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Bill Dog's Journal: If I were rich like Ted Turner... 19

Journal by Bill Dog

...I'd start my own news network. I yearn for there being available push-model (i.e. TV and radio) news of a drastically different what and how. So that I can stand it again.

I'll start with FNC. The one good thing about that network is that they cover the suprisingly large number of things that all the other networks will short-shrift or outright black out. Unless you like to have a tremendously skewed or giant blind spot in your perception of what's going on around you... It's sad that the acquisition of the other half of balance is single-source.

FNC's failings:

A) The hear both sides and then decide thing. It was an admirable experiment, but it's predicated on a crucial, yet only implicit assumption, and one that is its fatal flaw; that both sides will tell you the truth about their side, enabling you to make an educated choice. Leftists can and do exhibit occasional moments of candor about Leftism in private, one-on-one conversations, but as the amount of broadcast inherent in the situation goes up, the hesitancy towards doing so escalates almost instantaneously to infinity. (And this makes sense, if you understand that side.)

B) Their Left-wing bias. Not in slant within a piece, not in selection of pieces to run as news, but by voluntarily co-habitating in the box that is the boundaries the Left defines for us on how we think about things. Readily pulled examples include "income disparity" and "the Republican war on women". Both are transparently cheap wedge vehicles that are defined as not a problem or not existing by the Right and an untainted Center. Why would I want to hear more news delivered in the terms of Leftist manufactured thought fences, cornering and corralling my mind.

My news network would be characterized by the following pillars of approach:

1) No quotes. For example, a defense attorney saying "My client is innocent and we are going to defend against this scurrilous lawsuit vigorously." Of course they're going to say that. That's not news. That doesn't make me more informed. Same for Obama saying he wants to get the economy going again, or the Lindsey Graham verbal posturing Right-ward before his re-election time.

Besides, they're too often taken out of context, something the Right is also egregiously guilty of I'm sad to say. If a journalist is bent on twisting things, they can easily do it without the ellipses. I'm already at the mercy of the reporter, so I'd much rather they just tell me in their own words, distilling what happened to the key points.

2) No human interest stories/interviews with the neighbors/et al. Somewhat related to the first. I'm sorry that some kids are dying of cancer, but an expose on how one got to live their Batman dream for a day is not worthy of my time. Neither is "he was a quiet boy and seemed nice enough" about a murderer, or "she loved life and gave it her all every day" about a murderee.

3) The Left's side of the argument given only by Right-wingers. That is, damn knowledgeable, and willing to be fair in the interests of spelling out the whole issue to the listeners, kind of Right-wingers. Which might be hard to find and recruit enough of, in that proper interpretation of the Left seems only an occasional fancy of the moment to most on the Right.

Differing conclusions about the Left-wing side or sides would even be fine, and particularly welcome, but only if backed up by sound reasoning about demonstrable Left-wing traits. No hyperbole, just what can be supported. Food for thought.

A difficulty in this would be in how to deal with newer viewers. Those already much further along in their understanding and seeing would find a lot of boring redundancy in things taken as givens, but that are foundational and new and necessary for any kind of comprehension of the rest of the material, for such as those who inadvertently hit the wrong channel on a Daily Show ad break.

I.e. my fledgling network would face several formidable, known challenges. Summarized as not looking like any other news network that presumably anyone had even known before.

4) A late-breaking one: No sports. What can match it in the ratio of the time spent reporting on it over its immaterialness. Many daily newsish type things, like horoscopes for example, are just as inconsequential, but get nowhere near the coverage. Similarly for entertainment news.

Strictly only things of edifying qualities. I think my network tagline would be "News That Improves". Come ready to parse and analyze, or go somewhere else to any number of sources to pass idle time vegetating.

p.s. I now read at the threshold of 1. Any would-be AC's and trolls: do the math. I think I'll be much happier this way, knowing that I've eliminated at least some of the wasting of my time.

p.p.s. I've been away from this place for about nine months.


If I were rich like Ted Turner...

