In The News good things?

I hate the news.. it is either bad, terrible things, or stupid sensationalism.
Have you heard anything good on the news lately?

Locally a man received a double hand transplant...
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/health/19372516/detail.html

Thats good...( I think)

Have you heard any good news lately?

I am ROFL. When I first read your post, I thought it said "double HEAD transplant" and I thought you'd lost your mind.

Good news in Missouri! A three year old boy went missing on Monday, and was actually found safe 3 days later!
Missing Boy Found

This however does not indicate that my mind is not lost....

missing boy... how terrible am I?
First thought, thank god they found him~
Second thought.. what do you mean diaper? He's three!

Oh well, once one hits half a century curmudgeonliness is allowed and perhaps expected. Certainly earned...

Definitely earned! Now I can admit that I thought the same thing about the diaper!

:)

Glad to hear that...I feel much better :)

Does it ever occur to you that these days our "news" is more like the The National Enquirer than actual news?

Oh, absolutely! I stopped my newspaper subscription, because I was starting to feel manipulated by what THEY considered news. I'm at a point where I feel like if something truly important is going on in the world, someone will tell me about it, and then I can look it up on my own. I don't know which is to blame--the celebrity-seekers who do ridiculous things to get in the news, or the crazy "newspapers" who pay outrageous amounts of money to these idiots.

Oh. Excuse me. For a minute there, I thought I was on the Pet Peeves thread...

you mean we aren't? lol!

>6 tloeffler: Here's some good news from the front page of today's Sun -- this story tells how the founder of the Under Armour sports apparel company is trying to restore one of Maryland's most beautiful and historic horse farms.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/horseracing/bal-sp.sagamore10may10,0,7311657....

And as a newspaper editor, I can tell you that we battle each day to get a front page that goes beyond crime, war and recession. We don't always succeed, but it's always part of our discussion.

yay! Dave nice to have you join in.. and thanks for the good news. That sounds like a wonderful thing to do!

No offense meant to any editors (you)personally... I think it is just the nature of the beast these days..

Good or bad, I would like just to have some news on the front page. What they've done to the front page of the Chicago Tribune is criminal. You shouldn't have to go six pages into the newspaper to find something worth reading.

I stopped our newspaper years ago!

For one thing, it used to be an afternoon paper. They switched it to morning.
By the time the incident is reported, it is no longer news...

Sensationalism and entertainment are not news.. I don't care about silly things like What Angelina wore when or what length sleeves Michelle Obama wears..lol

Then there is FOX ( ugh) and CNN where they speculate and interview other reporters... when did that start???

Our paper has decided to make each story it reports a lesson of some kind. It spends more column space telling you what they think we should do about what happened then what actually happened. Example: in one article they gave about 40 words (around 9 lines) to the drowning death of a young man. They then spent the next 250 words (approxamently 40 lines) on why there should be a boating license. The fact that the young man was jumping off a pier was not included in the story. I no longer subscribe to my local family owned paper.

>8 ReadStreetDave: I'm with Kath, Dave. I rant, but I'm sure that what's printed is what far too many people want to read. I blame our silly society more than anything. Glad you're here--I'd like nothing better than to be proven wrong!

>12 LA12Hernandez: I see that a lot too. Someone does something stupid so let's make a law.

"
>12 LA12Hernandez: I see that a lot too. Someone does something stupid so let's make a law.
flag abuse "

OMG isn't that insane???

It took me a minute, but now I'm ROFL.

I'm so glad to be among your friends. You SO make me giggle!

Congratulations to this group's founder, Megwaiteclayton, for her mention in today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/books/22target.html?_r=1&ref=arts

She and her book are mentioned in the 8th graph and she is quoted toward the end of the story about Target's success in the bookselling biz.

well done meg!

Go Meg!

Good new for over-50 types like us (especially those who like motor sports). Two of the fastest four qualifiers for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Indianapolis this weekend are over the age of 50. Mark Martin -- who turned 50 in January -- is on the pole (fastest qualifier), and Bill Elliot, age 53, qualified 4th. So much for the idea of age slowing people down! :-D

NASCAR -

1. Go fast
2. Turn left
3. Repeat until you crash.

Actually, it's a lot more complicated than that, Jim.

For one thing, they do some road courses (turn left AND right, and even uphill and down :-).

