posted June 29, 2011 09:50 PM            

Haven't I told you before acoustic...that attempting to use others against me..or anyone else is a sure sign of weakness?

Yes acoustic, I did.

Now acoustic, whatever happened to your attempt to prove me wrong by contacting the Pew organization...as you said you would?

posted June 30, 2011 11:32 AM            

quote:

---

haven't I told you before acoustic...that attempting to use others against me..or anyone else is a sure sign of weakness?

---

I've come to view this tactic of yours as manipulative. You don't like it being clearly in your face that most people disagree with you, so you try to thin the numbers through claims like this. I don't have to "attempt" to use others against you. People will always be against you for as long as you're talking politics. You don't ever get things even remotely correct enough for people not to bother with setting you straight. So nice try, but you're not going to cast me as "weak," because more people agree with me than you. More people will always agree with me than you. It's a simple effect of being more rational.

quote:

---

Now acoustic, whatever happened to your attempt to prove me wrong by contacting the Pew organization...as you said you would?

---

You're welcome to contact Pew on your own, and it would be better that way as you'd get the email back directly and not be able to claim I faked it in some manner. They won't confirm your belief, however. Anyone with any knowledge of that poll has to agree with my position.

quote:

---

Face it acoustic! You were wrong..and I was right. What I predicted would happen, did happen

---

posted July 03, 2011 02:08 PM            

14 Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans
Saturday

There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.

It is ironic that in the era of 24-hour cable news networks and "reality" programming, the news-to-fluff ratio and overall veracity of information has declined precipitously. Take the fact Americans now spend on average about 50 hours a week using various forms of media, while at the same time cultural literacy levels hover just above the gutter. Not only does mainstream media now tolerate gross misrepresentations of fact and history by public figures (highlighted most recently by Sarah Palin's ludicrous depiction of Paul Revere's ride), but many media actually legitimize these displays. Pause for a moment and ask yourself what it means that the world's largest, most profitable and most popular news channel passes off as fact every whim, impulse and outrageously incompetent analysis of its so-called reporters. How did we get here? Take the enormous amount of misinformation that is taken for truth by Fox audiences: the belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that he was in on 9/11, the belief that climate change isn't real and/or man-made, the belief that Barack Obama is Muslim and wasn't born in the United States, the insistence that all Arabs are Muslim and all Muslims are terrorists, the inexplicable perceptions that immigrants are both too lazy to work and are about to steal your job. All of these claims are demonstrably false, yet Fox News viewers will maintain their veracity with incredible zeal. Why? Is it simply that we have lost our respect for knowledge?

My curiosity about this question compelled me to sit down and document the most oft-used methods by which willful ignorance has been turned into dogma by Fox News and other propagandists disguised as media. The techniques I identify here also help to explain the simultaneously powerful identification the Fox media audience has with the network, as well as their ardent, reflexive defenses of it.

The good news is that the more conscious you are of these techniques, the less likely they are to work on you. The bad news is that those reading this article are probably the least in need in of it.

1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren't activated, you aren't alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don't think rationally. And when they can't think rationally, they'll believe anything.

2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person's credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. "liberals," "hippies," "progressives" etc. This form of argument - if it can be called that - leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.

3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It's often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.

4. Rewriting History. This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin's mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they'll often speak with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.

5. Scapegoating/Othering. This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It's technically a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.

6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This is more of what I'd call a "meta-frame" (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news is reported constantly. For example, terms like "show of strength" are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force - it can turn wars into sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.

7. Bullying. This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a "win."

8. Confusion. As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking, thereby giving the user's claims veracity in the viewer's mind.

9. Populism. This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of "the people" and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always "elitist" or a "bureaucrat" or a "government insider" or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused "elitists" are almost always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.

posted July 03, 2011 02:18 PM            

all about the techniques.

posted July 03, 2011 11:01 PM            

The oft used bullying technique of repeating a persons on-line name repeatedly in a reply, let's use the name Dick in our example:

So, Dick, is there anything else you don't have to add to this discussion?
and by the way Dick, check your facts, as you, Dick- are way of base. Dick I have told you many times that you need to reference sanity in all replies. So, Dick what is your response?

posted July 06, 2011 12:22 AM            

Wrong, the Pew Poll under discussion was focused on press credibility. The issue of news seekers going to other formats...like the Internet was not discussed....in that poll.

