#journalism

My grandfather. Grew up in a small Kansas town in the drepression to a family of railroaders. Only person in his family to graduate high school. Went to journalism school in college while paying his waythrough. Ended up being really successful working for IBM, which has afforded him the ability to travel to every continent, except Antarctica, twice. Is in Africa right now. And since his retirement has done hundreds and hundreds of hours interviewing military Veterans and was honored by the Library of Congress for it. So since I've grown up in an affluent household in a nice suburb of KC, it helps remind me not to bitch when the littlest things are bothering me. My girlfriend inspires me. She is why I get up in the morning, she is why I try to eat healthier than I used to. She is the reason why I try to improve myself every single day so that I can provide the best for her. I'm going to marry that girl one day. I don't particularly aspire to be like anyone. That will only lead to disappointment, because I am me, and not someone else. So I aspire to be a little bit better today than I was yesterday, and that is enough for me. Yara Shahidi. Even though she’s just 20, what she is doing for the young girls in America is amazing. She embraces her heritage and always wants to learn new things. She also goes to Harvard with one of Obama’s daughters. She’s incredibly smart, pretty and, her letter of recommendation was written by Michelle Obama herself. Oprah also praised her and said that she hopes to see her as president one day. Everything she is doing inspires me to keep on moving. She’s the leader of my generation.
My husband, actually. And my dad. They have gone through enormous bad patches in life but remain positive and optimistic, they are genuinely happy in life because they figured out what other people think/social norms don’t matter and that material things are just that - things.

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i don’t know honestly. my thoughts are convoluted. half of my family is rooting for the takeover while the other half condemns it. i personally feel like none of us have the right to decide/speak for the death and displacement of innocent afghan lives, it should be in the hands of afghan citizens. i think none of the governments (esp not usa with it’s severe saviour complex) have afghanistan’s best interest at heart. not the previous afghan govt, neither the taliban. but i hear that the citizens did not resist the takeover, they helped it, i hear that taliban is misunderstood bcs our perception of them is based on mainstream media that lies. but i also hear that women are forced into marriages by taliban. i hear their ways are extreme. and i also hear that the taliban were funded by usa to destabilise afghanistan as a dirty politics play. i also hear that usa pulled out so taliban would wage war against china and pakistan. i also hear that the taliban went rouge and decided to instead form secret alliances w china and pk and all of usa’s efforts went in vain. i hear alot of things. there is so much contradictory information for me to have any opinion. how do i differentiate facts from false journalism and conspiracy theories. only thing i’m certain about is that i care sooo deeply about afghanistan my heart sinks 50 feet deep thinking about the pain and trauma people went thru, the citizens and the land that fell prey to this blekh power plague. they deserve democracy, they deserve peace after being at war for 20 years. i can only hope that the people who took over yesterday give them that, i don’t think that is the case, but i hope and pray they get their freedom

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Answer Part 1
It’s a difficult one. In my country (this answer is from a UK POV)there’s been a noticeable diminishing of proper investigative journalism in recent years. A broad variety of reading and watching of different media is probably preferable, the problem is with people working long hours they’re often stuck with grabbing 30 minutes of headline news from a station with a particular bias. Here’s my rundown of stuff I read or have seen:
📡 BBC - UK state broadcaster funded through public money. News channel is broadly pro- government of the day, but other programming isn’t, so you’ll get government oppositional themes in some drama programmes for example, but the news programmes will (usually, but not always) go fairly easy on the incumbent administration.
📡Channel 4 News - part state funded, part funded through advertising. More likely to tackle difficult issues regarding the government than the BBC. Has some good news reports, its anchors are very visible on Twitter, it has a fact-check facility to test the truth and validity of news stories.
📡Sky News - a Murdoch (News International) venture, so you won’t often find his uber-capitalist tax-dodging etc interests challenged. Other than that, coverage can be reasonable depending on the presenter and subject matter.
📡Fox News - another Murdoch (News International) venture, but this time broadcast directly out of the arse of Donald Trump, the NRA and the Evangelical Christian Right of America. Output ranges from disingenuous to pure bullshit.
📡The Daily Mail / MailOnline - a product of Lord Harmsworth, The Viscount Rothermere. The paper has been owned by the Rothermeres for generations. It came out in support of the Nazis in the 1930s, and has had an anti-Europe, anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, racist, sexist, homophobic, extreme right wing position ever since. The current Viscount Rothermere is domiciled abroad so he doesn’t have to pay tax into things like education, hospitals, the NHS etc that he hates. He wants out of the EU so he doesn’t get hit by their anti-tax-dodgers legislation coming in in 2020. Its editor, Paul Dacre, is by all accounts one of the worst humans ever.
📡The Daily Express - property of pornographer Richard “Dirty” Desmond, the Express loves Princess Diana who you will often still see on their front page by virtue of yet more secret diaries or tapes or letters they keep finding, and hates most of the things the Daily Heil hates (see previous). However while the Mail is a Tory rag, the Express supports UKIP.
📡The Independent - owned by a Russian oligarch, the Indy was once a bastion of quality investigative journalism but in recent years its online incarnation has embraced clickbait and lots of frivolous news, and I don’t take it quite as seriously as I once did, though it still produces good articles from time to time.

