An Observation on the News
January 23, 2008 by Anne Wayman
Filed under Jobs
I heard something on the news this morning about movement in the writer’s strike, but I was looking up jobs or making coffee or something and didn’t hear the whole clip. Once the jobs were finished, the newsletter sent and the job entry made, I used Google News to try to catch up. What I got was more confusion. Here are the headlines at the moment:
LA story: $1.5 billion lost due to the strike – MSNBC I’d label this one almost a fear piece about the economic impact of the strike, because of the way it’s framed. The subhead is ‘People are scared and angry — and some will be losing their houses soon’ which, while it may be true, is only one side of the story. Hopes of movement in writers’ strike Guardian Unlimited – Sounds good, but read on. Directors pact could pave the way for writers National Post – I don’t know the National Post, but this also sounds optimistic. Directors undercut writers’ strike Socialist Worker Online – okay, it’s not a main-stream paper, but it’s pro-labor and so am I.
So what’s true here? How can I tell? How can you tell? Even if we work through all 834 news articles I don’t know that I’d know anything more clearly. Like you, I pick the sources that resonate most closely with what I already believe!
Of course, I make an effort to at least consider both sides of most issues, and I suspect you do to. But how many other people do that? How many take time to read or listen or watch news and views that represents a different way of thinking?
Write well and often,
Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.
I think that most people who don’t look up both sides are people who really don’t care. They’d rather learn about it from a one-sentence blurb on the nightly news. For those people, I don’t think it’s so bad that they get their information that way, although I may have too much hope that the nightly news will stay unbiased or do any research.
Trisha, used to be the nightly news had some credibility, but since media deregulation news has become infotainment and answers to corporations not truth or even an attempt at it… at least that’s how I see it… hence my question since, as writers, we have some influence