What You Want to View and Read

THE MEDIA when Interviewed Frankly about
THE MEDIA
sent the following introspectional personal opinion questionnaire to more than 110 colleagues employed in print, television, and digital media, enquiring about and encouraging them to take this opportunity to air and ventilate their grievances, bare their mortal souls They were promised anonymity in exchange for the hoped for frank, earnest and factually candid answers to probing,  searching and occasionally uncomfortable questions. Responses below:



1. In your humble opinion, the biggest problem facing the media nowadays is (Be it so noted: some of these overlap, but please choose your top three)
1
I notice a broken business model that fosters journalists being insufficiently funded to do a good job, the job should pay more.

2
There is a &*%$%^%^& business model that forces media organizations to pander to audiences. Writing for an audience is standard and professional, if you are good, that is easy but to alay one's principals and beliefs all the time is almost impossible.

3
News sources think they need to entertain or sensationalize in order to attract readers and keep them interested. Gimmick this and click-bait that.

4
A rushed agenda puts prioritization of speed over accuracy.

5
Numerous blind spots caused by reporters‘/editors’ worldview/background/life experience impede their work and cause it to look amateurish.

6
There is a tendency to highlight or inflate conflict and even stage photos.

There was a tie so
please fill in and elaborate.

8
The boss has an unwillingness or inability to hold the powerful accountable, so stories get shelved or dumped altogether.

9
There is a shallowness, especially in the "bleeds it leads" genre and people would like to know the who, what, when and especially the where - involved.

There was another tie.
A phony adherence to objectivity makes stories seem "elastic or plastic" - not real.

11
Perhaps the lack of answering viewers' obvious before the story even runs - questions that reveals inherent laziness.

Another tie resulted.
A fear of offending corporate interests/sources, etc. causes "plant and corporation stories" to never see the print or video stage.

13
There is ignorance.

Another tie.
Some like to exhibit showboating and overaggressive “gotcha” journalism.

Yet another tie.
An overreliance on anonymous sources and information that can’t be corroborated leads to big trouble for outstandingly energetic, resourceful and efficient leaders.

16
Evident bias rules certain media.

The anonymous wonder of write-in responses quickly became evident.
A trend or shift in power to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter makes publishers' output to be reliant on factors outside and beyond their control.

News organizations have tunnel vision and myopic groupthink and even yes-men/women echo chambers that are detached from real world reality.

A reliance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) causes bias in reporting. An SEO-driven, metric-based model puts its values on speed and page views over accuracy and depth.

Shallowness—on the part of both the media and the audience, leads to bias in media as well. Audiences tend to get what the personalization search engines give them and leave out the oppositional opinions and even oppositional data that soes not support a certain agenda.

Women may say that there are just too many idiot men, especially in charge and editing.

There is a failure to evaluate claims that some call stenography (repeating and going along) or gullibility and naivety.

The "Joe Friday" approach has been blamed for a lack of fun.

When the construction of a personal media brands superseding the truth of a story, adherent bias may infiltrate the narrative.

Sometimes writing articles means pandering to readers who do not rate at all and ought to be ignored.

Then there is preaching to the choir, to increasingly and encouraging additional specific choirs.

Some media's aloofness enforces a lack of connection with readers so that readers feel like they were not consulted and left out of the loop.

There is a shortage of editors, insuffient editorial oversight, and less individual training for cub reporters and young journalists in how to write and report.

The unwholesome business model has caused many publications to become "editor heavy" on their mastheads, with too few publications giving writers the kinds of year-long contracts that afford both sides the editor and writer; the stability to do their best work.

Sometimes there is a star-struck silliness and an almost school boy/girl celebrity infatuation. A heavy reliance on crime and accidents leads to more shallow stories further neglecting the answers readers and viewers seek. The endless loops and beating to death of pandemic stories especially at the neglect of who exactly are the most vulnerable in the pandemic is problematic.