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It has a lot of influence over how people behave in society.

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For those of you who remember the O.J. Simpson trial back in the 90s, I was surprised by how the media responded when he tried on the glove that the prosecution accused him of wearing the night his wife died. The glove obviously didn't fit him, and yet the media seemed to brush that off quickly. That struck me as weird.

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the media's response after 9/11 made me raise an eyebrow as well. They seemed to swallow everything the White House said without question. I expect journalists to verify all claims even if those claims seem like they're obviously true on the surface. That's what journalism is all about. No, I'm not a 9/11 truther or anything like that. I just didn't like how fast the media turned their minds and their curiosity off.

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I also don't approve of how the media tries to smear the names of the black men and women who have been murdered by cops. It strikes me as incredibly racist to assume that the police are always innocent or that someone could somehow deserve to die because they were stopped for a minor traffic violation.

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I could go on and on. I take what the media says with a big grain of salt. A lot of their stories seem to be exaggerations or even outright fabrications.

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Aside from my dislike towards catcalling, I am here to say that we shouldn't be afraid of what's radical.

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People nowadays are like "woa this is radicalism!" And be terrified af, but when I asked them what does radical means they could only associate it with bad things. Which mean they have fallen upon the fear mongering journalism that lacks of conceptualization basis of what is radicalism.

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So what is radicalism? It is an ideology of counter culture which means people who believe in it believes that the core of the problems (or in a more technical term they'd choose hegemony, oppression, neo-colonialism) rooted in the cultural values, and that component constitutes the very essence of feminism. As culture is an ever evolving adaptation of human survivability a revolution towards the current culture is needed in order to change things as it is detrimental if if is being continued.

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But what about Islamic radicalism? In fact they are also radical, they believe that the core issue of the world happened because of the "kufr" sets the global system, however this became dangerous due to the violence enforcement to pursue their counter cultural objective.

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by all means, be a radical if you think that the problem lies within the system. But consider how to pursue the revolution without sparing the lives of the innocent.

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For more substantial reading do read:
Ernest Laclau
Judith Butler
Chantal Mouffe
Antonio Gramsci

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i tried to stay away from social justice issue because it upset me so much... dan ironisnya, yang bikin gue kesel adalah orang2 sayap kirinya.

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but anyway, i just done my research. he's not homophobic and he's not racist. he's anti political correctness (gue juga) dan lebih mendukung all lives matters ketimbang black lives matters (again, gue juga).

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dia bilang dia gak mendukung gay marriage karena dia ngerasa dari dulu the gay communities have always been the one pushing the boundaries dan begitu the gay communities became to comfortable with the norm, the boundaries will stop get pushed.

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meanwhile i'm not 100% agree with him on this, gue juga kepikiran sih... apakah pernikahan sepenting itu? ketimbang ngepush gay marriage, kenapa gak merubah struktur masyarakat supaya orang2 pada sadar kalo pernikahan itu cuma garnish atas suatu hubungan yang secara voluntarily mengikat?

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even though changing a global mindset would be harder than making a simple bill, shouldn't it be better to do what's right than doing what's easy?

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and it seems like he's a trump supporter.

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i wouldn't say kalo gue trump supporter, i just happen to be anti-hillary. hell, i'd pick ANYONE over a lying weasel yang selalu berpindah pihak, berbuat licik dan mengumbar kebohongan demi memajukan kepentingan politiknya.

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i'm also sick and tired of these holier-than-thou left wing narrative yang mulai dari absurd, kayak drinking milk is a symbol of racism (it's a thing recently) dan sexual intercourse is anti-feminist, sampe yang outright harmful towards people, kayak kasusnya pewdiepie yang dapet severe backlash for complaining about reverse racism dan of course, the UC Berkeley riot yang berujung pada penembakan, orang pingsan diinjek2, cewe disemprot pepper spray kemudian dipukulin pake bendera dan perusakan yang dilakukan atas nama.... liberalism??

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really? apakah ngelarang orang lain untuk berbicara, sebodoh dan sesalah apapun omongan orang itu, merupakan tindakan yang liberal sekarang?

