A Current

The US media has seemingly set its news stories into a constant cycle of reporting on the civil war in Libya, the budget crisis, Charlie Sheen, and even a bunch of Christians proclaiming the end of the world is near; what I would like to focus on is journalistic integrity.
Journalistic integrity, as I see it, is the duty of every professional journalist to report a story objectively and without inserting their own bias; if there must be an opinion in a story, then there also must be a valid counter-opinion to balance the substance of the story. This definition immediately negates the Sean Hannitys and the Glenn Becks of the world, as they have been known to present arguments with both no basis in fact or logic.
Journalism and journalism media in general has been regarded as the fourth branch of the government, in that journalism media is supposed to provide another check on the government by making it accountable to the populace. Ideally, all (or most) people would read or hear the news, make a valid judgment and vote/contact their representatives based on that judgment in order to better participate in the democratic process.
Everyone and their mother knows that this is far from the truth. Unfortunately, news media is a product owned by corporations (with the exception of public news such as NPR), and is made to be sold. If a story, such as Charlie Sheen's antics, is selling, you focus more on Charlie Sheen then, say, the most conservative members of congress desiring to cut large percentages of planned parenthood and education from the budget. Thus, viewership/readership goes up, and due to that, increased revenue from advertisers desiring to display their product to the average consumer.
Regardless of this desire to increase revenue, journalists should still look to present stories in, as Fox News purports to do, a fair and balanced manner. Unfortunately, there is no Hippocratic oath of journalism for me to call upon when demanding that all journalists remain loyal to the distribution of truth rather than truth as they see it. There is only the integrity of the field and the tradition of journalists such as Edward R. Murrow to guide every prodigal journalist along the journey; unfortunately, this does not count for much anymore. For example, Dan Rather, one of the more respected journalists today, did not report on the fallacy of the buildup to the Iraq War; instead, he touted his American pride by continually reporting on American firepower and the resoluteness of soldiers to fight. As a journalist, he failed the American people.
Increasingly, journalists are being replaced by pundits for creating opinions in people, and the result is disheartening, to say the least. A pundit's opinion, however skewered and factually incorrect, is accepted willingly simply because the pundit's beliefs coincide with the viewer's.
Is the field salvageable? Of course; nothing is ever completely lost. As of right now, though, it will take a lot of work to recover.

That's all for now,
Das Flüg

P.S. Don't forget to click here!

EDIT------

Apparently, there is a journalistic code of ethics. Just goes to show that I should take a journalism class in college. Even so, that makes it that much sadder.

Brouhaha

If you are someone who pays attention to Congressional elections (which, for America, is about 40% of you), you know how important the upcoming Congressional elections are. You also know that there is vehement crapslinging (one step worse than mudslinging) from both sides, and that the television media only aids in this crapslinging. For that reason, I ask that you, my loyal reader, not watch any TV news regarding the Congressional elections. Read the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, whatever; just don't watch TV news.

Why? Well, for one thing, TV news is heavily opinionated. Wait, you may say, the newspapers are opinionated too. They may be opinionated, but, in the case of the New York Times, only on the last page. Otherwise, all journalists are required to give two sides to every story and be more fair and balanced (in the literal sense of the term, not Fox's).

TV news has an affinity for shaping people's arguments and opinions, and even making non-pertinent topics prudent. If all TV news were balanced, then Park 51 wouldn't be an issue and nor would Pastor Terry Jones.

So, I encourage you to read your news rather than hear it from Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Chris Matthews, the aboriginal pygmies at CNN, or your local grumpy pedophile. I know that no one purportedly reads anymore, but I must say that it's entertaining to read about how candidate Christine O'Donnell dabbled in witchcraft and believes that masturbation is infidelity.

I guess I'm going to hell, then.

That's all for now,
Das Flüg

Insert evil laugh here

My psych professor asked a question about the nature of evil, and below is my answer. It's not very good.

The very concept of evil didn't originate until the advent of the concept of morality and right and wrong. That being the case, it took a lot of time until people were able to reason that murdering your neighbor because you envy his flock of sheep is wrong because it is detrimental to the community, animalistic, and barbaric.

