American Politics is a game with no refs?

[Boris Johnson]

I'm agreeing with you capt. paranoid. Besides notice the absence of pictures of our lord and savior.


Now, shall we try and make a descent puplit thread?

In response to your O.P and the argument from history i've just made, would you agree, or disagree that some sort of reformation of the U.S media may be the best way to establish some sort of 'referee' in the U.S political system? As i've tried to make the case for, what actually makes the press no longer fit for this purpose, is the fact they have to respond to demand, and in no people or nation anywhere has there been large scale or at least predominant demand for the objective reporting of facts. Thouse few places where you have organisations in the western world that do a half descent job, as in effect they don't have to actually 'give the people what they want' but instead 'stuff they might actually need to know' are in some format quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation or 'Quango's'. A concept I understand is not exactly easily packagable as 'american'.

Or what would be better, a non-press based NGO? Some sort of non-partisan goverment agency? What?

Or maybe even just improving PBS's funding might help? As I understand it there so close to broke half the time they can barely do this. Or maybe prehaps improvin the avaiblity of C-SPAN?

[Daktoria]

The press is loaded with bohemian bourgeois leftism. Even broadcast morning and Sunday news shows are flat out leftist. It takes a keen eye, but you pick up on it once you see the underlying trends in how they admire celebrities and brainwash audiences into taking silly stuff seriously. When you listen to what reporters actually say, it has a very eerie doublespeak tone to it. They can be interpreted as appealing to naive vanity at the same time that they're describing how to exploit other for being naively vain. There's no contribution to cultural sophistication. Criticism is looked down upon for being judgmental, and people don't like to discuss complex issues since they can be undermined by "stupid is cool" pragmatism.

After all, TV appeals to short-term attention spans. Harold Innis talked about this transition from newspapers to radio, and Chris Hedges talked about this transition from newspapers to television in terms of print versus image culture.

If you think free press lends itself towards unbiased perspective, you really don't seem to be paying attention.

[OGPhilly]

I think you're on point for the most part. The 24 Hour Cable News Network is a big force in American political media, which wouldn't be such a horrible thing except for that there are 3 of them competing for ratings, and the two that are competing with any level of success are doing so by tailoring their content for partisans on one side or the other.

I would enjoy a better funded PBS, but like I mentioned in my OP, we have a problem that whatever you say, someone claims you're being partisan against them. You can't be a referee if you can't gain a consensus that you're making fair calls, and PBS isn't immune to this problem.

I think Cspan is widely available, but no one watches it.


I don't have any ideas for a solution here, and for a large part I don't think there is one as long as you have a sizeable number of people who won't accept that sometimes they're in the wrong and sometimes their opposition gets something right.

[Boris Johnson]

[OGPhilly]

It could be worth a shot, but American politics has become so whiny with both sides crying foul at every turn, so I think the fundamental problem would still be unsolved. I think a lot of conservatives in this country already consider PBS to be left wing propaganda under the theory that anyone who gets money from the government must be a soshulist.

[Boris Johnson]

[Dennis]