The poll was so embarrassing for the so called main stream media that the Pew Organization took it down. I know they did because I saved it to "favorite places"..here
http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=838

and now, it can't be found.

Here's another report which talks about a series of the Pew Polls under discussion and the link to the Pew Poll takes you to the "can't find" page at Pew.

How embarrassing for the main stream media that their credibility was..and is...so low that the Pew Organization had to take it down. Embarrassing for the Pew Organization too...that they take unfavorable polls for their news buddies out of circulation.

Media Credibility Plummets
Wednesday's Biased Item - September 10, 2008
Directions
Read the excerpt below (from MediaResearch.org). Read "Types of Media Bias" in the right column. Then answer the questions.

Question(s)
Are you surprised by the results of the Pew Research Center poll on the news media? Explain your answer.

Excerpt
"Over the last 10 years," the just-released ... news consumption survey from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press determined, "virtually every news organization or program has seen its credibility marks decline" and "Democrats continue to give most news organizations much higher credibility ratings than do Republicans."

Based on past Pew polls, CNN touts itself as "the most trusted name in news," but the percent who "believe all or most" of what CNN reports has fallen ... to 30%, since Pew first posed the question in 1998. Yet, in a sign of how far the news media have fallen in the eyes of the public, that puts CNN at the top of the 12 television news outlets analyzed, as well as above all the newspapers and online sources. Believability for ABC News, CBS News and NBC News is down six points over the past ten years, to 24% for ABC and NBC, 22% for CBS, but that's still better than the mere 18% who "believe all or most" of what they read in the New York Times.

The extensive polling conducted in May also discovered that the audiences for CNN and MSNBC, "which were heavily Democratic two years ago, have become even more so: fully 51% of CNN's regular viewers are Democrats while only 18 percent are Republicans. MSNBC's audience makeup is similar -- 45% of regular viewers of MSNBC are Democrats, 18 percent are Republicans" and "the regular audience for nightly network news also is now about two-to-one Democratic (45 percent vs. 22 percent Republican)."

Fox News Channel attracts a more balanced audience: "Currently, 39% of regular Fox News viewers are Republicans while 33% are Democrats; in 2006, the margin was 38% to 31%." hahahaha

("Regular viewers of The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," not surprisingly, "are much more liberal than the public at large. More than a third of Colbert's regular viewers (36%) describe their political views as liberal and 45% of regular Daily Show viewers say they are liberal.")

Read the entire post at MRC.org.

posted July 06, 2011 01:24 PM            

It's been condensed into a broader-based article titled: News Audiences Increasingly Politicized. http://people-press.org/2004/06/08/news-audiences-increasingly-politicized/

They did address the growing online news audience even back then in 2004:

"With most other media trends flat, the steady growth in the audience for online news stands out." http://people-press.org/2004/06/08/news-audiences-increasingly-politicized/

The other notable change is a rise in online news consumption. About three-in-ten (29%) Americans now report that they regularly go online to get news, up from 25% in 2002 and 23% in 2000. In addition, surveys by the Pew Internet and American Life Project have found the percentage who go online for news on a typical day has increased by half over the past four years (from 12% to 18%). A more inclusive question on this survey found 24% saying they went online for news on the previous day.
http://people-press.org/2004/06/08/i-where-americans-go-for-news/

Subsequent reviews of news media done by Pew reflect the same growing trend towards getting the news online.

_______________________________________

posted July 07, 2011 10:48 AM            

Makes no difference whatsoever. The Press Credibility reports back me up...not you acoustic.

Further, what I said would happen to the lying press...did happen.

Your interpretation of this chart continues in error.

Those who cannot dechiper the word "Most" will draw the wrong conclusions from this chart.

These uninformed ones will jump to the conclusion this is an "equal distribution" chart when it cannot possibly be.

The word "Most" means...more that half, the greatest part...the largest part...when it's used as an indefinite quantifier...as it is in the Pew Report.

Category 4...the most favorable to press credibility shows only 21% believe ALL or MOST of what the NY Times prints as news.

On the scale the Pew Report established, some of the respondents (4) could believe ALL and some could believe an amount over 50% (MOST) of what the NY Times printes.