The most native and fundamental motive to the human being is the sense of self-preservation, aka selfishness (to a degree). The concept of evil can be attributed to a human's desire to survive well and beyond his means, though in this case I am circumventing the average person's ability to reason and behave rationally. This selfishness, when humans hunted in tribes, would be diffused to the other members of the tribe, essentially creating an entagled web that was almost analogous to one complete person rather than many. Tribal raids between humans were common, and the tribes that emerged victorious also reveled in the spoils of their victory, oftentimes being the women, weapons and supplies of the defeated tribe. In more evolutionary anthropological terms, winning a raid essentially meant the diversifying of the gene pool, creating more fit and better adaptable offspring. Thus, as self-preservation in this case extends to the entirety of the tribe, the human is fulfilling his primal desires.

As we live in a time where good and evil are more defined, though the boundaries become fuzzy, it is somewhat easier to determine. However, there are special cases: is acting evil in order to produce a good outcome still evil? Is acting with good intentions but achieving a deleterious outcome still considered evil? (I have often heard that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, though I find that to be a logical fallacy.)

In this case, I choose to ignore religious precepts for good and evil because there are many different religious standards in different beliefs, though all (or at least most) religions can agree that there are several things that are universally considered "evil": murder without justifiable reason, theft, and pork. (Interesting note: There was an ancient Greek cult which forbade the consumption of beans. Go figure.)

Just to explain my pork statement, and to quote one of my favorite movies:
Vincent: Want some bacon?
Jules: No man, I don't eat pork.
Vincent: Are you Jewish?
Jules: Nah, I ain't Jewish, I just don't dig on swine, that's all.
Vincent: Why not?
Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don't eat filthy animals.
Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood.
Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy mother****er. Pigs sleep and root in ****. That's a filthy animal. I ain't eat nothin' that ain't got sense enough to disregard its own feces.
Vincent: How about a dog? Dogs eats its own feces.
Jules: I don't eat dog either.
Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?
Jules: I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy but they're definitely dirty. But, a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.
Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?
Jules: Well we'd have to be talkin' about one charming mother****in' pig. I mean he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I'm sayin'?

The rule was written that pork was disallowed in many religions because, essentially, pigs are dirty. That's it. They're evil.

I think I lost track of the question.

That's all for now,
Das Flüg

(Almost) Labor Day Lunacy

Every Sunday, I make the long and perilous 15 minute drive from college to my house in order to do my laundry, work out a bit, and contemplate life.


(Pictured: Bad humor.)

My dad, the Argentine immigrant that he is, decided to ingratiate himself into American culture by doing what a lot of other people do over Labor Day weekend: have a barbecue. His friends came, all of them over the age of 40, leaving me only to hope that I don't look that old when I reach 50. Anyway, skipping past my title of grill master and subsequently stinking of charcoal, after the meal was done I decided to do my usual routine of exercising. I was startled by the sound of my dad yelling at a rather irate and intransigent codger about immigration.

Upon hearing their debate, one facet of the conversation I realized, possibly the most important, was that the old codger was using arguments and almost emulating verbatim the rhetoric of those on Fox News. I had never actually encountered anyone who had so fervently spouted the absolute horse crap that Fox News flaunted as "fair and balanced"; I was amazed. My father (hopefully) soon realized that arguing with that curmudgeon was akin to eating a pinecone; sure, it would give you good fiber, but you don't like the feeling.

It is something that reinforces a personal credo of mine: You can't win an argument with an idiot. Idiot, in this case, is not someone who simply disagrees with me; it is someone who does not have an informed opinion with which to sustain a logical and coherent argument. Essentially, it is the very definition of the word: someone lacking knowledge.

I could go on about how denigrating it is for America to have so many people like that curmudgeon, or how personal opinions have been supplanted by pundit opinions, but, I just feel like I'd be exhuming a dead horse, beating it, burying it again, and then repeating the process simply because I could.

That's all for now,
Das Flüg