Last week, I suggested we tax advertising on local news, to pay for the law enforcement and crime costs that the local news media imposes on society, via their glorification of crime and criminal justice system. Stamp taxes aren’t a popular thing, ever since the British imposed it on the American colonies, but I think it may be a necessary thing to reduce crime and rein in the abuse of the first amendment by commercial media.
It’s well documented that the news media should not cover suicide, unless it’s a particularly suicide of a public figure or happens in a public place that impacts a large number of people — like somebody blowing off their head in a community gathering. But even there the news media treads carefully. But I have to wonder if those guidelines mostly exist, because advertisers don’t get the same value out of suicide coverage that they get out of crime. Suicide isn’t particularly scary to people, as only the suicidal individual dies. Without fear, there isn’t the profits.
"President Franklin Roosevelt created the VOA during World War II to broadcast behind enemy lines what its current director, Amanda Bennett, said was "truthful news about the war, in contrast with Nazi propaganda." She said that, over the years, the mission hasn't really changed that much. "Our job is to do two things," she said."One is to tell America's story objectively to places that can't see it otherwise, and the other one is to bring objective news and information to places that have no other access to it. So we say that in a large part of the world we are the free press."
"I’m a political journalist. I’ve been a political journalist for 15 years. I believe in my profession. But right now, I’m worried we’re failing. I’m worried we’re making American politics worse, not better. That’s not because journalists aren’t doing remarkable, courageous, heroic work. Look at the #MeToo movement, the investigations of Donald Trump’s finances, the remarkable reporting that journalists do every day in the midst of war zones and Ebola outbreaks and authoritarian regimes.'
'It’s because everything around us has changed — our business models, the way people read us, the way we compete with each other, the way we’re manipulated — and we’re not keeping up. Instead, we’re getting played by the outrage merchants and con artists and trolls and polarizers who understand this new world better. President Trump is the most successful media hacker out there, but he’s not the only one. We’re being used to fracture American democracy, and I don’t think we know how to stop it."
"Garfield is a comic created by Jim Davis. Published since 1978, it chronicles the life of the title character, Garfield, the cat; Jon Arbuckle, the human; and Odie, the dog. As of 2013, it was syndicated in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals, and held the Guinness World Record for being the world's most widely syndicated comic strip."
"Though this is rarely mentioned in print, Garfield is set in Muncie, Indiana, the home of Jim Davis, according to the television special Happy Birthday, Garfield. Common themes in the strip include Garfield's laziness, obsessive eating, coffee, and disdain of Mondays and diets. The strip's focus is mostly on the interactions among Garfield, Jon, and Odie, but other recurring minor characters appear as well. Originally created with the intentions to "come up with a good, marketable character", Garfield has spawned merchandise earning $750 million to $1 billion annually. In addition to the various merchandise and commercial tie-ins, the strip has spawned several animated television specials, two animated television series, two theatrical feature-length live-action/CGI animated films, and three fully CGI animated direct-to-video movies."
"Part of the strip's broad pop cultural appeal is due to its lack of social or political commentary; though this was Davis's original intention, he also admitted that his "grasp of politics isn't strong," joking that, for many years, he thought "OPEC was a denture adhesive"."
