotional high of mathematical elation and renewed hope for future generations that will still care about math because of extraordinary projects like those by Vihart, I came across this next video. I crashed. I burned. I debated on whether ‘future generations’ was an option we really ought to pursue.
The two stories presented in this video are beyond ludicrous. The staggering amount of harmful stupid and horrific wrongness exposed here boggle the mind. It’s like I’ve been slapped in the face, but the stunned shock will not wear off. Just watch.
If humanity has any hope at all, it is with educators like Vihart. People who make curiosity, learning, science, and math fun. People who find their passion and wonder in reality and share it with the rest of us. The more children (and in turn, the public) are inspired to think, to be inquisitive, to actually care what is real, the less idiocy like that in the last video will be a part of our society.
If you haven’t checked out all the Vihart links in the first part of this post, now is probably a good time. It will make you feel better.
Some relevant background given the recent publicity of how much our governments pry into our personal lives.
Whatever your take on recent revelations about government spying on our phone calls and Internet activity, there’s no denying that Big Brother is bigger and less brotherly than we thought. What’s the resulting cost to our privacy — and more so, our democracy? Lawrence Lessig joins Bill to discuss the implications of our government’s actions.
Chris rock makes a point about how to think about “progressive politics” and what it means to people. It is almost always informative to hear the story of those who regularly receive the short end of history’s stick.
I would recommend adding this to your reading lists, I’m only a third of the way though, but it has been a detailed and interesting account of genesis and growth of the large mean streak of anti-intellectualism that is currently dominating the zeitgeist of American society. Jacoby was interviewed by Bill Moyers and thus, allow me to wet your whistle with an excerpt from the transcript.
SUSAN JACOBY: Now, this was not always the case in our country. In the 19th century Robert Ingersoll, whom we’ve talked, who is known as the great agnostic, had audiences full of people who didn’t agree with him. But they wanted to hear what he had to say. And they wanted to see whether the devil really has horns. And now what we have is a situation in which people go to hear people they already agree with. What’s going on is not so much education as reinforcement of the opinions you already have.
BILL MOYERS: Yeah, why is it we’re so unwilling to give, as you say, a hearing to contradictory viewpoints? Or to imagine that we might learn something from someone who disagrees with us?
SUSAN JACOBY: Well, I think part of it is part of a larger thing that is making our culture dumber. We have, really, over the past 40 years, gotten shorter and shorter and shorter attention spans. One of the most important studies I’ve found, and I’ve put in this chapter, they call it Infantainment– on this book. It’s by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And they’ve found that children under six spend two hours a day watching television and video on average. But only 39 minutes a day being read to by their parents.
Well, you don’t need a scientific study to know that if you’re not read to by your parents, if most of your entertainment when you’re in those very formative years is looking at a screen, you value what you do. And I don’t see how people can learn to concentrate and read if they watch television when they’re very young as opposed to having their parents read to them. The fact is when you’re watching television, whether it’s an infant or you or I, or staring glazedly at a video screen, you’re not doing something else.
BILL MOYERS: What does it say to you, Susan, that half of American adults believe in ghosts? Now I take these from your book. One-third believe in astrology. Three quarters believe in angels. And four-fifths believe in miracles.
SUSAN JACOBY: I think even more important than the fact that large numbers of Americans believe in ghosts or angels, that is part of some religious beliefs. Is the flip side is of this is that over half of Americans don’t believe in evolution. And these things go together. Because what they do is they place science on a par almost with folk beliefs.
And I think– if I may inveigh against myself, ourselves, I think the American media in particular has a lot to do with it. Because one of the things that really has gotten dumber about our culture the media constantly talks about truth as if it– if it were always equidistant from two points. In other words, sometimes the truth is one-sided.
I mentioned this in THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON that after the 9/11 terrorist attacks there was a huge cover story in TIME Magazine in 2002 about the rapture and end of the world scenarios. There wasn’t a singular secular person quoted in it. They discussed the rapture scenario from the book of Revelation as though it was a perfectly reasonable thing for people to believe. On the one hand, these people don’t believe it. On the other it’s exactly like saying– you know, “Two plus– two plus two, so-and-so says, ‘two plus two equals five.’ But, of course, mathematicians say that it really equals four.” The mathematicians are right. The people who say that two plus two equals five are wrong. The media blurs that constantly.
BILL MOYERS: You call that a kind of dumb objectivity.
SUSAN JACOBY: Yes. Dumb objectivity. Exactly.
As an educator I find Jacoby’s work illuminating and depressing at the same time. We have such a large hill to climb in the struggle to reclaim children’s minds from the media.
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