News in Today's World

[HinesDaMan]

I got the idea for this thread after reading Mick's post in the Person Below You Game...

Mick brought up the point that nowadays all we hear about in the news are deaths and tradgedies. This is something that I have noticed, and something that greatly worries me. I don't know how prevalent this issue is in other countries, but in America it saddens me to see that sad stories are reported because that is what people will read the most and are most interested.

For example:

A good friend of mine got a 36 on the ACT (American College Test for you foreigners), which is an entrance exam for colleges and universities. A 36 is the highest you can get and is also very rare and impressive. However, rather than put this interesting, uncommon, and HAPPY story on the front page it was moved to the second to last section of the newspaper, and the front page was filled with tragedy. This to me is sick and wrong.

How do you all feel?

[Mick]

I totally agree with you on that Hines, as I said in the games thread, I am disappointed with the amount of negative news stories with death and destruction. Sure they may be current events in the world but do they have to dominate our news?

I'm wondering if any news group has ever considered doing a newspaper or TV news show that keeps the gory details to a minimum, just covering the basic facts which will allow for other more interesting stories which are more enjoyable to watch.

Surely this would be a popular alternative to the news we get today as it is all the same these days so we dont get much choice. You are right Hines they should give higher priority to things like great achievements by people.

And while on the subject of misguided news, the story of Kylie Minogue is big news here in Australia. Some papers even had special 5 PAGE stories on her, it was incredible how over the top it went. Sure it's bad news but she's got the money to get the best treatment possible so she's not doing it as tough as many women are who have to wait for their treatment.
The best headline I saw said something like "32 women found out they had breast cancer today, Kylie was one of them". I thought that was a good way of saying it.

I heard a funny thing on the news, a small group of protestors (about 15 of them), wearing balaclavas turned up at Kylie's house and started throwing eggs at the news crews camped outside. They should respect her privacy and leave her alone, there's a word for what some journalists do, it's called stalking.

[HinesDaMan]

I agree on that Mick...I'll admit that I was once vastly interested in Journalism, but as I got older and wiser and I realized all the pain spread by Journalism, I decided my talents would be better utilized elsewhere

[Freakums]

hmm. . .
News has to sell, just like apples, just like video games.
People have to make their living!
And let's face it: Peopoel do incredible thigns all the time. Their lives go on. Diasters happen all the tiume too, but you ahev afew people knocked out of the human race.
The only way to hear abiout good news on the news, is to live somewhereb where there is too little news to not report the achievements of people.
I don;t lkike it, but hey,. we're a minority market, what can we do to change the news? not much.
Names sell papers, so do diasters. Who wants to hear that whatsisface won an award fr outstanding acheievement in his school for ghetting 100% in all his courses in Uni for thirty years? surprisingly little peopel. Pretty much only whasisface and his friends and family.
but take that same guy and put him in a car crash that kills him and evrybody knows his name, even if the story isd pushed inot the back oagers or even out of the newspaper.
what a sad group psychology we have . . . .

[Skeletor]

what gets me is that these journalists (referring to above posts about Stalking etc) actually think people are interested in knowing every small detail..sure i feel sorry for Kylie i'm sure we all do given her celebrity status and she seems to be such a nice person. But i care as much as i would to anyone who have the same problems and worse. i sympathise.

Also why do they feel the need to tell us all about Posh and Becks? who gives a damn?? honestly i really get awestruck the way journalists carry on these days..i'd hate to be in the 'limelight' having every move watched like i was some terrorist being watched by the fbi..

Having said that news is news i guess, problem is that there is far to many bad things happening in the world and not enough good. with regards to the post about an exam result, imo thats not news either, no offence but i couldn't care one little bit. However, i'm sure it makes news int he right places, ie in the schools where it counts.

I disagree with you Freakums however, he'd had to have been drink driving or similar to make headlines, besides i'm sure these people would get a mention about their academic achievements if someone actually informed the news media..

[Mick]

Yeah you're right Freakums about disaster selling newspapers. It is true, there is some funny human quirk that we have when we see a disaster, we know it's awful but can't look away, we want to see more, to know more about it. Maybe it might be an instinctive thing to be interested in how others died so we can learn from that and avoid the same fate, who knows?

Oh dear...poor Skeletor .. you have to hear all the crap about Posh and Becks:D. Well I do feel sorry for you in a way, we don't hear much about them over here in Aus. We hear about our local ones, I think flavour of the month is Bec Cartright and Leyton Hewitt(or Leyton F-witt as I call him). (Can I say that Ark? Delete it if you like:D, I just can't stand him, bring back a real Aussie, bring back Pat Rafter I say:) )
Hewitt didn't waste any time getting her pregnant so we get to hear all the boring details, the trouble is, as long as people keep buying this garbage the journo's will keep writing it.

[Freakums]

skelotor, I didn;t say it would make headlines. I siad everybody would know his name!
exdept in very large cities, where the accidents are too numerous.

hmmm . . . didn;t the beatles comment about this?
in a song called "A day in my life" I believe. The lyrics mention a guy killed in a crash, and how everybody was staring.
nothing new, at least.
perhpas we should be thankful diasters sell newspapers: it means that they are unusual. hmmm . . . .

[yarnellcg17]

I live in a town with a population of just under 5000..so mostly what I see on the front page of a news paper in my town is very upbeat..it either reads of either a student that has acheived something.. to what state route will be closed due to repair..or what the President is going to be doing etc..

[JsWoman]

Our local paper talks about all the local news, good and bad, and, more often than not, has good news on the front page. I'm not saying that the bigger newspapers and journalistic items don't do that, but here, at least, it doesn't make the tragedies the front page and most of the rest of it.