Comments Filter:
  • What is this, old home week?
  • Blaze TV shows promise. Granted, I've only seen about 10 minutes total of it because I don't watch much television.
    • by Bill Dog (726542)

      Yes, his show on FNC for that year or two was deeper and more educational than their primetime opinion stuff, and more my style. Unfortunately a basically Tea Party network can probably never go mainstream. OTOH I think just a no-fluff and all truths laid bare network ought to have some indeterminately wider level of appeal.

  • is that both the right and the left are liberals. That is, they want liberty for themselves and the things they think are important, without bothering to ask why things were the way they were in the first place.

    Time to change my tag line again.

    • by Bill Dog (726542)

      Well in the *very* first place, we had near infinite liberty; only one prohibition (which we then were stupid enough to be talked into violating).

      I guess neocons, but of faith, are who you would be supporting. People like Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee, who could be seen as willing to use the power of the state to try to enforce morality on progressively more ambitious scales. Too bad for you that the by far most authoritarian category of people are the most godless.

      • Yes. In many ways.

        To both. The most authoritarian are the most godless- because authority is an even surer way to harm one's neighbor profitably than liberty.

        Before the fall, liberty existed - that's an interesting thought. Because I would have said, before the fall, liberty did NOT exist, we had to act within our natures. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is liberty- the ability to know good from evil, and thus, to redefine good and evil.

        • It is the tree of opinion, not knowledge. If man knew good from evil there would be no debate over it.

          • It is precisely because man is rebelling from good, that there is debate about it.

            • Man is not rebelling against anything. He is only proving that he continues to strictly conform to his animal nature, even when profiting from culturally defined 'deviance'.

        • by Bill Dog (726542)

          But knowledge is not the same as liberty. Knowledge just gave us more to do, good and bad, with our liberty.

          • It is, as always, the bad that concerns me, and makes me wonder if liberty is worth it.

            • by Bill Dog (726542)

              Well when you get to Heaven, pick that bone and find out. I'd love to hear the full reasoning for Free Will.

              When I get there, I'm going to ask Him if He really needed to make gravity so strong. Just something I've long wondered about the necessity of.

          • Man does not know good and bad. He can only opine. That what your religions are. They are opinions and do not necessarily reflect knowledge.

      • This is why I self identify more as a small 'l' libertarian as opposed to just 'conservative', and not at all with the GOP "establishment" -- I'm all in with the Tea Party.

        There's just more and more and more that I just don't care about from a Government perspective, if it doesn't infringe on someone else's right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, I just can't be bothered to care (from a governmental perspective) anymore.

        Weed? As long as you're not driving under the influence -- legalize it.
        • by Bill Dog (726542)

          As a libertarian-leading Conservative I'm not so much against the legalization of drugs as I am against the destigmatization of them that would follow. I'd generally be fine with it if only the current batch of losers doing them, like that fat, over-rated actor, did them afterwards. But I'm afraid of the message it would send.

          Dissipating beneficial negative associations and taboos, like those involving teenage pregnancy and homosexual relations, is a major way in which the Devil, through the Left, corrode

          • The flip side to that argument is look how stigmatized smoking tobacco is, and it is still (for the moment) legal. If anything, since it's arguably WORSE for you to smoke weed than tobacco (unfiltered, more toxic chemicals) maybe people will wake up and understand that smoking weed is horrible for you.

            Still, I don't want to throw people in jail for smoking weed.

            But you do have a terrific point on the stigmatization.
            • If anything, since it's arguably WORSE for you to smoke weed than tobacco (unfiltered, more toxic chemicals)...

              Yeah! And next thing you know, your daughter will start hanging out with jazz musicians!

              You really do suffer from that reefer madness. It would be wise for you to stick to propaganda that can't be disproved.

              • Smoke, any kind, is horribly bad for your lungs. Marijuana is often smoked unfiltered, unlike tobacco, and more quantities of particulates end up entering the smoker's lungs.

                This is simply a biological fact. Smoke (any kind) is bad for your lungs.

                Still... I'm not willing to use government force to throw people in jail for smoking weed. Everyone I know that smokes it is content to sit there bored... just because I have no interest in smoking weed, and would not want my kids to waste their lives on it ei

Memory fault -- brain fried