You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Media’ tag.
This was Douglas Murray’s closing statement in the Munk Debate over whether one should trust the mainstream media. It should be required viewing over at the CBC and CTV.
Also, see the full debate here where you can watch Douglas Murray and Matt Taibbi crush the opposition and especially Malc Gladwell, who offered little toward the substantive debate of the topic at hand (constructing strawmen and playing the racism card doesn’t seem to cut it in serious debate).
Driving to work on Saturday and Sunday I tune to CBC to get an idea of what is going on in Alberta and the world. On Sunday though I was quite perplexed. The topic was – I think – bear safety.
Bear safety, especially during spring, is a relevant topic in many parts of Alberta as human and wild habitats are now entangled. Reminding humans not to be stupid around bears saves human and bear lives. I was expecting a rundown of the basic tips for not being an idiot around bears. Something like this (also found on CBC).
You know, relevant fact based information that will useful most people. But that didn’t happen.
Instead, I was introduced to ‘indigenous ways’ of coexisting with bears, and how important it was to work with indigenous Canadians. The news piece featured a short interview with an individual who said that coexisting with bears was the indigenous way of life and it was culturally important feature of their heritage.
What I took from the piece was that it was important to, in an ‘indigenous way’ coexist with bears – because Indigenous Canadian Culture…
What was missing from the news story was any sort of factual information on keeping yourself safe during the annual spring bear awakening season(!). I’m pretty sure the phrase ‘indigenous ways of knowing” was repeated at least three times during the piece, and I thought to myself, “What additional knowledge is being added to the topic of bear safety?”.
I’m guessing the answer is pretty close to zero. Biologists have done a fairly good job at studying, recording, and making knowledgeable observations about bear behaviour why not share some of those with the public? But no, our national broadcaster decided to make the story about (undefined) mystical ways of knowing how to coexist with bears.
I know mornings can be a slow news time, but maybe CBC, just maybe make your news stories contain well, news?
Other news media are now commenting on the insular nature of American media. Douglas Murray remarks about the obfuscation of language in the middle segment, rightly observing that the supposed left wing media in the US is busy erasing the term ‘woman’ from its vocabulary.
Hint – There is no liberation value to removing the category female people use to describe themselves.
The table of contents and a link to the full .pdf download. :)
Look at the bullshit that goes on in Gotham. Have you ever…ever seen a gratuitous ass shot of the male caped crusader? Yah. Me neither.
Patriarchy :(
We try to replicate what we see in our society and media. We as a society need to stop portraying women in media as mere eye candy for the male-gaze. Of course, if you happen to be Legolas, the rules do not apply. :)
Why looking at non-North American news feeds is important. This little tidbit by Pepe Escobar cropped up on Counterpunch, but the article is all over the place in the Eastern media.
“But this is extremely serious. A China-North Korea mutual defense treaty has been in effect since 1961. Under this framework, Beijing’s response to Trump’s “fire and fury” was a thing of beauty. If Pyongyang attacks, China is neutral. But if the US launches a McMaster-style pre-emptive attack, China intervenes – militarily – on behalf of Pyongyang.
As a clincher, Beijing even made it clear that its preference is for the current status quo to remain. Checkmate.
Hunger Games apart, the rhetorical war in the Korean Peninsula did decrease a substantial notch after China made its position clear. According to a Beltway intel source, that shows “the US and Chinese militaries, as the US and the Russians in Syria, are coordinating to avoid a war”.
Evidence may have been provided by a very important meeting last week between the chairmen of the US and Chinese Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford and General Fang Fenghui. They signed a deal that the Pentagon spun as able to “reduce the risk of miscalculation” in Northeast Asia.
Among the prodigious fireworks inherent to his departure as White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon nailed it: “There’s no military solution, forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”
And extra evidence in the “they got us” department is that B-1B heavy bomber “decapitation” practice runs – out of Andersen Air Force Base in Guam – have been quietly “suspended”. This crucial, largely unreported fact in the air supersedes rhetoric from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Pentagon head James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who previous to Bannon’s exit were stressing “strong military consequences if North Korea chooses wrongly”.
Wouldn’t it have been nice to see a reiteration of the China-North Korea mutual defence treaty along side the worrisome proclamations of the current leader Republican Administration? The ‘Fire and Fury’ comment, in this context, seems little more that empty words and tired grandstanding when the geopolitical realities of the situation are taken into account.
It is the responsibility of our news media to provide meaningful context to the public so they make decisions based on fact, not on the unqualified hyperbolic rantings of the current president of the United States.
Our media needs to do better, and not just cover the buffoonery that is going on the US, but provide the information necessary for those of us in the reality based community to make informed decisions and judgments.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…