Topic: I think I'm actually going to boycott mainstream televised news (Read 5649 times)

Same here.  I occasionally watch local television news to get the local weather report.  I'm always shocked at horrified at the levels of propaganda on local news.  It seems even more intense than on national news media.

Local news is an unending stream of stories about local government heros smacking da' meth menace, bringing home D.C. largess for some new local social program, or pimping pharmaceuticals and consumer electronic crap.

Some people leave this crap running in their homes how 24/7.  I recently attended a Christmas party at a TSA supervisor's house.  He had, I kid you not, six televisions *all running* in his house at once; kitchen, living room, bedroom, master bath, office, and outdoors on the porch!

The cacophony was maddening.  I turned off the television where we were sitting on the porch so I could better converse with other party-goers.  He came outside to put more food on the BBQ, saw the blank screen, became visibly annoyed, and turned it back on.  I mean, the guy had a look on his face like he'd spotted a turd floating in his hot tub.

@ OP

Ya I myself don't even have cable, all my news I get online and any shows I like I just queue them online and hook up an hdmi to my t.v.

The news is all incredibly biased poorly-reported crap, the shows are almost all poorly-written and try wayyyy too hard to appeal to as much of the population as they can, and they rarely ever show good movies anymore. As far as I'm concerned, I just don't see any reason to watch ANY of the broadcasted shit.

I find it hilarious that local news pretends law enforcement is making a dent in the drug trade and especially silk road.

I know it's a comedy show, but The Daily Show has to be the only lot I've ever trusted when it comes to this sort of thing and they're all perfectly honest about they're beliefs, plus it's fucking hilarious to watch them make fools out of politicians and reporters, it just shows off what a complete circus it all is.

I don't mind Russia Today in small doses, but let's be honest They are RUSSIA today, so of course they're going to take every chance they can to make America look bad, that said I have no problem with that, I've really gotten sickened by that country in particular lately.

The beeb buys some good documentaries occasionally. But it is relatively supportive of the wars in the Middle East, the war on terror and all this immoral stuff and it has some values that are not up for debate such as the monarchy.

If you want honest world news, RT is much better, or Euronews.
PressTV is a bit radical but they have a lot of very good points and definitely worth watching.

Only if what you were trying to quit was PBR.

Thanks, now I can add more sites to my addiction to my RSS news reader.  If I told you I was trying to quit drinking, you would put a hundred year old scotch in my glass and tell me I was drinking the wrong stuff, wouldn't you? 

Ah, your in the UK? You see the whole BBC, crap and good. The world service is so much better than network (abc, nbc, cbs) news that they are not really comparable. Fox, CNN and MSNBC should not even be considered "news".

I'm sure it may seem professional to you guys who are used to the crap like Fox News and MSNBC but you'll get tired of the stupid puns and blatant nationalist propaganda soon enough.

Ok, it is official government TV. But their distant prospective is often far more insightful than our native news. And it is far more professional than any of the three networks. Network news is pre-packaged stories produced by big pharma companies, stories about pop culture, guys standing in the rain to tell you about storms,  "experts" on the topic de jure who were life-coaches six months ago. It's all nonsense. Without the foreign media, I would not know what's happening in my country.

LOL

There are a few legitimate news sources left. Don't forget "The News Hour", "Frontline", and "BBC World service". They can all be found on TV and do contain actual news.

Replace that with http://www.newsblur.com

This way you have more control over what gets injected into your mind.

Some I consume...

Disinformation - http://feeds.feedburner.com/disinfo

Information Liberation - http://www.informationliberation.com/rss.xml

Libertarian News - http://feeds.feedburner.com/libertariannews

Strike-The-Root - http://strike-the-root.com/feed

The Daily Bell - http://www2.thedailybell.com/rss.xml

Washington's Blog - http://www.washingtonsblog.com/feed

thats the trend

lol I'm just boycotting it for my own benefit, that said, I bet it would solve a lot of the problems in the world if we just used the internet etc. for our information.

you need a way to hype and spread the boycott. what is it

You better cry! 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085636/North-Koreans-face-labour-camps-upset-death-Kim-Jong-il.html
 

I'll probably cry tears of love for Big Brother.