All other categories...(3, 2 and 1) believe less than "MOST" which leaves 79% of respondents believing 50% or less, or..less than half of what the NY Times prints...and in a decending scale of disbelief all the way down to..."Believe Almost Nothing".

Clearly, this Pew scale cannot be an "Equal Distribution" scale when one of the categories..4 takes up the entire top 50.00000001 to 100% of belief.

posted July 07, 2011 11:02 AM            

It was Clarence Thomas who said it first, during his nomination to the Supremes. Now Ann Coulter has written her book, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America. But conservatives should be pointing to the lefties and chanting it every day, because it is all too true:

The hard left is nothing but a lynch mob with alternative tools.

Justice Thomas paid the media mob the compliment of calling them a "high-tech lynch mob." Clarence Thomas was born in the South at a time when lynch mobs were very real. But technology just amplifies what they already are, as moral low-lives. Bull Connor passed out ax handles to the mob in the sixties, but today's high-tech lynch mobsters are no different when they try to destroy the careers, jobs, and reputations of good and decent people -- and even their children, like one-year-old baby Trig Palin. Michele Bachmann was just threatened by one of the media mobsters, because now her 23 foster children are free bait for the media lynchers. This is like mafia thugs walking through your nice family home and telling you what a fire hazard it is, and are you sure you don't want to sell out?

They have no decency. None at all.

Our media and Democrat politicians have been taken over by lynch mob psychology, in the form of Saul Alinsky's little book. What do you think this means? "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." It means pick a scapegoat, freeze him in the mob's eyes as evil, make him look personally evil, and whip the mob up into a frenzy against him. That is what Obama did the other day with private jet owners, who are his favorite scapegoat of the moment. It's how Kluxers lynched blacks in the Dixiecrat South, and the Democrats haven't forgotten how well it worked for them then. Leftist Democrats have just changed the targets to you and me. If you're male, adult, heterosexual, and white, you are the designated goat in the media. Don't think it hasn't filtered into your own life? It has.

The leftist-media-Democrats just repeat it over and over again, and you can watch them. That's how brainwashing works. Mechanical repetition stamps out any independent thought. No human being can resist that 24/7 mob chant.

Alinsky's Rules for Radicals should be sold as Rules for Lynch Mobs. I assume it's required reading in JourNOlism schools these days, because fresh young jourNOlists come out all ready to join the big mob. It's their road to promotion and a job at the New York Times, the leader of all the lynch mobs on the left.

Alinsky's Rules for Radicals is nothing but the rules of lynch mob leaders throughout human history. There is nothing new about it, and certainly nothing "progressive."

All the liberal media are now following Alinsky Rules. Is the left respectful of blacks or women? Not on your life. They will burn you at the stake regardless of age, sex, or race.

We have to understand very clearly how ruthless these people are. Mentally they are prepared to destroy other human beings, something conservatives (by definition) cannot do, because we have decent values.

Mob psychology is the most toxic force in any society. Media behavior filters down into our everyday relationships, so that many colleges have their own versions of lynchings, rage, and fear campaigns deliberately designed to keep professors and students frightened and obedient to the left. Words like "racist, sexist, and homophobe" are use as clubs to beat innocent people over the head. I knew a professor at an East Coast women's college whose laboratory was trashed by a leftie mob. He ended up in the hospital with a heart attack, and retired. He was a good and decent man.

The left has told women to hate men. Gays are supposed to hate heterosexuals. Blacks are now more paranoid about whites than they ever were before. Sarah Palin's church was burned down in Wasilla after the 2008 campaign. Where are the media sleuths on that raging mob behavior? They demonstrate how to do it to their brain-dead followers. Then they accuse others of "bullying." Socialist societies are nothing but bullying societies, because they are run by control freaks. Socialists bully and abuse you for your own good. So a lynching every now and then is all right. Pour encourager les autres.

This is truly primitive behavior.

Chimps turn into lynch mobs when an alpha male gets sick or injured, or when a lone chimp from another clan wanders into their territory. They spot a scapegoat, go into a frenzy, hunt him down, and kill him.

