Gee, Ya THINK?

[filkertom]

The "news" in this country is broken.

I guess we all know that, and have known it for a long time -- but more and more things which are considered newsworthy by one organization or another are making me bang my head against the wall with their banality. Last week it was the startling revelation that overfishing led to dwindling fish populations.

Today, it's that girls who are date raped get tested for STDs more frequently, and more frequently contract them.

It isn't just me, is it? And, if not, what's your stupidest "news" story of the week? Not a "News of the Weird" type thing -- something that someone considers important and possibly startling.

Comments

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

"Soft drinks linked to weight gain"

http://www.foodconsumer.org/777/8/Soft_drinks_linked_to_weight_gain.shtml

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

They coulda just frickin' asked me. :-7 I admit I was thinking a more major news outlet, but that is a thing of, ahem, beauty.

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

Well CBS did carry this story, but the funnier headline was with the smaller site.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/29/health/webmd/main712797.shtml

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

Working at a newspaper, I gotta say...

... yeah. *sigh* The paper I work for occasionally runs the same kind of thing, though I think we're not QUITE so bad. Like, for instance, the just did a story on how... gasp and shock... podcasts for TVshows are getting quite popular!

[blackpaladin.livejournal.com]

Granted, I had to dig pretty far down in the AP Top Stories newsfeed to find them, but they're still all on the Top Stories feed:

Dog Beats Most in Swim from Alcatraz
Bacall Rips Cruise's 'Vulgar' Behavior
Wandering Moose Takes to Mini-Golf Course

[dragonscholar.livejournal.com]

News is a commodity. Commodities are sold based on need and desire. Selling often requires you not upset the customer unless they want to be upset. Ergo news is now basically inane.

If you had a populace interested in the truth and investigation . . . they may change. I don't think that's a large enough majority - yet.

[devospice.livejournal.com]

It wasn't this week, but this past Spring we were under a flood watch here in New Jersey. The news had a special report on how areas with poor drainage would have the most problems with flooding.

I do a weekly News Of The Stupid feature on my podcast. Highlights from this week include a guy who called the cops to report his marijuana stolen. :)

->Later.....Spice

[aiela.livejournal.com]

*spits pop all over monitor*

Some people are really, really stupid.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Gawd. Reminds me of a Cops episode I happened to catch the other month. A woman flagged down a cop car to report that she wanted her $20 back from another woman who had not given her the crack cocaine she wanted to buy. The second woman denied that she sold crack, as she was a prostitute....

[devospice.livejournal.com]

I saw that one!

There was a similar one where a guy who was obviously stoned told the cop he hadn't touched a joint in 3 or 4 years. Then the camera man zooms in on the joint the guy had tucked behind his ear. :)

[netpositive.livejournal.com]

Obviously he hadn't touched the joint - the joint was just touching him!

[kengr]

Back in the early 70s a local dealer got arrested by an undercover cop. And *cheerfully* told him that the baggies were full of oregano.

The cops tested the stuff and he was telling the truth. So they charged him with *fraud*. :-)

[kayshapero]

Snerk...

[mouser.livejournal.com]

I log in throught Compuserve. They do a news page and a "That's interesting" window upon login.

It's... hard to read somedays.

Even google news ends up with some. From an hour ago:
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/109/109293.htm

Image-Conscious Teens Prone to Supplement Use
Teens Turn to Potentially Dangerous Supplements to Build Bigger Muscles


What a shock!

[faxpaladin.livejournal.com]

Different people consider different things to be news. The one study means the fishing industry has less of a leg to stand on if they argue that they're not overfishing. The other points to a secondary aspect of date rape people might not have considered -- something that makes it more difficult to not see date rape as a problem. The stories aren't startling; they certainly aren't Page 1A banner-headline material. But there are all those pages back of 1A...

And, you know, sometimes we do have these things called slow news days...

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

And, you know, sometimes we do have these things called slow news days...

Not in Bush's America, my friend. :)

And I'm not disagreeing with you -- my point is that the headlines, conclusions, etc., fall (to my mind) into the category of How Dumb Do You Think We Are That You Have To Tell Us This? Right up there with "One Plus One Equals Two -- Film At Eleven".

If they focused on the aspects you mentioned, the stories immediately have more worth and depth. But the chosen headlines, ostensibly intended to garner interest and make you want to find out more, left me with the impression that [a] the scientists and [b] the newspeople had nothing much important to do or say, so why should I bother?