They will, it does wonders encouraging people to take their pills. When you wake up you wont have a care (or thought) in the world.

They better bring the cattle prods :-)

Thanks!  :-)

"Central command, we have a unit thinking on his own. Someone named Rudd-O. Shall I call the truck?" 

Great post!

I especially like the "What you see in observable reality" bit. (a) and (b) go hand in hand. This is why we have the mainstream news, to continuously convince (b) that they need (a).

My vice is going to news.google.com when I have nothing else to do for the next 30seconds to 2 minutes.  I am trying to give it up but it is hard.  It is like trying not to look at the car accident that you drive past.

...except everyone in your life who doesn't kill, rape or rob you, even when they could get away with it easily?

I get the feeling that this (rather common) counterargument -- aside from not really being an argument but rather an allegedly untested hypothesis according to their proponents -- stems from a very creationist / religious / Original Sin form of conceptualizing one's fellow man.

That is, the idea that without a government everyone turns into evil Motorcycling Mad Max in Mohawks, is really no different from the belief that roads will "instantly vanish" if "government disappears"

But then again, we've been telling religious people that for decades, and they still believe -- against all observable evidence -- that without the Bible, people will suddenly become evil.

Now, there's absolutely every reason to believe that a tiny minority of the populace will most definitely turn evil, because they already were evil and believe that committing evil doesn't matter, only getting caught does.  We call these people "psychopaths".  They're about like 5% of the people.  And it is a problem (for which theoretical and practical decentralized solutions exist).

Now, don't quote me on this, but even if we don't have a solution to the psychopath problem, I much prefer a system where a psychopath gets shot in the face while attempting to rape a little child, to a system where the same psychopath is worshipped by useful idiots and empowered to firebomb children, give syphilis to Negroes, or trigger nuclear bombs.  Democide, remember?


No, not really.  I don't think there are two opinions on each side here.  What is there, is an irrational belief about pervasive human malevolence rooted in Original Sin, being battled (and increasingly being proven wrong and conquered) by facts that demonstrate the ample majority of people are voluntaryists when left to their own devices, and only really resort to violence to defend themselves and their loved ones.

I mean, there's research proving this.  Even frigging soldiers won't fire into each other during war (a fact  that is described as a "serious problem" by the psychopaths who run these murderer gangs).  People, even strangers, even when they are children, help each other and have altruism.

I can show you videos of this shit.  The question really only is: will you believe your eyes, or will you reject it and believe what you were told about your Evil Cousin, Man?

lolz, I wonder if there's a study that shows a link between mainstream news and violent tendencies? It certainly seems to be very manipulative.

I've banned TV and Pub from my life as much as possible several years ago.. This was the best move I've never done    I feel a lot better, and I'm not a lesser human not knowing what TV tought is the actuality.. with the time passing by, learning a lot about anything, I came to a form of conclusion.. TV news are not centered on what really matters, they focus hard on stuff they think will bring audience, cause they have to sell pub, wich is  toxic for our mind.  Not being exposed to pub, made my life easier and simpler..  When de-intoxicated from the news/pub, we begin to have a much better view of the world, our live.

After few years, you will see that peoples around you exposed to those toxics are acting wierd on few levels, and have some strange value attached to things..

Thats a real nice move from you..

Lethn, you just begin to feel the benefit.. as the time goes, you will renforce your position and became much more against this brain washing machine named TV.

Happy for you

I don't want, and never wanted, to blame "governments".  They don't exist.  All there is, is people doing things.

I blame the belief in the virtue of a group who perpetrates organized aggression to parasitize everyone else.  People under the influence of this belief, whether members or victims of this group, are the ones who believe that governments exist.  Not me.

What you see in observable reality is nothing more than (a) a tiny minority of people telling you what to do and how much to pay so they will let you live unharmed (b) a gaggle of people who incorrectly believe that the first group are their saviors and protectors, and worship them as a result of this incorrect belief.