Humans do it wherever they are taught to hate, which is precisely what Alinsky rules do. Last week a Jewish driver got lost in an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem, and was immediately mobbed, barely making it out alive. If you look at the MEMRI website you can see the 24/7 hate propaganda machine that creates such hatred all over the Muslim world. This is all deliberate, well-financed, and with murderous intent. The Middle East is thirsting for another lynch mob attack on the Jews, and Obama is enabling that kind of primitive, throwback behavior.

It never seems to enter Obama's head that it is the 24/7 hate propaganda campaign that prevents peace in the Middle East from ever becoming a reality. It's his own Alinskyite training to whip up mobs, but he doesn't think anybody else ever used it as a political tool, as he was taught to. Well, he's wrong about that, too. If Israel is ever crazy enough to retreat to its 1949 ceasefire lines, as Obama just demanded, the hate propaganda will just increase as all the mobs go into a frenzy at the same time. Isn't that what "revolution" really is to the left? The poor are kept in a constant stew against the rich, the women against men, the blacks against whites. That rage is what the Alinsky disorganizers need, to make their famous little omelet. Watch Obama and his proxies use it again during the next election campaign. It's SOP. That's what "community organizers" do. Obama demonstrated it when he used the Tahrir Square mob to get Mubarak out of power, thereby tripping off mob rage all over the Middle East.

Muslim lynch mobs are traditionally whipped into rage by the Friday sermons of their (Saudi-trained) imams, and then go on a rampage. Louis Farrakhan and Father Pfleger are the perfect models. Just listen to their "sermons." It's one of those quaint multicultural traditions, coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

The American left's love affair with that kind of mob insanity is the worst news of the last half-century. Liberals used to be decent people. Today they act like Kluxers in drag. Normal people can easily be made to do genuine evil, if you can control the propaganda machine, as the left does in America today.

But first you have to shut up any organized dissent, as the media did during Obama's 2008 campaign, when John McCain was too scared to criticize his opponent. So was the press, the part of it that wasn't into totally goose-stepping obedience to Obamanoia. A mediot accidentally called Obama a "dick" last week, and instantly froze into panic. That's fear you could see in his eyes. With George W. Bush, all his little mobster buddies would have applauded. When these people aren't mobbing Sarah Palin they live in fear of the obamessiah and his enforcers.

If you can brainwash kids in the schools and the media you can transform normal people into lynch-mobbers. That is why the media's mob behavior is so toxic: It spreads like a plague through society.

If you think I'm exaggerating, just watch what the media mobsters are doing to Herman Cain, Rep. Allen West, Governor Palin, and Rep. Michele Bachmann, and ask yourself if there's any difference from the Dixiecrat Kluxers beyond the choice of tools..

There is no difference. Hate is hate. Public abuse is the forerunner of physical abuse. "Anti-bullying," my foot.

The feminists hate Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann so much, I wouldn't trust them with Bull Connor's ax handles. I don't doubt that the Congressional Black Caucus will all turn out smartly to smear and slander Herman Cain and Allen West, if they rise in the polls. After all, that's who Al Sharpton is, right? He's a mob ranter. That's how he gets his power.

Here's Obama's big hero V.I. Lenin as lynch mob leader. When you read it, just substitute "jet owners" for "kulaks." The principle is the same.

Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is now under way everywhere. An example must be demonstrated.

1. Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers.

2. Publish their names.

3. Seize all their grain from them.

4. Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday's telegram.

Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometres around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: "they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks".

Telegraph receipt and implementation.

Yours, Lenin.

Find some truly hard people[7].

Well, there it is. The President of the United States comes out of that tradition, not the American one.

Justice Clarence Thomas is being attacked again by liberal mobsters because they're afraid that he'll vote against ObamaCare when it gets to the Supremes. So they want to take Thomas out, and scare the others. By attacking Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court justices have just been told what will happen to them if they turn down O'Care. This is the very essence of lynch mob behavior.

The liberal media are social poison. They are coordinated and directed, because they come out with the identical party line slogans every single day. They are the worst we've ever seen in this country, and their methods go back straight to Lenin and Marx, who were mainly mob leaders. This is the essence of every extremist attack on the institutions of law, order, and democracy in the last two centuries.

