Interesting post on the evolution of news creation. I had thought the future was well written press releases from the actors themselves. But it appears something much less transparent is emerging:
The news media is dead broke. Print advertising is washed up and all the digital advertising that was supposed to replace lost revenue from print ads and subscribers has been swallowed up by Facebook and Google. But the good news is that people will still pay for stories, and it’s an awful lot easier to bill one customer than invoicing the 1,500 readers of your blog. The top customers for these stories are political operations.
There is no accurate accounting of how many of the stories you read in the news are the fruit of opposition research, because no journalist wants to admit how many of their top “sources” are just information packagers—which is why the blinding success of Fusion GPS is the least-covered media story in America right now.
Includes interesting history of Fusion GPS. It’s getting harder to know where the story is really coming from.RTWT
Richard Fernandez, as usual, has an interesting view of the situation.
Each side is increasingly drifting toward “different truths” in Bernstein’s phrase, and American politics is bifurcating under separate banners. As with marital divorces, much of the fuel for political estrangement is, the lack of money. Government has long lived beyond its means. “Health care is devouring the budget. … federal health spending has jumped to 5.5 percent of GDP today, on its way to a projected 9.3 percent thirty years from now.” Now the money is running out. State funding for higher education dropped in 2016, with Illinois leading the collapse. Pensions are at risk. “According to a 2015 study from the National Association of State Retirement Administrators (NASRA), public pension funds are around $1 trillion in the red,” writes Forbes. “They’re facing two major problems: a severe rise in the old-age dependency ratio and dwindling investment returns.”
It may be a fight for the spoils, all over again. Maybe that’s why kids like “Hunger Games” and other dystopian fantasies like “Game of Thrones.”
They sense something is coming and it won’t be pleasant.
“From whence” is redundant.
I’m not seeing a link to the story the quote is pulled from so I searched it. This is what I turned up:
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/241381/news-of-the-news
‘ “From whence” is redundant.’
I’d prefer ‘It’s getting harder to know whence cometh the story.’
I like that.
‘Maybe that’s why kids like “Hunger Games” and other dystopian fantasies like “Game of Thrones.”’
I like GoT a lot. I seldom watch TV and avoided it till a couple of years ago. I was bored one night and downloaded the current episode, I dunno maybe 5/2 or something like that. I was impressed. A medieval, slightly fantasy, show with a lot of reality in it.
I watched the first 5 seasons, ‘binge watching’ it’s called, and have been hooked ever since. It’s fun, if you have the time. Binge watching tens of hours of coherent, movie like content, is a new possibility, and I can recommend it, for good content that you enjoy.
With all due respect for Richard Hernandez this isn’t about the lack of money, it is about the size, power and scope of the state. Funding comes from present or future taxes (or financial collapse). For the dollars government spends (in all the areas they should not be trying to control in its ham fisted way), it reduces private options and the power of individuals and voluntary organizations to act. When the state assumes a role in an activity, it takes way voluntary choice options and substitutes its regulation and actions.
The crisis is not about money or even funding sources, it is a struggle between those who believe individual choice and voluntary association is superior way to organize human life versus those who believe that government coercion and assumption of the provision of much more human activity beyond the minimalist provisions contained in our constitution is required to achieve their view of social justice.
Perhaps (not likely) the young will come to see that centralized power leads to a society of lawless power in the hands of the most ruthless few and misery of the rest by viewing things like Game of Thrones or Hunger Games. I’m not convinced it is anything more than circuses for them. You have to think critically in order to get the point.
Apparently most of them can’t and many of those that can, see nothing wrong with seeking a share of the coercive power. They have joined the game and even know how to use the appropriate social justice rhetoric. After all if you have the power, your freedom is much less restricted so no issue. Power corrupts and more power corrupts geometrically. The moral imperatives of personal peace (leave ME alone) and MY affluence (the rewards of power or productivity) are not sufficient to restrain the abuse of power. Especially if you have no particularly developed productive skills, only social skills that might enable you to accumulate political and social power.
Death6