Presuming you do not read it, because most people no longer read, where do you get your news when you travel?
One of the biggest inconveniences I experience when I travel is attempting to get, not unbiased, but equally biased, televised political-oriented news coverage. The majority of basic cable offerings, which is what most hotels offer, do not include MSNBC in their channel line-up. I have as yet to find a basic cable line-up that does not include FOX.
I like to tune in to Rachel Maddow’s evening news show if it is at all possible. I was quite shocked when I checked in to the Sheraton Towers Chicago, the conference hotel for #BlogHer13, and was limited to Fox and CNN products for news coverage while there. Some people say CNN is liberal, but as a person on the left side of the political spectrum, I assure you that I am often offended by the bias inherent in most of CNN’s coverage of a “mainstream view” that mimics the purported middle ground that is a moderate conservative viewpoint.
I equate the lack of news data from across the political spectrum with the lack of access to unprocessed, unpackaged, food stuffs which are known as food deserts. Unfortunately the term “news desert” has come to narrowly apply to the lack of local news. I believe a better definition of news desert is a place where there is a lack of easy access to a whole data, or data from all types of sources.
There are food deserts where the only access to groceries within an easily reachable distance on foot or by public transportation is from a food “mart” where a produce section, if you are very lucky, will be a refrigerated case with plastic-wrapped salad in a plastic container that has an expiration date stamped on the label, so a shopper can tell if it has been on the shelf for more than 5 days.
Unequal access to any basic component of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” disturbs me. Nutritious food and basic information are two of the most important building blocks of democracy. Full bellies and access to the information you need to make sound decisions are essential to maintaining a democracy and working toward equality.
If the upper economic slice of the population does not have access to a full complement of news information when traveling, that means that all the people with that same basic cable service that the hotel provides do not have access to anything but
So what am I doing about this? Just bitching? Nope, I am sending a copy of this article to the Sheraton where I stayed. It will be interesting to see what sort of a reply I receive, if I receive one. I will let you know.
But in the meantime I would like to know, do you have access to full spectrum news through TV ?
MSNBC Is Political, Fox Is Political, News Is Not Political
My husband and I, both televised political and news coverage junkies, disagree about how much coverage to allow into our home, but the one area in which we are in agreement is that MSNBC is the only mainstream news entity that routinely covers progressive analysis of topics.
Allow me to re-emphasize that last point, if you will. It is analysis and not individual topics themselves that have political leanings. People and editorial entities have political stances; news that is fact based, as news is supposed to be, cannot have a political viewpoint.
I, personally, am best described in current political jargon as a “Progressive.” The thing that is totally weird is that, even though my perspective is best described by the word progressive, I do not believe in the concept of progress. I believe that change happens all the time, but progress is a dangerous concept. Few people define what progress is or would be and how it would be measured. To over-simplify to the extreme Democrats currently view the past as flawed and the future as wide open. Similarly, to over-simplify to the extreme, Republicans view the past as perfect and the future as a dangerous or even horrific if we continue moving in the direction we are moving. Neither perspective is acceptable in and of itself. The past has passed on, and we rarely know what really happened and almost never know why it happened. This type of uncertainty is not something most people like to think about or can even tolerate in our lives. I am a rarity in that dealing with uncertainty, while it is scary to plan for, is the only reality in which I can exist. To believe in anything else would constitute my being negligent to the point of endangering my family, my life, and my world. To me that is the bottom line.
This view is antithetical to the oversimplified pabulum we are fed at every turn by entities whose best interest is to have the vast majority of the people not pay attention to big pictures. In my interpretation of the world, progressives are not wide-eyed liberals who just want us all to get along, in my world progressives are actually pessimists because they acknowledge the crap that has come before, still exists, and believe we can make it all better. In my interpretation of the world, conservatives are the optimists who think there was some glory point in the past where things were much better and by adopting elements of what worked before we can make the future a better place.
I cannot make peace with either of these perspectives, and to let you know why I cannot, please allow me to digress for a moment and bring religion into the mix. And while I am at it, I might as well get the other taboo topic, of which “nice women” are not supposed speak, out in the open, too. Religion, politics and sex, the things that nice women are not supposed to talk about. Bull Shit!
