Wednesday, January 4, 2012

The News, the real NEWS and how to get it

It has always been difficult to get "the news."
If we were living a thousand years ago, it would be the same.
Story then, had to travel by man on horseback or camel, if it were from a distance, perhaps pigeon if nearby.
Now, our story comes from ourselves, in real time.
Our modern technocracy affords us the luxuries of quantity and speed, but our ability to determine the substance or worth of any news has not really increased.
This is because a polished turd is still a turd.
Our news, if not genuine, is not news at all.
And our news is not genuine, most of the time.

Avid readers of mine know, as does anyone with an appreciation of the peril and promise of Philosophy, that language itself is a slippery slope. The semantic deception of dialectical theses aside, even when we allow ourselves the common sliding scale of understanding, the News is blatantly subjective. So how are we to acheive any real understanding from any real knowledge in a world awash in opinion? By carefully sampling from as many sources as possible and searching out the golden mean.

Here's how I do it:

On TV, I watch whatever channel I want, knowing that any particular channel could have numerous intentionalities, as could any individual or group holding influence over the channel, plus the personalities of producers, anchors, reporters, etc. I use CBCnews and RT CBC is pretty clean, RT is heavily subjective, but they report on stories that the mainstream doesn't, plus theirs is a heavy "northern European" influence. Obviously, it's worth keeping an open mind. (Decide, if you must.)

So I also watch CNN but usually only when I need a "deeper American" coverage than the CBC provides. I never watch FOX because, although it is sometimes funny, keeping an open mind does not include wasting my time. 

But, with the exception of Canadian news, I don't get my "world news" from the TV. I get it all from the net. Here's how I do it:
Above Top Secret  This is the world's foremost conspiracy discussion forum. It's chock full of nutbars. Seriously, I've been a member for a few years now, I know. However, despite having to wade through a bunch of stories about UFOs and Alien Agendas, ATS consistently breaks 90% of my stories to me. This is because ATS members strive to be "the one who breaks it." At abovetopsecret.com, it is required that the breaking news forum provide sources for their articles. These sources, of course, require another evaluation. They vary from the usual alternative sources: RT, the guardian, sky, wired.com, huffington post, etc. to the mainstream. (Any newspaper you'd care to mention.)
-On the ATS main page there is a button that says RECENT POSTS. These are your headlines. Scan through them, right click any that interest you open in a new tab. Then read your newspaper, or skip it.

If there's a story breaking, twitter usually gets jammed up with humans posting it play by play. (Excluding blackouts, for various reasons.) But people often tweet links that lead you to other things. This can be helpful, as can knowing people in various places in the world.

Who should you listen to? Everyone.
Who should you believe? No one.
Try to determine the intentionality of the parties involved in giving you the message, then do the same for the subject(s) of the message.
How do you do that?
You read my book. It's free.

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