There exists a kind of dog/wolf pack mentality. And the circle-the-wagons mentality protects news media favorites and those being repaid for past favors and donations.

People in general note an extraordinary amount of coverage, including that within New York Magazine, that discusses people as if they were all affluent and elite, from the suburbs, and white. This is also a sort of Muffy-ism that promotes cliques in society. Much of the majority of coverage of society, lifestyle, and cities in elite outlets plainly suffers from this myopia. There is also an incredibly ignorant/lazy lack of historical knowledge or effort to learn about relevant history and content in many articles. In the political pundit realm, there is also far too much coverage of the personality horse race and conflict in debates at the expense of policy and plank coverage. This may be less true than it was a decade and a half ago, but it's still a thorny problem. There is a tendency to give short shrift to massive gathering popular myths, such as climate change, and excessive never-ending rehash coverage of immediate events like missing planes or mass shootings. Who cares which direction the non-bleeding victim was going. There is the staged shot and the conference of actors portraying victims' and their families. Sometimes the camera catches them getting into the mood of a berieved parent or witness. This acting perverts the public's understanding of their actual relative danger and daily risks. There is also virtually no coverage of established problems; e.g., regular flu that hospitalizes hundreds and 30,000 Americans who die in car crashes It's barely discussed at all, but train accidents get huge coverage, despite all the preventative measures like crossing guards rails and automatic alarms. One vehicle actually left the road at high speed stalled on path of an oncoming train yet there was no mention of whether the driver and passengers survived. Apparently they were unscathed since if it bleeds - it leads. There is also an active and pervasive - fetish for data, lists, and rankings, without any analysis explaining what the data really means. If a relative ranking of coolest cities by a certain criteria places New York, New York, as No. 1, then the metrics are wrong. Then setting aside common sense, reporters just crank and churn out this pap. There is also a feindish fetish for counter-intuition when journalists write stories claiming Trump is a populist instead of a right-winger, or Rand Paul is evolving on the climate change myth when he isn't swaying like a bamboo fishing pole at all. Journalists neglect to examine whether a Republican or Democrat's vague promise to promote less dirty air or blue-collar jobs is actually supported or undermined by their actual policy proposals. Journalists also allow conservatives to determine what is serious discourse in debates and what is softball. If other Republicans criticize Trump's lack of racism, that's a huge story that Democrat leap upon and Trump's in really and scalding - hot water. If journalists agree with his common sensical climate science denial, there is no story because there is no irony or surprise. Also journalists prefer stories that are easy to 6th grader easy to understand such as Trump makes offhand Twitter comment about one judge gets far more coverage than his responsible and ngigantic regressive economy building tax-cut proposal because the latter would require a great deal of effort to explain and no other Republicans and only tax and spend agenda progressive Democrat Socialists object to Trump getting obstacles out of the way that make the US economy boom. This makes Trump's predicessor and the press who supported his every proposition - look bad or even pro-socialist/communist/radical Muslamist.

Publishers can't seem to catch up and get on the same page to ascertain a way to create a concrete business model based on incentive fueled subscriptions that will fund the business. Publishers and cable news can't seem to understand that - like magazines - increased circulation even when it sets aside price hikes - will enable them to make it up on advertisments that reach more readers and viewers.

There is an active trend toward consuming media on social platforms on phones.

Intelligent media is still convinced that it's a business when, in fact, it's more like the opera - the ability to appreciate what's happening displaces the need to understand the content word for word.

As for gentrification and HEALTH CARE:
LINK:

https://www.cdc.gov/HEALTHYPLACES/healthtopics/gentrification.htm

As far as READING ABOUT Trump, recommended is Brietbart.com and other CONSERVATIVE websites!

Almost daily, people discover another "fine mess" that Obama got them into so that he, as a wrecking ball POTUS, was not only a trfecta of grief and misery but an INFINITY-fecta of grief and misery!