media
Thoughtlets. xxxvi. (Repost; January 27,2021)
Tacitus, an Roman historian, writes these words in the Annals sometime around 117 CE: “I wanted to dispel the fictions of hearsay, and to ask people into whose hands my book may come not to prefer widely circulated and eagerly accepted… Read More ›
What, if anything, is wrong with MSNBC, CNN, and FOX? (Part 1 of 2)
My other half habitually surfs through a number of national and international news channels in the evenings. Our house is small, so I’m captive to whatever noise emanates from these rotating broadcasts. Sometimes this noise really gets under my skin…. Read More ›
Thoughtlets.XLVII.
Just when news anchors’ hemorrhoid-inducing overuse of mindless phrases such as walk it back and double down starts to wane, another wave of brain-deadening soundbites inevitably waxes. And at its crest is the phrase bad actors. This phrase doesn’t refer… Read More ›
Thoughtlets. XLV. Theodicy revisited.
News media characteristically brings us one story after another about the kinds of things humans to do each other which are broadly characterized as ‘evil.’ And these stories tend to generate accusations of ‘evil-doers’ which are then dispatched with the… Read More ›
Thoughtlets . xxxviii.
Lately I’ve been troubled by laughing-at-stupid-people infotainment, especially in partisan news media, and on both sides of the political spectrum. I’d like to watch a broadcast that doesn’t devolve into some version of nanny-nanny-poo-poo-you-have-stinky-pants. That the frowning anchor wears a suit… Read More ›
A meditation on the character of a political speaker and, by extension, a voter (Oct. 31/20 with Nov. 15/20 addendum)
Loosely put, rhetoric is the art of persuasion. More specifically, on Aristotle’s definition, rhetoric is “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.” We all use rhetoric to convince others of some thing or other,… Read More ›
Thoughtlets .xvii.
Dear Chris Cuomo (CNN), a.k.a. The Great Interrupter, Let your interviewee finish a sentence.
Thoughtlets .xiv.
Dear News-Media folks, It’s hard to take you seriously when you report Tweets. It appears that Tweets are to journalists as seeds are to chickens, fodder for mindless feeding frenzies.
pam-mentations.com 