[faxpaladin.livejournal.com]

Well, headlines, yeah. :)

"Big fish population down due to overfishing" would have gotten the news across better, but it's a passive construction, and a lot of headline writers are taught to avoid that. Problem is, the active construction makes it a general case rather than a specific case...

[kengr]

Well, they *do* have to. After all, just because "everyone knows" doesn't make it true.

Remember, one of Proxmire's favorite tricks was to pounce on this sort of research as a waste of money...

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

08/01/05 - WorldNow: South Georgian among latest 48th Brigade casualties
Sergeant First Class Victor Anderson of Americus and three others were killed around 11 Saturday night when a roadside bomb exploded near their Humvee.


08/01/05 - Xinhuanet: Gunmen kidnap 8 in southern Baghdad
Gunmen disguised themselves as police kidnapped eight people in Abu Dshir area in southern Baghdad early on Monday. The armed men, driving in four police vehicles, were masked and wearing bullet-proof vests when they stormed houses in the area.


08/01/05 - Reuters: One Iraqi Soldier Killed Near Kirkuk
One Iraqi soldier was killed and six injured when a roadside bomb struck near their patrol in Tuz Khurmatu, 60 km (40 miles) south of Kirkuk, a police source said.

08/01/05 - CENTCOM: FIVE TASK FORCE BAGHDAD SOLDIERS KILLED IN TWO ATTACKS (confirmed)
One Soldier was killed when a patrol struck an improvised explosive device around 1:40 p.m. July 30 in al-Dora south of Baghdad. Four more Soldiers were killed when their patrol southwest of Baghdad struck an improvised explosive device around 11 p.m.


08/01/05 - Reuters: Twenty bodies dumped in Baghdad after killings
Twenty bodies of people who had been shot or beheaded were discovered in southwest Baghdad on Monday, a police source said. The source said witnesses...they saw a truck dump the bodies near a school in the Om al-Ma'alif area in southwest Baghdad.

08/01/05 - AFP: Insurgency in Fallujah on increase
Insurgent attacks in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are expected to rise over the next few months, a US commander said but vowed that rebels will not be allowed to regain control of their former bastion.

08/01/05 - Reuters: Gunmen kill Iraqi security brigadier
Gunmen killed a brigadier in the Iraqi security forces on Monday, opening fire on his car as he crossed a Baghdad bridge, an interior ministry source said.

Yeah. Slow news day.

[faxpaladin.livejournal.com]

I didn't say today was...

And besides -- as I said, you've got all those pages behind 1A. War news certainly needs to be reported -- and, yeah, more reported than it generally is currently -- but you can't fill all those pages with it...

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

Man, I do not need to hear apologists for the US mainstream media. Notice how many of those stories above were featured or even covered by US news sources? One. (Two if you count the direct Pentagon press release, yay for letting the Pentagon do all the reporting on its own wars.) American corporate news is strictly for entertainment at best, and mass mindshare manipulation at its worst. The Fourth Estate is no more.

The Koran-flushing "retraction" said everything you needed to know about the state of independent journalism here. Persistent, vegetative, and with no feasible chance of recovery.

Good thing there's still an internet and an "other 95% of the world's population" so I can still get news if I look for it. But here? It's just shark attack, celebrity scandal, and White Woman In Trouble of the Week stories.

And just for the record, today's war news stories? The ones I listed above? Taken together, they absolutely DO constitute a slow news day in Iraq. Almost every single day in July was worse than that. I'd say that place has a hell of a lot better chance of developing into an all out civil war than a peaceful democracy.

But is that our water cooler topic? No. CNN's big headline as I write this is, "Palmeiro suspended for drug violation." Isn't that an earthshaker? Discuss.

[kender42.livejournal.com]

This is what I thought of when I heard about this:

[jss]

Bwahahaha.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

/me rolls on floor laughing

[lapislaz.livejournal.com]

Ah! We should live so long and get so lucky!

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Couldn't be worse. Wouldn't be better, but couldn't be worse.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Love it!

[arensb.livejournal.com]

I'm going to play devil's advocate for a bit. The News Of The Duh story that leapt to mind is "Wining and dining best way to woo women".

LONDON (Reuters) - Forget expensive presents or costly jewelry. Wining and dining is the best way for men to woo women, scientists said on Tuesday.

Which seems pretty obvious, or so I gather from people who, unlike me, have social skills.

