Veteran journalist Cokie Roberts, who joined an upstart NPR in 1978 and left an indelible imprint on the growing network with her coverage of Washington politics before later going to ABC News, has died. She was 75. Roberts died Tuesday due to complications from breast cancer, according to a family statement.
I don’t have a television at home nor do I have internet beyond what I can do on my phone. It’s just too distracting and obnoxious and I like the walk to the library.
I find myself even listening to the radio less and less as all it is about these days is pushing gun control and banning plastic straws. Hardly relevant to my life.
Maybe I’m just hiding from the pain of modern living by watching videos about farming and off-grid living but I don’t know, so much of modern life is based on what the politicians think will score them points than reality.
Maybe I’m a luddite, but I actually enjoy technology that makes life easier and better rather than the horrors that contemporary media and news brings into one’s home.
I often get tired of listening to the news and the liberal narrative that we must all be afraid of gun violence and we need more arbitrary restrictions on gun rights. I don’t need to hear such things so I just don’t listen to the news anymore. I’m glad I couldn’t hear the news while I was up in the wilderness due to valley blocking the radio signal.
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."
"New York is the #1 state with the most "fake news" shares on Twitter."