Wednesday, November 26, 2014

WTF Journalism . Tabloids, do you pick them up in the supermarket.

Yahoo news has hastened it's free fall to the bottom with their tabloid approach to journalism. People , and I use my self as an example don't really wish to have to censor every article that we read or fact check them just to see if some of the information provided within them are indeed real. Once upon a time, a person could read an article and be reasonably assured that what the person who wrote the article said was true and that they had some skin in the game and when they affixed their name to it , it meant something. Not any more. Sadly , there are a great number of people who believe in reading just the headlines of any story, and whatever it tells them in two sentences is the Gods honest truth . Facts , there is no place for having any facts when your whole story has to be said in forty characters or less. Fake stories and who is supposed to regulate them? Do you get you news from the rack at the grocery store. Big Foot lives - My camera jammed so I don't have his picture. The Loch ness Monster sank my boat- story inside I'm raising my ex-wife's alien love child. This type of journalism is becoming the fare from many of the sites that grace the pages of Yahoo News as of late. I find my self going to Google more and more looking to find stories that I can read with an open mind and let the author tell the story without having to chase down all of what was said within. I put this story away yesterday before finishing it , and today I no longer have the types of sites offering the stories that I had been telling about. This leads to another thing, I was writing about Yahoo on a Google site and some how my information got to yahoo without me ever even posting this story , Coincidence? OK. 11-26-10:34 decided to run story anyway after at first deciding not to on 11-20

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

After

Here we are a week past the 2014 mid-term elections, many Americans voted but sadly many more did not. Many of the voting Americans got who they voted for, elected to the office that they were seeking. They have earned the full right to speak out if and when their elected officials don't deliver on what they promised during the campaign. The non-voting Americans don't have that right but will speak out irregardless, acting as though they have no say or don't count as Americans. Did you see the part where I wrote the word count? in order to be counted you have to participate in something besides your favorite reality show. Being self absorbed is not a crime, it may well not be one of the most desirable traits that humans can posses but it is far from being one of the worst. Sometime during the next two years many of the non-voting Americans will go online to one or more discussion blogs that are available for the average person to vent their anger on. They undoubtedly will discuss term limits and blame the system for their own inadequacies. Many Americans do feel disenfranchised and rightfully so. There are many Americans who feel that going to the polls is just a waste of their time as nothing will ever change, and they are right with that attitude. For the others many feel that those running for the position don't represent them and won't change anything about their lives for the better. They just don't understand the plight of those of us living down here, how can they identify with what we're feeling day in and day out. The worst part of this story is that they may be right. Corporations are now perceived to be running the American Government because they are people too. They give massive donations to the campaigns of many of the office seekers and they do expect for those donations to bear fruit. This is not new, the fourteenth amendment gave corporations the same status as individuals for certain things but that is a different story. Inclusion, the political parties need to reach out to all members of the community get them to become involved in the political process. Sadly this will never happen , as it serves them well to limit the number of potential adversaries when it comes to enacting legislation that benefits only a small sector of the American electorate. No answers but many questions. Just give it a try next time and go vote. Change begins with you.