Getting Your News Groove Back-Podcast 621

Social Media Rules

More of us get our news from social media these days. Problem is most of the ‘news’ on social media doesn’t adhere to standards. Might feel better informed, but it’s hard to tell the difference between writing to a standard and propaganda. In Getting Your News Groove Back-Podcast 621.

Internet Never Lies

People are in the habit of posting, sharing, liking and commenting on stories that support their point of view. People apparently believe anything published on the Internet that looks credible and comes from a site they visit often. We are floating on a sea of bad information.

Garbage In Garbage Out

News stories not written to standard assert things that turn out to be false. What’s worse, this kind of information poisons the discourse. Thoughts, insights and ideas based on bad information form into concrete assumptions and conclusions. Those conclusions drive people’s ideas about the world.

Propaganda and Manipulation

In Getting Your News Groove Back-Podcast 621 I’ll provide some examples of story-lines that have not been proven. Most of the time these stories reinforce the right versus left thinking that ruins friendships and family ties. It’s what makes social media so angry and vitriolic.

There are standards. When you know the standards you can determine whether a writer lives up to those standards. Without standards we’re susceptible to a steady stream of propaganda and manipulation. It’s up to us to learn the standards and choose what we post, share, like and comment on accordingly.

Context and Perspective

A steady diet of Social Media, 24 Hour Cable News and Talk Radio is like junk food for the mind. This ruins a person’s ability to discern whether assertions are true or just opinion. When all we do is read stuff online, watch You Tube videos and listen to cable news and talk radio we lose the context of major stories. We don’t get the details to be able to master the issues. Getting Your News Groove Back-Podcast 621  explains how to do that.

Getting Your News Groove Back-Podcast 621

Sponsored by X Government Cars 

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Podcast 482

The Story Less Travelled. As the pay for play media continues to chatter about what Donald Trump did this week, or Bernie Sanders’ predictions about democrat super delegates switching allegiance to him, maybe it’s time to take a look at The Story Less Travelled. Some percolating stories and issues people really aren’t talking about because they’re arguing about how tabloids post stories, how Internet rumors get started, how Donald Trump is going to make US allies pay ‘us’ for security, or why Bernie Sanders’ thinks Detroit became a hell hole in the last fifty years. There are real things happening in the world, most of which are reported on but not occupying very much attention, because too many pundits, talk hosts, talking heads, editors and managers are doing the bidding of political parties, candidates and their minders. What happens if Saudi Arabia decides to switch their alliance to China and Asia, which will account for the lion’s share of growth in energy consumption over the next ten years? What happens when economic instability due to massive debt and low profits comes home to roost in the banking system? How do you feel about academics going around saying the days of 4 percent and greater economic growth are over, and the solution is a world wide socialism-lite system, with more government and higher taxes? How will future presidents – the people filling your television screen with nonsense right now, and getting accolades from talkers, pundits and so called experts for it – confront a collapsing China, a Europe embroiled in a guerrilla war with thousands of ISIS fighters, and an economic depression. Maybe we should be talking about The Story Less Travelled more than what they want us to talk about. Sponsored by X Government Cars, Brush Studio in the West End, Saint Louis Park and by Hydrus. (Editor’s Note: This is not a ‘transcript’. Each podcast, which is original content in itself, also is accompanied by a short blog about the podcast. This blog is also original content, not a repetition of what is in the podcast, but a discussion of some of the ideas in the podcast. If you want to know what’s in the podcast, listen to it.)

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Podcast 441

Shopping, Trump, Lies & Liquor. Welcome back from the big Thanksgiving weekend. The weeks starts with the National Retail Federation, AKA The Propaganda Ministry for the Big Box Retailers. If they’re not making up stories about how many people will shop the day after Thanksgiving, they’re blaming lackluster retail numbers on … wait for it … The Internet and specifically Amazon.com. This is the latest nonsense cooked up to convince lawmakers ‘something has to be done’, and that something is regulation of the Internet, so people will continue to shop at obsolete brick and mortar retailers located inside something called ‘The Mall’. Do we have data that shows the Internet is killing the Mall? Not really. Meanwhile ‘Black Friday’ is more and more an example of all that is wrong in America, and provides a great ‘look at the fat Americans fighting over flat screen TV’s’ story often seen in the foreign media. Maybe people aren’t shopping because they don’t believe the fairy tail about our growing economy, or because the new job only pays half what the old job pays, or because there’s a double digit health insurance premium. Yeah, right. We’re going to ‘spend the savings on two dollar gasoline’ at the mall. You know, like a tax cut. Meanwhile, Political Information Lag produced a lot of surprises at the Thanksgiving table as relatives discovered each other were rooting for Trump, or Bernie Sanders. Both candidates are outside the ‘establishment’ Republican and Democrat story line. Everyone HATES Washington and they HATE mainstream media charlatans who lie to them, while they work for candidates like Hillary Clinton. Once real people actually start voting, we’ll see whether anti-establishmentarianism is a ‘thing’, or not. Jeb! shouldn’t hold his breath tho. Meanwhile the City of Edina’s liquor store apparently can’t complete with ‘cut throat’ discount liquor stores (that actually have a responsibility to their stock holders to make money; how quaint.) Thus, the Mayor of Edina wants a liquor store tax, to make up the loss. “It’s a good business, and we’re going to stay in it”. Why are municipalities in the business of selling liquor? Bottom line, if government can’t even make money selling liquor apparently its incompetence knows no bounds. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and X Government Trucks.

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