[yarnellcg17]

Right now..what I see this time of the year is Soap Box Derby..Local Speedway results..Some School Levy's that won't pass for next school year..
New businesses that will be opening up soon..stuff like that is what I like seeing and is more imformative to me..

[JsWoman]

I think that would be more informative to everyone who lives in a smaller town.. Heck, even for some of the larger towns, too. I know that I don't like the papers very much, and the ones that have the front page tragedies I like even less. Oh, well.

[Freakums]

well, yeah, a lot of times good news shows up, but not as often ina lot of places.
and also, lately "studies suggest" that newspaperrs that empathize good things aresellign better and better. Interesting. WOnder if I could fiund a reasonably believeable website woth info on this . .. .
On another interrestign note: The front page headline today on The Georgeian (local newspaper)
"Port Au Port school celebrating twenty years of NOT closing today!!"
Question: is that good or bad news? :D

[JsWoman]

Depends on if the school is a good one or not, teaching what needs to be taught in a way that the students can get out of it what they need to learn. If the answer is "yes" then it's a pretty good thought that it's a good thing, if it's a "no" than I feel sorry for the Georgians that need to put up with it for at least another year. :D

[yarnellcg17]

Here is something that can be considered possibly humorous..


Putin pockets Pats owner’s Super Bowl ring
It's not clear if diamond-encrusted bauble was given as gift

BOSTON - Russian President Vladimir Putin walked off with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s diamond-encrusted 2005 Super Bowl ring, but was it a generous gift or a very expensive international misunderstanding?

Following a meeting of American business executives and Putin at Konstantinovsky Palace near St. Petersburg on Saturday, Kraft showed the ring to Putin — who tried it on, put it in his pocket and left, said Russian news reports.

It isn’t clear yet if Kraft, whose business
interests also include paper and packaging companies and venture capital investments, intended that Putin keep the ring.
Patriots spokesman Stacey James said Wednesday that Kraft was traveling and he hadn’t talked to him in four or five days, despite e-mails and calls. “He’s still overseas, I can’t even tell you where. ... He’s not due back until next week.”

“It’s an incredible story. I just haven’t been able to talk to Robert Kraft to confirm the story,” James told The Associated Press.

However, a Kremlin official who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of compromising his position said the ring was a present. “Such a present was made,” the official said.

He said Putin had given the ring to the Kremlin library where other foreign gifts are kept.

James said the ring’s worth was “substantially more” than $15,000, as the value had been reported. He refused to be specific, but noted that the ring has 124 diamonds.
Kraft handed out Super Bowl rings to players and coaches at his home two weeks ago.

[Arkacia]

I think this all boils down to money. The news services are a business and lets face it, sex sells, carnage sells, disasters sell, celebrities sell, horror and death sell. Nice positive stories about people no-one has ever heard of don't sell. The sellers realised a long time ago that people on the whole are more interested in the "bad" side of humanity than the "good".

[yarnellcg17]

Yes..it's that way all the time... especially when it comes to disasters that occur annually..
If the media is bored..and they cannot raise the almighty dollar..they will go overkill with a subject..
Example of that would be with Airline Crashes..

[Arkacia]

Not only that but milking stories for all they are worth. 2 weeks after the London bombings, we were still being treated to "Australians who survived, hear their stories :rolleyes:. It seemed most of those interviewed were never in any real danger and the Australian news services were just pushing them to add an "Aussie" flavour to another nations horror day. All to sell papers or advertising space.

[yarnellcg17]

:eek: Once again here in the US the price of a gallon
of gas has hit another new high @ $2.71 p/gal
8 miles north of me.. and that was from $2.38 p/gal
Here in my town it went to $2.59 p/gal.. from $2.38 p/gal:rolleyes:
Very crazy jump at the pump..

[yarnellcg17]

Updated: 9:22 p.m. ET Sept. 27, 2005
FORT HOOD, Texas - Lynndie England, the U.S. soldier pictured holding a leash to a naked Iraqi inmate at Abu Ghraib prison in a scandal that prompted global outrage, was sentenced on Tuesday to three years in prison and given a dishonorable discharge.
In sentencing testimony just hours before, England, who had faced a maximum of nine years behind bars, said she was sorry for her actions but said she remained an American patriot.

For more on that:

http://ori.msnbc.msn.com/id/9360407/

[JsWoman]

I mean, I understand doing what you need to to get prisoners to talk, but stripping them naked, putting leashes on them, and dressing them up in women's underwear, then taking pictures of all of the above? That doesn't make you a patriot in my mind, that makes you a bully, because those men didn't have a way to retaliate at that point, regardless of what they had done before they were caught.

I know I'm an American, and was in the Army, but stuff like that just makes me cringe. Sorry if that seems disloyal, but I'm definately not the first to have thought this, and won't be the last.

[yarnellcg17]

No Js, doesn't make you disloyal at all by cringing for acts such as what she did and whomever else was involved with her.

Just as you and I both do know, this is what we learned in Basic Training classes and why it's placement does exist.

She violated the UCMJ ( Uniform Code of Military Justice ) as well as violating International Law by violating what the Geneva Convention of 1949 adopted.


Kind of makes me wonder how she ever got thru Basic without ever really learning it. She really needed to have been monitored more for a possible Section 8..

Although she should have received the maximum sentence..

I'd think a felony conviction along with a courts martial, 3 yrs of Federal Prison, then an overall booting out along with a dishonorable discharge and what other misfortunes that may follow her after..are going to do more then sitting a max sentence of 10 yrs.

[tinmanwcf]

well i think they can go over board, But then again some of these people treated like that, ARE the very people who would kill you in a min, Or Blow up the world trade center buildings, And most of you would be the first to cry about it,so sometimes things are done for good reason, And dont ever think a terrorist would hasitate to kill you or your whole family!!