Limiting internet

[TnRiver46]

2 hours ago, N Florida Mike said:

They should separate news from spin and opinion.

All the spin started when news became 24 hours a day stations.

It used to be local news at 6 , national at 6:30, and local news at 11. That was it, except for 60 minutes which was more on the opinion side I thought.

When news stations started being 24 hours is when they had to come up with stuff to fill in the time. That’s when fact became opinion and opinion became fact.

Im sure it’s much deeper than that but that’s where it seemed to start...

I still maintain that they were spinning stories in the late 1700s which ever way they needed to go.  Yellow journalism is an old adversary from just before 1900 also 

[Glenn]

Ok guys, let's be careful here, as this is starting to head down a slippery slope.  I'm sure we can cite many outlets that have a way of positioning current events under a certain light, but there's also many that do not, or at least try not to.  Often it's how it's perceived through our own lenses as well.

 

So let's pivot away from the "media bias" topic please.

[TOXIC]

I pivoted away from media bias years ago. ?. Now if I want the true facts on anything I go directly to the source.  The internet is a wonderful thing.  I can go pull up most any speech, study or anything else and read/listen for myself.  

[.ghoti.]

21 hours ago, throttleplate said:

stopped facebook going on 2 months now, same with twitter. Stopped watching world news and local news and dont read the newspaper or online paper but do read up online my sports teams but not to the degree i did in the past. If i see a political snippet on a sports site i turn my eyes away from it and forget about it in a few seconds.

 

I get all my tv shows and movies from torrents avoiding all commercials. When i listen to the radio in the car and the top of the hr news comes on i turn radio off for a few minutes. I have no idea what is going on in politics and dont want to know, maybe in a few months a year? i will take a look but right now and since november 15 2020 i am cold turkey from the BS and my mood is soooooo much better and i am a happier person.

Glad you posted this. Saved me time posting the same thing. I “divorced” the world when retired at the end 2015.

i have had four heart attacks. Will be 69 in a couple of weeks. I know what is going to kill me, just don’t know when.

 I can lived oblivious to the world and be happy. Or I could be in the know, and be enraged.

Twas an easy choice.

[RoLo]

 

After reading everyone's contribution, you guys covered a treacherous topic

with admirable tolerance and advice.

 

                                     

 

I would only add however, that media bias is not a recent phenomenon.

Their bottom-line always benefitted more from negative news than good news. 

 

Roger

[MN Fisher]

40 minutes ago, RoLo said:

I would only add however, that media bias is not a recent phenomenon,

that their bottom-line always benefitted more from negative news than from good news

Yep - all depends on who holds the purse-strings.

[schplurg]

Some critical thinking skills and a lot of skepticism will keep your head straight.

[The Bassman]

Cheesy B movies and 50's-60's reruns on some of my Dish Network channels make for a nice escape. We used to manage just fine before all of this connectivity available to us. That said, these forums are always an encouragement to me that normal people still exist.

[NYWayfarer]

I am anti-social media.

 

I do like to know what is going on in the world though. I watch a lot of different news media channels some of which are in direct opposition to one another.

 

Getting multiple views of the same events I can see that the truth always seems to be somewhere in the middle. 

 

 

[J Francho]

I love Instagram.  Follow who you want, seems like less ads, if you get bored of seeing a certain feed, mute it.  You have much more control over what's in your feed than FB or Twitter.

[throttleplate]

I went to get a back massage last week and the lady started talking politics and i stopped her immediatly and told her i dont watch the news, read the paper, listen, talk or care about politics.

She says so you dont want to know all the bad things going on today and i said no, better off not knowing.

[roadwarrior]

20 hours ago, The Bassman said:

...these forums are always an encouragement to me that normal people still exist.

 

[Stasher1]

I actually just joined FB a couple months ago because that's the only way the local kayak fishing group communicates, but I just can't get into it. I was hoping to do some social networking and maybe find 2-3 people to fish with, but I just don't like it.

 

Guess I'll just fish by myself, like I've been doing for years.

 

As far as the news media goes, I spend several hours a day reading news from a wide variety of sources. They all have their own slant, but the truth lies where the stories overlap. ?

[jimmyjoe]

22 hours ago, The Bassman said:

That said, these forums are always an encouragement to me that normal people still exist.

 

   Fooled you, didn't we?   ???      jj

[TnRiver46]

2 hours ago, Stasher1 said:

I actually just joined FB a couple months ago because that's the only way the local kayak fishing group communicates, but I just can't get into it. I was hoping to do some social networking and maybe find 2-3 people to fish with, but I just don't like it.

 

Guess I'll just fish by myself, like I've been doing for years.

 

As far as the news media goes, I spend several hours a day reading news from a wide variety of sources. They all have their own slant, but the truth lies where the stories overlap. ?

I honestly wanted to fish some kayak tournaments until I heard they had to run through Facebook haha. No thanks! 

[J Francho]

Interesting, how would that even work?  I've used TourneyX, and it works great for this.

[TnRiver46]

4 minutes ago, J Francho said:

Interesting, how would that even work?  I've used TourneyX, and it works great for this.

Heck if I know, you’re familiar with my IT knowledge base haha. I’d have to be on the low tech trail 

[J Francho]

Good tech doesn't require any special knowledge.

[roadwarrior]

12 hours ago, J Francho said:

Good tech doesn't require any special knowledge.

That's right.

 

-roadwarrior a.k.a Bill Gates

[Columbia Craw]

Interesting perspectives here. Maybe I’ll start my own social media site, TwoFacedBook.   I do like that term wackadoo.   Sounds like a Flippin bait.

[JohnFromLisbon]

Even before it got this bad I started deleting all of my social media. The only account I have is a Facebook account because I need it for work (creating test users for mobile games, etc.), but I don't have any friends on there and I don't follow any pages. I just don't trust Facebook as a platform and don't use any of their products. I talk to my friends on a Signal group chat (we recently killed off our WhatsApp accounts) and I call my folks from time to time.

 

I tried going back to Twitter recently because I missed some of the bass fishing folks on there, and interacting with the guys on Zona Live for example. That account lasted 6 hours before I deactivated it.

 

YouTube is trickier to quit, but I'll try to "curate" my suggestions to keep it acceptable.

 

As for actual news, I'll read a couple of local (Portuguese) newspapers, and I subscribe to two US ones, too.