Monday, February 6, 2012

H N & S: "Quiz"



It's said with some justification that knowledge is power. These days, there are dozens upon dozens of sources from which one might "re-arm" onself with news and information, the raw materials of knowledge. But ammunition is only as good as it is reliable. So whom do you trust for your "informational" reloads?

I'm gonna read you a list -0-admittedly incomplete and partial-0- in which you will hear the names of 20 various N&I sources. After you hear the name, if you recognize it, rate it on a scale of 0 to 10, for TRUSTWORTHINESS: zero being LEAST Trustworthy, TEN being most trustworthy.
I'll begin:
1) Al Jazeera Network
2) NPR/PBS
3) The Guardian/Independent
4) Huffington Post/Truthdig
5) RT/Alex Jones
6) Democracy Now!
7) ABC News
8) Salon/Slate
9) Facebook
10) YouTube
11) AFP
12) The NY Times
13) Time Magazine
14) Newsweek
15) Wall Street Journal
16) Reuters
17) The National Enquirer
18) NBC News
19) Washington Post
20) BBC News
Now, total the score:

The Highest number you could recorded is 200, the lowest is zero.

Here's how to analyze your score:
0-50: Acceptably skeptical
51-100: Charmingly naive
101-150: Alarmingly naive
151-250: Dangerously credulous
The lesson I wanna draw for you is this:

In the CorpoRat State, CorpoRat Media ARE the State Media: All of them are designed to spin propaganda, one way or another.

Folks who "trust" media are the besotted drones and drooling dullards who flock to Fox to watch for the flash of Blonde Bimbette panty as the Gretchens cross and uncross their legs, who titillate and tantalize whilst they ratify the morons' prejudices and pander to their fears.

NONE of them--not Al Jazeera, not NPR, not the NYTimes, certainly not RT, a vehicle of the Russian state propaganda agency which also brings us --is free of over-riding propaganda interests in "spin."

What you should do, of course, is read them ALL--or as many as possible--and compare the accounts, then judge for yourself the relative accuracy of any one...

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On an associated topic:

The Constitution offers no bar against the censorship of ideas, words or images by private interests on proprietary media.

Folks appear sometimes to forget this.

And when it happens, the First Amendment offers no relief.
The First Amendment only stipulates that the State may not exercise prior restraint upon speech in public (though there is the "Fire" exception, even to that)
Biot in any case, it doesn't apply at ALL to PRIVATE restrictions on speech.
That's why ABC could fire Howard Cosell, and ESPN could run off Hank Williams JR, too...
You're speech in a private forum is only as "protected" as the owner of the forum wants it to be.
As AJ Liebling said in the 50s, the press is free to those who own one.

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