The next time you hear Chris Matthews and Ed Schultz, think of Bull Connor. There is no difference between them beyond methods.

posted July 07, 2011 11:42 AM            

Q.23 Now, I’m going to read a list. Please rate how much you think you can BELIEVE each organization I name on a scale of 4 to 1. On this four point scale, “4" means you can believe all or most of what the organization says. “1" means you believe almost nothing of what they say. How would you rate the believability of (READ ITEM. RANDOMIZE LIST) on this scale of 4 to 1?

Every questioned person got to pick an answer on a scale between two extremes. The first line of the question sets the tone:

Please rate how much you think you can BELIEVE each organization I name on a scale of 4 to 1.

In order to pick, the respondents needed to know which side was which, so they clarified "4" as believing almost everything, and "1" as believing almost nothing. That means that choices of "2" and "3" are some variant in between.

"4" most certainly doesn't equal HALF of the scale. No one said it was an equal distribution chart. I merely illustrated it to you that way once in hopes that you'd come to grips with understanding how questions that ask people to rate something on a scale work.

quote:

---

The word "Most" means...more that half, the greatest part...the largest part...when it's used as an indefinite quantifier...as it is in the Pew Report.

---

That is false. Pew would not back you up on that opinion. When things are on a scale there are always extremes at the ends, and shades of either extreme in the middle. In their own words they didn't make "1" definite either. "“1" means you believe almost nothing of what they say." Not "1" means you believe absolutely nothing of what they say, but "almost nothing". The same is true of category "4".

posted July 07, 2011 06:49 PM            

You must be a masochist to keep coming back for more after being pummeled so often.

MOST

adverb, determiner, pronoun
▸the largest part of something, or the majority of people or things...

▸the largest amount

Therefore acoustic...the largest amount of, largest part of..the majority of anything is obviously more than 50%. Any quantity of 50% or less is NOT the largest amount, not the majority of or the largest part of...or MOST of whatever is being discussed.

posted July 07, 2011 08:14 PM            

I think we previously discussed the fact that choice "4" is "All or Most". What do you think a person would answer if they wished to convey that while they generally find their news source credible, they don't believe ALL of what that news source prints? If they chose "4" they'd be submitting to the idea that they believe everything that news source has to say, because "ALL" is part of the descriptor. Naturally, they take a step down, and choose "3" thus distinctly saying that they don't believe everything that source reports. "All or most" reads to people as "Everything or Most Everything," much as choice "1" is "Believe Almost Nothing."

Pew concedes this fact in their 2010 Survey:

Majorities give each of the news organizations included on the survey a credibility rating of three or four on the four-point scale. Relatively small percentages give the organizations a one – meaning they can believe “almost nothing” of what the news organization reports. http://people-press.org/2010/09/12/section-5-news-media-credibility/

posted July 08, 2011 08:34 AM            

While you are arguing about "What should have been"..regarding the poll distribution plot, I focus on what is, according to the commonly used English word "MOST"...which has a commonly used dictionary definition used by "MOST" English speaking persons.

posted July 08, 2011 10:06 AM            

I'm not wishing for what the poll should be. I'm understanding the poll for what it is.

Your absurdity is made clear by the fact that the Wall Street Journal posted similar numbers, and now has the highest circulation in the country. USA Today had credibility numbers WORSE than the NYT, and is still doing better. If Pew's poll accurately defined these paper's credibility via one end of a scale, and if the NYT's numbers in that scale lead to a conclusion that it was losing readership due to credibility issues, then obviously USA Today should be doing even worse than the NYT.

posted July 08, 2011 10:49 AM            

he has closed the News of the World, his biggest seller, which has come up for scrutiny about it's wheeling and dealing and basically illegal tactics in getting stories after 170 years of providing a good laugh for many and scandal and trouble for others...

and will shortly transfer operations to its baby sister paper, the SUN, which has always been famous for publishing pinups (page 3 girls) and following along with a digest version of the NOTW...