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gue sering nyerang argumen orang yang salah di platform ini atau dimanapun. tapi gak pernah sekalipun gue ngelarang orang mengatakan apapun yang dia mau dimanapun yang dia mau.

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gue cuma bilang; you have the right to the freedom of speech, but so does other people and they will respond to you.

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gue udah dititik dimana gue ngerasa omongan donald trump soal media yang ngeberendel semua pendapat yang gak selaras dengan narasi sayap kiri ini ada benernya.

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karena channel2 berita bahkan ga nyebut kejadian di UC Berkeley itu sebagai a violent riot (which exactly what it is), tapi disebutnya sebagai protest. click-bait journalism soal pemberitaan pewdiepie merajalela, portraying him as a racist and anti-semitic (padahal dia cuma bikin ironic joke where people would do ANYTHING for $5).

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so yeah, i'm starting to think that maybe the annoying orange had a point and if that makes me a trump supporter, then so be it.

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because even though i don't, by modern liberal's standard, i definitely am:

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Not reading OpIndia links. Stop creating false equivalences of 'two sides to every story'. The Government is banning the Hindi wing of the channel which just happens to be most critical of them with the only anchor who has resisted behaving around Modi like a teenage girl does with Zayn Malik? This is such bullshit.
The problem with people being 'okay' with the NDTV ban is you lot don't seem to understand what the implication is of a precedent of the Govt having the power to ban channels as they wish. Can't wait for 2018 when Modi has to go even higher into campaign mode and every speech which incites riots in Bihar, UP, and Bengal cannot be covered because the Govt will ban the channels.
Speaking truth to power is basic journalism ethics. One which people like Arnab Goswami sold long ago. Questioning the government is a fucking duty of every citizen in this country and don't you ever forget it. The Government doesn't get my trust just because people voted them to power. Modi will never get my trust but he should definitely not get your trust just because some talking head on the TV told you acche din aa gaye. Don't drink the cool aid of Nationalism. Use your brains.

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Oh god you're an angel. Honestly, science is "one" of my favourite subjects, and its also one i am particularly good at (if that made sense). However, i didn't take science up because its my passion.

I took up science only because it gives me the benefit of doubt. In our country India, as you're probably aware, mixed interests aren't given much priority. Like if you're good in science, science should be your SOLE focus. I m like wtf man? What if i love chemistry and literature both? Indian students never get enough flexibility in their choices.

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Science simply allows me to take another two years to think abt what i want to seriously take up as a career and also, score well. If i take up any other stream i wouldn't get to change my streams if i wanted.

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My career choice is very thinly balanced between Arts and Science. I am still not sure as to take up what, but i am still preparing myself for JEE (because well, indian parents). If i find 11-12th Science too strenuous, then i'd probably shift to Mass Comm. post high school (Scientific Journalism is my one and only love in life).

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Also, lets not forget how important a B-TECH degree is in India. I mean even if you're a Masters in say, International Politics, a half-headed and robotic IITian holds more importance than you in this shit country (no offense, but i am not VERY fond our country's education system now that i am at the crux of selecting my career path). So yeah, that's it. Rant over.

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Phew. Sorry if i bored you too much ?.

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This might be hypocritical, but I think saying "gamers" suck and implying all or most people who partake in a medium are just shitty across the board is kind of missing the point. You use the word, "cohesive," which I think is interesting because it's cohesion that got us into this mess in the first place.

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I don't think Gamergate was about journalism OR pushing a political ideology (even though it ended up being associated with both of these things), it was about shared spaces and cultural groups. Most mainstream sites, forums, social media services etc try to cater to "gamers" as if they're all part of one big, cohesive social group. They aren't. In fact, I don't think there's ever been a singular "gamer" identity. It's pure marketing spiel. So we ended up with these sites that were trying to appeal to once specific idea of what a gamer is, and they ended up appealing to no one. Sites started pushing towards more socially conscious reporting to match a demographic that's only getting older and more aware of the world, but in doing so they left behind a large core audience that isn't interested in that kind of thing. Both groups will insist they're the "core" audience that games are aimed at, but the truth is neither of them are. The vast majority of people who purchase games these days aren't "gamers" in anything but the most literal interpretation of the word. They're consumers, rather than "fans.' If Gamergate achieved one positive outcome, it proved that games sites trying to target "the gamer" as a whole is a fucking waste of time. Figure out your audience, cater to them. Let other sites cater to theirs.

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So back to your original question, I don't think "toxic" gamers are any more common than they've ever been. They're just loud and they evangelize more. They've got their own spaces and their own media outlets that cater to them. I'm fine with that as long as they're not shitting up people's feeds.

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