Then, there's car set-up (which of a zillion different adjustment options to implement to make the car suit the track, and to keep up with track conditions -- many adjusted before the race, but others done on the fly in a 13 or 14 second pit stop). There's also pit strategy (when to pit, how many tires to change, and fuel mileage strategy), and the proficiency of the pit crew (who are athletes in their own right) to make those quick pit stops.

And going fast in those cars -- heavy, edgy, always half ready to wreck -- for 400 or 500 miles is not as easy as it looks. (They don't drive like street cars.) It requires the strength of a linebacker, the reflexes and hand-eye coordination of a video game champion, and the stamina of a long-distance runner -- not to mention amazing depth-perception (running mere inches apart at almost 200 mph) and peripheral vision. Not to mention a certain level of courage.

And the goal is to get to the checkered flag first WITHOUT crashing . . .

That may be the drivers' goal, but the guys in the stands only go to see the wrecks, don't they?

Only taking the Mickey, you watch what you find exciting and I'll watch Test Cricket which would probably bore you to tears ("You play one bat and ball game for five days and you still might not get a result?!?!")

I agree with jim on NASCAR....a bunch of cars going round and round and never getting anywhere....but I have very good friends who never miss a race and we like each other anyway.

> 22, 23 To each, his/her own. :)

When you think of it, most sports are sort of pointless, in a way . . . trying to hit a ball someone throws at you and running around a diamond . . . trying to muscle your way through crowd of oversized linemen (who are trying to tackle you and squash you into the turf) in order to get to a goal line -- so the other team will then try to do the whole drill in reverse . . . sliding a puck around ice toward a net . . . hitting a ball over a net so someone can hit it back . . . etc.

But I like most sports, anyway. And some of my best friends don't know a ball from a strike, or a field goal from a safety, or a stock car from a Formula 1 car. That's OK.

here is my mom's philosophy of sports..."If they'd all get their own ball, they wouldn't have to fight over it." :)

Obviously Mom doesn't get sports, and I'm pretty sure I got that gene too. But my son played football all thru jr hi/hi school and is an ESPN addict. Go figure.

#25 count me in with you and mom..
All the rest of my family , 3 sons, daughter and husband love sports..
Thank the goddess for books

Here I go again with the marching band thing...
I love to tease my nephew, who is a sports fanatic. When I tell him marching band is a sport, he says no, there's no ball. So I say there's no ball in track. Well, there's running. So I say there's running in marching band, but you have to do it in sync with 100+ others, and carry an instrument. We go around and around for hours till he gets disgusted and goes back to his video games.

I used to say, "If there's not a number on your back, it's not a sport". Then somebody pointed out competitive ballroom dancing to me. Bang went that definition.

.

13 days? In Melbourne recently a dog was found after nine years.. It was 1,200 miles from where it was lost. That's long walkies!

Edited to change link to a local paper.

But are 'feel good' stories news? Or are they just gooey pap to make us feel good, or sad, or glad it wasn't our sorry self in the story? They are all manipulative. Good news isn't about a dog finding its way home after his moronic owner dumped him in the wilderness (okay, it IS good news - for the dog). Good news is improved health care, less crime, more people refusing to waste their money on the junk they try to sell us....

I want intelligent, informed reporting, not drivel. I'm intelligent, and so are you. We deserve better.

I want news too.. not drivel..
but surely not all good news is drivel?

>Not all of it, of course, but a lot of what they try to pass off as "good news" is just pap to make us "feel good" (the Ophrah-ization of news) - not something substantial and interesting that might actually make a difference to us or even make us THINK....
After all, these short segments of "good news" are cheap and easy to produce and may take 2 or 3 minutes of reporting time - and often are purchased from other services - a real in-depth look at something that might improve our lives in a meaningful way...well, that's lacking.
What gets me is the local stories (TV) where something a tiny bit dire might be happening and the reporter warns us not to "panic". Hey, I don't need to be told by a whippersnapper not to panic - surely most of us are intelligent and sane enough not to panic over a small problem or inconvenience? An example, on yesterday's news they were talking about the driving-testers being on strike and told the public not to panic....geez, if that makes someone panic, hate to think what nuclear war might do!

What ever happened to providing the facts of a story? When did they start offering opinions and speculation instead? I don't bother to watch the news any more. A bunch of reporters hired because they look good on camera telling me what they think a handful of facts mean. Then asking each other for their opinions.

Then asking the audience "Did you see this accident/incident/whatever? Send us your photos. If you see any other news, tell us about it." Get the hell out of your office and do some research/investigation and do your own damn job!