The dramatic closure of the 168-year-old newspaper is Murdoch's way of deflecting attention from not just the paper's scandalous phone-hacking ways but its destruction of evidence in the Milly Dowler murder case, its payoffs to police, its role in the cover-up of the scandal, and lord knows what other crimes it committed. By killing the newspaper, said by the Guardian to be the company's most profitable venture, Murdoch hopes to create the illusion that justice has been done. By abruptly closing the paper, Murdoch also scatters a potentially incriminating paper- and computer-trail...

posted July 08, 2011 11:46 AM            

There are many more ways to get the news these days, and as a consequence Americans are spending more time with the news than over much of the past decade. Digital platforms are playing a larger role in news consumption, and they seem to be more than making up for modest declines in the audience for traditional platforms. As a result, the average time Americans spend with the news on a given day is as high as it was in the mid-1990s, when audiences for traditional news sources were much larger.

Roughly a third (34%) of the public say they went online for news yesterday – on par with radio, and slightly higher than daily newspapers. And when cell phones, email, social networks and podcasts are added in, 44% of Americans say they got news through one or more internet or mobile digital source yesterday.

At the same time, the proportion of Americans who get news from traditional media platforms – television, radio and print – has been stable or edging downward in the last few years. There has been no overall decline in the percentage saying they watched news on television, and even with the continued erosion of print newspaper and radio audiences, three-quarters of Americans got news yesterday from one or more of these three traditional platforms.

In short, instead of replacing traditional news platforms, Americans are increasingly integrating new technologies into their news consumption habits. More than a third (36%) of Americans say they got news from both digital and traditional sources yesterday, just shy of the number who relied solely on traditional sources (39%). Only 9% of Americans got news through the internet and mobile technology without also using traditional sources.

The net impact of digital platforms supplementing traditional sources is that Americans are spending more time with the news than was the case a decade ago. As was the case in 2000, people now say they spend 57 minutes on average getting the news from TV, radio or newspapers on a given day. But today, they also spend an additional 13 minutes getting news online, increasing the total time spent with the news to 70 minutes. This is one of the highest totals on this measure since the mid-1990s and it does not take into account time spent getting news on cell phones or other digital devices .

The biennial news consumption survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted June 8-28 on cell phones and landlines among 3,006 adults, finds further evidence that the combination of digital and traditional platforms is leading to increased news consumption.
The groups that are driving the increase in time spent with the news – particularly highly educated people – are most likely to use digital and traditional platforms. Fully 69% of those with some post-graduate experience got news through a digital source yesterday; this also is the group that showed the largest rise in time spent with the news from 2006-2008 to 2010 (from 81 minutes yesterday to 96 minutes). There also has been a modest increase in time spent with the news among those 30 to 64 – but not among older and younger age groups.

Digital platforms are supplementing the news diets of news consumers, but there is little indication they are expanding the proportion of Americans who get news on a given day. The vast majority of Americans (83%) get news in one form or another as part of their daily life. But even when cell phones, podcasts, social networks, email, Twitter and RSS feeds are accounted for, 17% of Americans say they got no news yesterday, little changed from previous years.

Moreover, while young people are most likely to integrate new technologies into their daily lives, they are not using these sources to get news at higher rates than do older Americans. Rather, those in their 30s are the only age group in which a majority (57%) reports getting news on one or more digital platforms yesterday.

The integration of traditional and digital technology is common among those in older age groups as well. Nearly half (49%) of people in their 40s, and 44% of those between 50 and 64, got news through one or more digital modes yesterday – rates that are comparable to those 18 to 29 (48%). Digital news consumption is low only among those ages 65 and older, just 23% of whom used one or more digital modes for news yesterday.

Pew 2010

Regarding the New York Times specifically:

In general, daily newspaper readers tend to be older on average than the general public, but the regular readership of some of the major national newspapers – USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and especially the New York Times – defy this trend. More than half of regular USA Today and Wall Street Journal (55% each) readers are younger than 50 – a profile that largely matches the nation as a whole (roughly 55% of all adults are between 18 and 49). Fully two-thirds (67%) of regular New York Times readers are younger than 50, with a third (34%) younger than 30 – making its audience substantially younger than the national average (55% younger than 50, 23% younger than 30).

The young profile of the regular New York Times readership is undoubtedly linked to the paper’s success online. Nearly one-in-ten of internet users younger than 30 (8%) – and 6% of all internet users – volunteer the New York Times when asked to name a few of the websites they use most often to get news and information.