That is, to me, the essence of statism.  It is to recoil in horror when watching an aggressor murder another, then to watch the exact same scene with the aggressor in a blue costume, only to say "well, he had it coming".  It is to feel terrified about being robbed of half of what you have, but paying up every April 15th with an unease that is hard to explain away.  It is to talk shit about Halliburton while celebrating the paid murderers in green costumes.  It is to cry in awe as the President sheds tears for the death of 20 children, when he himself has ordered the firebombing of 2000.  It is that level of irrationallity.  That is statism.

The problem isn't "totalitarianism".  It never was, not in the slightest.  The problem really isn't "aggressive people using too much aggression".  The problem is the belief that a bunch of aggressive people are virtuous and protect you.  That very belief, that the aggressive people are authorized and righteous to use aggression, is precisely what enables the aggressive people to murder everyone else, with total impunity.

If you think for a second that you live in a human farm, where you're farmed for your labor, and suppressed if you become a problem for the farmers, then the distinction between "totalitarianism" and "democracy" becomes very easy to figure out: both are merely methods to organize the farm.

The belief that a human being is righteously authorized to murder, brutalize, or cage another human being, as punishment for peacefully resisting an order, is not a totalitarian belief -- it is a statist belief.  Democide is not caused by totalitarianism -- it is caused by statism.

All do to some degree. True, not equally, but all of them do to one degree or another.

lol now I've got to figure out what to do with all this free time maybe I'll finally start learning Japanese like I've been planning to for awhile now.

So the "statist" response to this (and really the point of that site) is that not all governments commit democide equally, but it is a function of how totalitarian the government is.


I mean you can't really blame the democratic/republican governments for the actions of the totalitarian ones. Really we need some estimate of how long it takes governments to either become totalitarian or fail due to whatever reason. Or perhaps those governments are totalitarian at the outset.

Even then the number of confounds will be huge, making any sort of real analysis (ie predictive) difficult. I think most westerner's agree that totalitarianism is bad. What we really want to know is whether or not there is a threshold that is crossed after which a state is very likely to become democidal. Maybe this is on that site somewhere.

...What he said.

Been there. A little misty. Prefer The Shivering Isles.

I cannot escape them No matter how I try They wait for me everywhere I cannot pass them by.

Driving down the street I see "Jesus Is Lord" And then immediately after I hear the word "FNORD!"

Innocuous sayings and parables And on the evening news I hear the word "FNORD!" And suddenly I'm confused

I sit alone in my room And I'm feeling rather bored I turn on the tube and guess what I hear the word "FNORD!"

"Don't see the fnords and they won't eat you" That's what I've heard the wisemen say But I can't get away from those beasties There's just no fucking way.

Fnord is toast without bread. Fnord is the source of all the zero bits in your computer.
Fnord is the echo of silence. Fnord is the parsley on the plate of life.
Fnord is the sales tax on happiness. Fnord is the donut hole.
Fnord is an annoying series of email messages. Fnord is the yin without yang.
Fnord is the color only blind people can see. Fnord is the Universe with decreasing entropy.

Good for you!
If you feel an overwhelming need for a "fix", then head over to RT.com, PressTV.ir or Euronews.com

English speaking news, free of ads, no commerical angle and a different side to the story if you live in a Western country.

Before you know it you'll actually start thinking for yourself and opening your eyes to what's really happening.

ON THIS DAY I GO TO SOVNGARDE!

If I can't see the what?  I think you accidentally a word there.

Just remember, if you don't see the Fnords! they can't hurt you.

For gauging the markets, I prefer clarkmoody.com :-D

Oh believe me I'm barely touching it now, I do need to read the finance news and stuff every now and then just to gauge the markets price movements though, that's unavoidable really but lol I've got much nicer websites for that now.

I seem to have gotten the figure wrong.  It's only 262 million corpses.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM

Yah, the whole fearmongering sockpuppetry is much less scary when in text form.  Hehe :-)  But, if I may suggest, just stop reading their bullshit entirely.  I mean, there's so many better things to do!

I was watching it originally to find out pretty much what the 'other' side was thinking, but now it's just nothing more than murder stories endlessly looping in order to scare the living daylights out of us. Realised I was being a bit of an idiot because I can just go to news articles in order to find that out and laugh at them instead of get angry.