My thoughts, exactly, LA12Hernandez/34.

And how do they decide WHICH handful of those 'facts' to report?

A relative who works with the Salvation Army told me about a flooding event in their area. They (the Salvation Army) immediately went to the scene, and had been working with the displaced for hours. Then the Red Cross shows up with local news teams in tow. The evening news was all about what the Red Cross did for the flood victims. Not about the flood, the causes, the different groups who showed up to help, but about the Red Cross!

Just a winter or so ago, there was a report on our local news of two people having died in a self-storage unit. They reported that someone saw a car parked outside the unit, which never left. That when authorities were called, they found a car inside the unit which had been left idling, and which caused the deaths of two persons. What they didn't report was that the two people inside were a married man and his lover conducting their affair in a running car parked inside the storage unit in the dead of winter. They asphixiated before dressing.

Knowing about just a couple of little snippets like that from two different news markets - it makes me wonder in what ways every piece of 'news' I see is shaded.

Yes, this sounds very manipulative on the part of the Red Cross and a slap on the wrist to that news channel for not reporting an unbiased story.

IMHO, I think it is to their credit that they did not report on the private lives of the dead people. Does the public really need to know?
There is way too much of this stuff on the news already. Those folks had families that don't need this info. blasted all over the community - and they're dead - too late for public punishment anyway.

I worked for time on the administrative side of a public relations firm and have never looked at the news the same since.

Important points to remember when dealing with or evaluating the media:

Reporters are fallible. And they may not be as smart as you are.

News anchors are often only news readers. Someone else wrote what they're reading.

Media outlets are always under deadlines. There's an old scriptwriter joke, "Do you want it good or do you want it Tuesday?" With the news, make that in an hour, or maybe in minutes.

On the same note, hurried and understaffed news outlets take what drops into their laps. Press releases may be read or republished verbatim; the same goes for "video news releases" which are sent out with voice-over scripts for the local anchor to read. This is especially true for business or entertainment news. When the Red Cross showed up with a pre-packaged story, it was a gift.

Media lives and dies on audience. News outlets are not a public service; they are vehicles for advertising. If they don't get enough advertising, people lose their jobs. It's a big motivator to pander to that which draws the biggest audience (which equals revenue).

Forget about news on the weekends. There is no staff. Nothing will get more than cursory coverage until Monday (c.f. the slow mainstream coverage of the Iranian election demonstrations; it wasn't a media conspiracy, it was a weekend). That's why a lot of bad political news gets released late on a Friday afternoon.

Yes, every scrap of news you see is shaded in some way. The best thing you can do is patronize more than one media outlet -- which is getting harder as media conglomerates swallow up small markets whole.

Agreed, dihiba/37. Those details did not need to be reported. My point was just this - that it points to the fact that there must be a lot unreported/shaded on every story they run.

PhaedraB/38: How interesting to hear your take. Thank you for sharing that!

OMG #34 exactly!!!!!!!

I'm not sure if any of you have read The Black Swan, but Taleb stated he doesn't listen/read any news.

If the news is really important he says it will find him. As I recall he feels almost all of it is noise and the commentator's speculation is just a waste of time.

He pays attention to things of proven significant value (and one of them is books.) I believe he said after cutting out the news for a period of time his thinking became clearer and he had much more time in his life.

Might be an interesting experiment...B-)

Steve, I did that when my son was in Kuwait.

Significant things did not find me, despite having the internet.
If one is determined to avoid something it can be done.

>42 mckait: Kathleen, I guess the news would have to be real significant in order for you to be aware of it. How long were you in a "news free" way?

I don't watch television anymore and get my news from the web (once a day) in order to make sure I haven't missed anything of earth shattering importance. Instead, I spend my time reading books and watching movies that I choose to see rather than watching what the networks are paid to show us. I feel more content and peaceful living this way even though some people think I'm "out of it".

I don't watch the news, and I don't read the paper. Not to make any kind of a statement, but I have just found better things to do with my time, and I agree with the above that news is one thing, but the commentary is just beyone my patience. If I see an interesting headline when I log into my email account, I may read it, but for the most part, I find that I'm not really missing anything of any consequence to me. That sounds selfish, but there's nothing I can do about most of it. Because I don't watch or listen to or read the news, I can't really say what I have or haven't missed, so it's hard to measure the impact. I can carry on a decent conversation, and people tend to tell me things they think I ought to know about.