Regarding the real reason for decline in newspaper readership:

The proportion turning to the internet for news continues to grow – 34% say they got news online yesterday in the latest survey, up from 29% in 2008 and 23% in 2006. And the overall reach of digital technologies is even broader – 44% say they got news yesterday from the internet, cell phones, social networks or podcasts.

Instead, it is people in their 30s (30 to 39) who are the most likely to use digital technologies to get news. Fully 57% of those in their 30s say they got news through a digital platform yesterday – either online or mobile – the highest percentage of any age group. And 21% of those 30 to 39 say they got news through social networking or Twitter yesterday, which is higher than other age groups.

Many older Americans also use new technologies to get the news. Nearly half (49%) of people in their 40s got news yesterday through some internet or mobile source, as did 44% of those ages 50-64. Digital news drops off as a source only among those ages 65 and older (23%), largely because older Americans remain less likely to go online or use mobile technology. In many cases, seniors who do have the technology are just as likely to use it to get news as their younger counterparts (see Section 2: Online and Digital News).

While men and women are equally likely to get news from one or more traditional platform on a given day (75% of men, 74% of women), men are far more likely than women to get news digitally. Overall, half of men (50%) get news over some kind of online or digital platform on any given day, compared with 39% of women. Specifically, men are twice as likely as women (12% vs. 6%) to get news using cell phones, and more men than women also get news from email, RSS readers and customizable webpages. However, there is no gender gap in the percentage getting news through social networks or Twitter on any given day.
Pew 2010

posted July 09, 2011 06:37 PM            

this NOTW incident/closure has created a precedent in britain, where both the party in power and the opposition are suddenly coming out against his tactics. this would have been unheard of even a week ago according to some british sources. rupert is used to making and breaking politicians and parties, and to having a "blind eye" turned by each and every one - due to fear of what his empire can do to them?

from wikipedia

McNight (2010) identifies four characteristics of his media operations: free market ideology; unified positions on matters of public policy; global editorial meetings; and opposition to a perceived liberal bias in other public media.[30] (just a couple of self-contradictions right there...)

On 8 May 2006, the Financial Times reported that Murdoch would be hosting a fund-raiser for Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-New York) Senate re-election campaign.[31]

In a 2008 interview with Walt Mossberg, Murdoch was asked whether he had "anything to do with the New York Post's endorsement of Barack Obama in the democratic primaries." Without hesitating, Murdoch replied, "Yeah. He is a rock star. It's fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don't think he will win Florida... but he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk."[32][33]

ie inspite of the "unified positions" of his entities WHO ARE IN THE HABIT OF DEMONIZING AND UNDERCUTTING OBAMA, he claims at least partial credit for obama's victory - and many others' too...obviously he recognized obama's "star power", and then his minions went to work to undermine the possibility of his being able to "walk the walk"..

In 2010 News Corporation gave $1M to the Republican Governors Association and $1M to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.[34][35][36]
(not to mention all the airtime spent pushing certain candidates and hatchetting others)

Murdoch also served on the board of directors of the libertarian Cato Institute.[37]

he is an american citizen because it is financially profitable to be one. american investors didn't want to buy into an australian company!

the closing of the NOTW will cost, as is normal in all murdoch's manoevers, several thousand WORKING people their jobs...at a moment's notice, though he is backing the people who were in charge of operations when the alleged dirty deeds were done...and THEY, in turn, are saying they "knew nothing" about what was going on under them.

(let's be honest here, the NOTW is FAMOUS for its shady entrapment/phone-tapping/illegal tactics...it has actually exposed some corrupt politics and a lot of silly celebrities, but it has never been shy about invading privacy or breaking the law...)

so we have a man who raises funds for one candidate, supports another, then tears them both to shreds ... for sport and profit? does the word amoral ring any bells here?

one comment i read on one of the stories about the NOTW was "he's 80? i didn't realize, but thank god! there may be a future worth living for my kids!"

this man is rated in some circles as the 13th most powerful man in the world. nothing is too high, or too low, for him as long as it keeps the tills ringing and the politicians cringing.

he "believes in" the free market, and practices buying up all the competition till there is no free market left.

posted July 09, 2011 07:06 PM            

did i read that right? did Ailes suggest that their treatment of him which has been swallowed whole by scads of innocent TRUSTING americans was a result of his not giving his seal of approval?