That's an interesting perspective on it. What's the source/calculation?

I would suggest that governments failed more catastrophically at their stated purpose of protecting their citizenry, by murdering their own populace to the tune of 273 million corpses, just in the 20th century, excluding wars.

But to each its own.

You really were still watching the sockpuppet shows?

I haven't watched one of those since 9/11, and I already didn't before that (that day it was impossible not to watch because the boob tube disease was everywhere).

No human institution in all of history has more utterly failed at it's stated purpose than the american press of the 20th and 21st centuries.

I boycotted mainstream news and television years ago.

I only turn on TV to watch 20 weeks of NFL football, presidential debates and the NBA finals.  I spend my free time reading history and other various old texts, along with contemplating the thinking about issues we have faced and face today.

To NoAgenda add...

http://www.corbettreport.com

plus

http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com

and you've got a nice set of curated content that covers topical events.

An excellent source of current events information.

No Agenda
http://www.noagendashow.com/

Good for you.  Welcome to Recovery.

Turning of  "the nooz" is like quitting cigarettes or turning off a kitchen blender.

Peace.  Quiet.  Senses return.  The atmosphere in your home becomes more pleasant.  You can think more clearly.  Life seems less like a mad rush of work, eat, repeat.   Intrusion by people thousands of miles away who don't matter stops.

I replaced my television with a combination of HDMI cable, XBMC, utorrent, videodownload helper, and selected content from http://www.google.com/#q=documentary+films

There is actually an amazing amount of content you can download for free to chill with on the couch in the evening.

This $25 remote control USB dongle made it perfect...  http://flirc.tv

I am also sickened to see the "news" swarm all over the grieving.  Not to help, not to inform, but rather to keep you watching through the commercials. Add to that every politician with a tactical jacket falling over each other to get on TV and rescue us via legislation.
Uugh. It's the media tragedy that follows every real tragedy.  

Haven't used a TV since 2007

Haven't had a TV in about 10 years either.

+1 

I'll just add to the chorus of "Yes, that's a good idea."

I use my TV to watch DVDs. Maybe the occasional sci-fi show. That's pretty much it. Haven't watched the news at my own home in well over a decade. Don't miss it in the least.

As soon as dsl over 3 mbps hit my area I disconnected tvs in my house and hooked them to pcs. 2001 I think that was.

I don't have a TV since 3 Years. And haven't missed it one second.

haven't had a television in 8 years

I should have done it back then, it's fucking disgusting seriously.

I'm boycotting TV since 2002  

For your information, most written articles are relaying same news than the mainstream media.

If that's the right term for it anyway, I've just switched it off, I'm done, I never thought I could find something that could seriously upset me enough that I would just switch it all off and just listen to music or silence for awhile. While Newtown was a terrible tragedy, it wasn't the killing that did it for me even though that was bad, it was the way a bunch of absolute opportunistic cunts immediately descended on the whole situation. Using it as an excuse to call for whatever bullshit legislation they could come up with, the mainstream television also paraded it around like crazy even more than usual and I think that's when I finally snapped on it, there was a fucking massacre of children and all every one of them did was. Well I'm still searching for the word for it because it was just so disgusting.

So in short:

. I'm sick of politicians appearing after every disaster promising everything will be okay and only acting civil to their fellow human beings in those situations

. I'm tired of the vulture lobby groups who use every single horror story to push their agenda rather than find the real cause like a doctor/scientist would and fix the problems

. I'm fed up with the mainstream news on television taking advantage of all of these situations and parading it around when there are other issues they can talk about or report on, why is it that they can find information on murders in very local areas and never report on anything else?

So yeah, I'm going to ditch mainstream news in favour of written articles because then I don't have to listen to the news reporters being loud, obnoxious and insensitive about everything horrible in the world, something interesting has happened as well, I actually feel a hell of a lot calmer and more relaxed now, maybe you guys should try it and see what happens? Bet you'll feel a lot better about what's going on in the world, I think the only thing I'm going to do now is take to what Jon Stewart does and just laugh at the media for the way they do all this, he has the right idea.