Re: [Phys-l] dealing with the media +- evolution

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 04/05/2008 03:40 PM, David Appell wrote:

> Thanks for this list

:-)

> But many of these people -- Christopher Hitchens, Bill O'Reilly,
> Chris Matthews, etc. -- are entertainers, not journalists.

Agreed.  Did you see Hardball last Wednesday? ---

        Matthews: Let me ask you about, at any time in this campaign, 
        did you have a chuckle that you just couldn't get rid of? 
        Something weird that happened that was so crazy that you just 
        went to bed laughing about?

        Obama: Oh, I think that happens once a day. Yeah, but then 
        I stopped watching cable news.

> Our society desperately needs more media literacy so people can tell
> them apart.
..........
> there is surely a large amount of misleading 
> reporting these days,

I agree ... but why limit to "these days"?  I figure it was always
thus.  

 *) Remember the heyday of yellow journalism (Joseph Pulitzer versus
  William Randolph Hearst)?  Today it's the Iraq war;  then it was the 
  Spanish-American war.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

 *) Thomas Jefferson wrote:
   "As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in 
   the newspapers." 

> Our society desperately needs more media literacy

Indeed.

IMHO a useful tool is
  http://news.google.com/
It's just a tool and a starting point, not a cure-all ... and you 
have to learn how to use the tool.  But it can help you find stuff 
that would never be discussed by the local paper (let alone O'Reilly 
or Limbaugh).