Keith Olbermann Suspended Indefinitely After Political Contributions

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by LipstickLola

I believe that delivery is everything. If news organizations are going to denigrate the facts, in order to "appeal" to a wider, non-thinking audience, then I will simply choose another source for information. The snarky, belittling comments are not necessary, IMO, to deliver the news for an audience of people who want facts and unbiased information. MSNBC seems to be wanting a piece of the Fox pie of late, it is not working, they know it, they've set out to change it!

What do you do when the people you are interviewing have no concern for the facts? How do you deal with that? If someone says "if we cut taxes, we'll reduce the deficit" and you know that this statement cannot be true because it defies any mathematical or economic logic, what do you do? Is that not a denigration of facts--to present as true something that not only is not true but cannot, by definition, *be* true? What if, when you ask a follow-up question, the person just goes back to saying "tax cuts will reduce the deficit"? So you press on and ask, again, how precisely will tax cuts reduce the deficit. The person again insists that math does not work the way that people believe that it does or that economic theory somehow has it that the fewer tax revenues you take in, the more money the government will have?

I understand what you are saying but that doesn't change the fact that we have one political party that has become completely unmoored from reality. Climate change IS happening. Evolution DID happen. Minority home buyers did NOT bring down the financial system. Barack Obama WAS born in Hawaii and Hawaii WAS at the time of his birth, part of the United States. If you are currently $10 trillion in the hole, reducing tax revenues by $750 billion does not mean that you are suddenly only $9.25 trillion in the hole. Yet one party espouses ALL of those things. They pay no penalty for espousing things that are demonstrably untrue. There are no negative consequences--at least not for them and not immediately--for espousing things that are untrue. Yet these very untruths have *real* policy consequences and thus have an actual impact on our society.

How do you do what you are saying should be done in order to keep your viewing loyalty while ALSO recognizing that one's job as a journalistic outfit is to get actual information out there?

[LipstickLola]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

What do you do when the people you are interviewing have no concern for the facts? How do you deal with that? If someone says "if we cut taxes, we'll reduce the deficit" and you know that this statement cannot be true because it defies any mathematical or economic logic, what do you do? Is that not a denigration of facts--to present as true something that not only is not true but cannot, by definition, *be* true? What if, when you ask a follow-up question, the person just goes back to saying "tax cuts will reduce the deficit"? So you press on and ask, again, how precisely will tax cuts reduce the deficit. The person again insists that math does not work the way that people believe that it does or that economic theory somehow has it that the fewer tax revenues you take in, the more money the government will have?

********** edited by Lola for brevity and to get to the point*************

How do you do what you are saying should be done in order to keep your viewing loyalty while ALSO recognizing that one's job as a journalistic outfit is to get actual information out there?

First, let me begin by saying in regards to the subject matter you address that I am not uber intelligent in regards to the tax deficit or any other debt issue our country is battling atm. and I in no way, mean to be antagonistic, just conversational since you cannot 'see me', ok? I get your point. Our country is in overwhelming debt, fact. The government has robbed Peter to pay Paul for years, is there a way to eradicate that? Are tax-cuts the answer? I doubt it. More spending? Common sense would say to me, "not without starting from scratch", but that's just an over-simplistic way to see it, IMO. The truth is not always pretty, but I'd still like to hear it from my news source of choice.

Also? I'm not really sure your question can be answered, but I am not a journalist, just an average person, of average intelligence who wants to know, the "real scoop" when I get my information. That said, I do not necessarily need to be entertained, shocked, (obviously real news is shocking enough) or talked down to. The news *should* be just that, the news, like the olden days, it was even rather boring as I recall. To keep my loyalty? be real, be sincere, be dogmatic when necessary and not shy away from the unpopular. There's a vast difference between being a bully and just plain hard-nosed when it comes to getting to the nitty gritty.