One thing that grinds my gears every election season is the lack of effort from the members of the national journalist class. Basically most of them turn into stenographers – just repeating what political people tell them. Robin Roberts, a morning show host who thinks she is a journalist, knows what her job should be but misses the point of what it is suppose to do.
Summer repeats of TV shows are a nice time to come across things like an interview with Good Morning America host Robin Roberts on the Ellen DeGeneres show from back in February. She is asked about the 2016 Presidential election:
Islamophobic Anti-Refugee Meme Debunked
A conservative friend of mine posted an Islamophobic anti-refugee Meme on Facebook the other day. The text on the image claims that the Prophet Muhammad, the Jesus of Islam, was taken in by the Jewish city of Medina and within five years he had driven out, killed, or enslaved all the Jews. The accusation sounded so ridiculous I had to try and verify it. Of course the ‘facts’ in the meme were very wrong.
A copy of the meme is to the right of this article (and a full size version is at the end of this post) but if you can’t see the image below is the full quote used:
Responding To Ignorance Part 2
A recent post mentioned a letter to the editor, I read in my local paper, about the US Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling made this past summer. The letter was so wrong and fact free it made me respond with a letter of my own. To my surprise (not really) the author of the original letter responded to me. Again his letter is free of any facts.
Sometimes You Have To Respond To Ignorance
Letters to the Editor of a local newspaper was one of our first ‘comment sections’ where regular readers could share their various viewpoints tempered with moderation by the newspaper staff. Today, even with prescreening, the letter section sometimes resembles the fact free fantasizes we find in places like FOX ‘news’, news websites and Facebook. Some friends think the ignorant comments should be ignored but I think one should respond to ignorance in some cases like I did to a recent letter to the editor about the US Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling.
A gentleman had the following letter published in my local paper this past week:
FOX “News” is all about Argumentum ad populum
I have to remind my friends who are avid watchers of the FOX “News” channel that just because they have the highest ratings of the big 3 opinion cable channels doesn’t mean what they present is true. FOX peddles in what is called Argumentum ad populum. Facts and the truth isn’t subject to popular choice. FOX could have 300 million viewers a night and their race baiting still would not be factual.
The fact is the total audience that watches FOX, CNN, and MSNBC only number about 1 to 3% of the entire TV watching population. For example last Thursday FOX “News” was available to 98 million homes but only had about 2.4 million actually watching.