Is the mainstream media ultimately damaging society?

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Just had a quick look at the BBC website to see their comedy shows.

The site was promoting...

"Your Black and British Moments" , "Do We Really Need Men" and "Should We Abandon Western Culture?".

If you're too thick to see the BBC bias, you're part of the problem.

Anyway, the cream of BBC funded comedy is an Irish cross dresser in one show and a Pakistani bloke in an ethnic dress in the other. The only other "comedy" is a bunch of geriatric Sweaties.

Just to keep that majority happy, they're re-running a 40 year old show of middle Englanders fighting Jerry on the home front.
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[Jewlio Rides Again LLB]

So you're basing the BBC as the 'majority' of the media now???
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[smegballs]

[Jewlio Rides Again LLB]

[Rogerborg]

[M.C]

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[Lord Percy]

[B5234FT]

I think it goes deeper than media, although of course perhaps I'm wrong, but it bothers me more that a market for this stuff exists than that it exists.

It's all a bit chicken and egg. Does the media report in the manner which it does in order to sell to the population, or has the media over many years crafted a population it can sell to?

Over my lifetime I've noted:

1) We've gone from aspiring to education to treating it as a chore. It's uncool to study at school and this sets the population up for a lifetime of taking the easy way out with reading, research etc

2) We've gone from fame being a celebration of success to simply fame for fames sake. The population as a whole worships people who have yet to achieve anything worthwhile

3) The population has become more conformal, everyone wants to agree with someone else. Ideally a well liked celebrity

It's disturbing that wars in the past were worsened by a lack of media, by the fact the population could be informed through a single, governement controlled propoganda outlet. Modern wars will be worsened by excessive media, because instead of using it to research matters and form their own viewpoint, people simply find something superficial to agree with and then run with it.

[Rogerborg]

[B5234FT]

Godwin's Law

[chris-red]

The problem with the 'media' is everything is about turning a profit. It's about readers and more so now 'Hits'.

That means any article will be written with a slant to get you to read it regardless of how it is distorting the facts.

The Social media age has increased this exponentially, before the papers relied on their reputations more. Now every worthless toss site is hunting for the next viral story and will spin it any way to get it.
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[Val]

[Lord Percy]

It's interesting actually. It's as if news outlets have now rapidly joined the race to the bottom, and it's kind of a symptom, or result, of the fact that everything is now more readily available.

Consider that not long ago there were only a handful of TV channels, so the TV services made good money without having to work quite so hard. This meant they could focus on good quality output. Fast-forward to today and you have hundreds of channels so it's more of a battle to keep ratings up. Instead of having time and money to invest in good material, every channel fires out utter tripe aimed at low level short term enjoyment (reality TV, soaps, talent shows, schadenfreude stuff, instead of high quality documentaries and productions) just to keep the cash coming.

People say the same of the film industry. "Every new film is shit these days". This is precisely because there are so many film makers now, so the only way to stay afloat is to produce generic, un-enriching trash. There's even a term for it - Tent-pole movies.

And now news organisations have gone the same way, churning out whatever will turn heads the fastest so they can ensure a continued profit stream, so it's all appeals to emotion groupthink, hysteria and rage. Never anything to actually inform in a clear and unbiased way.

Interesting because people say that the advancement of society, through technology, should make things better, but this abundance of opportunity to 'create' and 'output' has just led to a need to cater to the dumbest aspects of the human psyche in order to succeed and maintain a profit stream.

So the problem is that fact - the need to maintain a profit - and so it loops back round to the worrying dominance of money in all areas of society and how it's dragging us down rather than being of maximum benefit.

Would things be better if arts, media and cultural output weren't constrained by the need to stay financially afloat. How to fix the problem?

Universal basic income raising its head again

[B5234FT]

[Jewlio Rides Again LLB]

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[arry]

[Rogerborg]

[Polarbear]

[Jewlio Rides Again LLB]

[Ribenapigeon]

The job of the media is to create stories. Why'd you think journos call what they do "stories"? the news media engages in what I call the novelisation of reality. Nice cozy little kiddies stories to keep everyone feeling like they have some handle on whats going on around them.

[Lord Percy]

Something interesting I've just seen:

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