What makes this story interesting, however, is that the researchers modeled it as a game theory problem, i.e., it's about the math of dating, which IMHO is pretty cool.

There are plenty of "well, duh!" stories out there, such as "Soft drinks linked to weight gain", which partiallyclips mentioned above. Yeah, it's common sense. Unfortunately, common sense is often wrong (after all, common sense is what tells you that there are solids and that the sun goes around the earth). It's just as important for scientists to check the "obvious" stuff as it is the non-obvious (and, of course, to publish their results once the obvious turns out to be true).

[janet-coburn.livejournal.com]

My favorite was a morning newscast a number of years ago, when gasoline had hit a then-outrageous price. The news people sent someone to a gas pump to pump ten gallons and tell consumers what it would cost. For all those early morning viewers incapable of multiplying by 10 or moving a decimal point over.

[swanofgrey.livejournal.com]

Since my fiancee works as a producer for a local TV station, I could come up with a list that would make your mind boggle. Thankfully HE tries to keep the important stuff aired, but occasionally he'll throw in a 'No fucking DUH!" story merely for his own amusement.

The same cannot be said for the weekend producer.

[mrteapot.livejournal.com]

A few years ago, I read a news story about how 50% of Americans are above average weight. Not overweight, above the average American weight. They seemed to think that this was a problem that needed solving.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this is factual or not; it was presented in a book of fiction (RAH's To Sail Beyond The Sunset), but Heinlein's been known to salt his "Future History" books with the occasional historical fact:

"I recall one candidate's promise that I heard during the presidential campaign of
1976, a campaign promise that seems to me to illustrate how American rationality
has skidded. 'We shall drive ever forward along this line until all our citizens have
above-average incomes!' Nobody laughed."

*wry smile*

\begin{pedantry}
Of course, 50% of Americans are above the _median_ weight, by definition. But if it's not a symmetric distribution, it could well be that less (or more) than 50% of the population is above the _mean_ weight.
\end{pedantry}

I'm just sayin'. :)

Extra Pedantic

[baronet.livejournal.com]

/begin{pedantry}
Actually, 50% are *at* or above the median by definition. If you have 5 data points, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, then the median is 2, 80% of the samples are at or above the median, and only 20% are strictly above it.
/end{pedantry}
Admittedly, the difference between > and >= comes up more when you are dealing with discrete data points and small sets, rather than continuous data and large sets, but you did say you were being pedantic.

Re: Extra Pedantic

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

You're right, of course. Serves me right for trying to take a middle road to pedantry. ;)

Re: Extra Pedantic

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Oh, and by the way, LaTeX \begin and \end use backslashes ("\") rather than forward slashes ("/"). While we're being pedantic and all. :)

Re: Extra Pedantic

[baronet.livejournal.com]

For Sooth! You're right. I guess it's what I get for switching back and forth between operating systems too often (and being mildly dyslexic).

[janet-coburn.livejournal.com]

"Roberts Documents Reveal a Conservative"

BTW, why no outraged blog in over a month? There have been plenty of things to be outraged about.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Oh hell yeah. But, between computer problems, cons, and Life In General, I really haven't had the time or inclination. When it needs to be done, it'll be done. But I'm not even a semi-pro blogger, and I can't spend the day trying to be one. :)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Newest damn example:

New Mac Mouse Has Multiple Buttons (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050802/ap_on_hi_te/apple_s_new_mouse)

Is this "news"?

[janet-coburn.livejournal.com]

It is to us Mac users. My mouse right now has NO buttons--you click the whole mouse. I get totally messed up when I have to use Dan's HP and deal with the freakin' right-click, left-click thing.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Ummm, darling, you should've talked with Anne years ago. The left-click, right-click thing has been covered by every mouse manufacturer except Apple for a long time now. :)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

And the point is not that it's not a good thing -- it's that it's an ad. It's not NEWS. It's exactly like "Proctor & Gamble Announces Nacho Cheese Extreme Flavor Pringles". Are "journalists" really so bored, useless, or unclear on the concept that they think they are doing something important with this kind of story?

[batyatoon]

From the archives of the Brunching Shuttlecocks:

The Twelve Least Surprising AP Headlines.

Next, join us at eleven for our investigative report: Are Cookies Delicious? The answer ... may surprise you. *wink*

[batyatoon]

-- ack, sorry about that first link: it should be this.