My mitochondrial DNA comes from long line of Amish people, although for the last few generations we have been more likely to define ourselves religiously as some other Protestant denomination. I cannot say much about my father’s lineage because, even though I know about Dad’s list of ancestors via public documents, marriage records, baptismal records, and family Bible records back into the 1700s, as anthropologists say, “Paternity is always problematic.” The “Pennsylvania Dutch” from whom I am descended are called Dutch, in my humble opinion, not because they are Dutch, the Amish are of Swiss decent, but because they passed through the Netherlands as refugees and because they spoke what my father always referred to as Low German as their mother tongue even after becoming Americans. At the time they became a cohesive group they believed in putting their tightly controlled community first, over any other allegiance, and that belief is still alive and well in my family even though the religion that went with it in its original state has not been observed since, at least, my great, great grandmother’s generation. The history of being political refugees is one that had enough meaning for my ancestors, both long past and recent, from the Amish ancestry as well as from the strong Anabaptist traditions of my father’s family that dates well back into the 1700s. Genetically and socially I was taught to be very suspicious of, and teach my children to be suspicious of corporate control. Corporate control beyond the purely business definition can be any outside group that attempts to control another group. This corporate body could be primarily a religious, political, or financial entity, or in the case of the Holy Roman Church that persecuted the first Amish, all three. Most families no longer have this strong of an oral tradition. The cyclic nature of history was taught to me as a part of my family history and family history was strongly influenced by both religious and political concerns.
In my family it was always okay to talk politics and religion whenever family was gathered together and my father was present. It was always okay to be political in public too. My dad lobbied in D.C., representing the local Farmer’s Union, and he also met a President which is rather uncommon in today’s world. He was given a tour of the Truman Library, in Independence, Missouri, by President Truman, as the President apparently was wont to do in the 1950s, when he was in a small group of farmer’s at a conference in Kansas City who opted to participate in an optional tour of the library. Dad also was a poll worker for his political party at election time.
I take politics seriously, religion seriously, and equality of the sexes seriously. I know why I believe in the way that I do. I want facts. I want history. And I want people to understand the difference between blind allegiance and informed support. I believe the responsibility of every American is to engage in critical thinking as best as she or he can so as to be an informed citizen . Our nation was founded to support individual economic autonomy and religious tolerance. These essential ingredients in our founding mix that is reflected in documents like the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are in danger of being lost if our recipe is changed. The essential ingredient in the original recipe that created our Great Nation that seems to be missing more and more often in contemporary political discussion is having an educated government and citizenry who know the difference between opinion and fact.
How much time do we spend on getting the facts about things that concern us, what kind of analysis or interpretation of the data do we take in and give weight or take at face value, and where are we getting our facts and how do we know we are facts? In my view it seems that more and more people in the U.S. have somehow missed the training that teaches them to think for themselves. How did this happen? How can we counteract it?
Do not blindly agree with me. Think about it. Research it. Read. Turn the damned T.V. over to something that teaches you how to think or gives you information and does not deal in opinion, or better yet, shut the T.V. off, put on some music and pick up a print source and read something that is not fiction.
I watch MSNBC partially because Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris Perry are anchors there and these two women both include lots of facts that cannot be reasonably disputed in their coverage of issues. There are other great anchors out there but today is “M” day in the “April A to Z Challenge” in which I am participating and MSNBC, Melissa, and Maddow all start with the letter “M.”
Recently I have been thinking a lot about people not understanding the different between news and political commentary. Rachel Maddow’s recent book, Drift, is filled with facts and I encourage everyone to pick up a copy and READ it. ( I think I linked to the kindle version of the book because it is the cheapest version, but do remember that public libraries still exist and you can read books there at no cost!) Why should you read it? Well, first, it is about the way our government has allowed the military to drift and transform into something that the Founding Fathers (and their very literate wives, mothers, sisters and daughters – our Founding Mothers) would not recognize. And, secondly, we will all have to have done our taxes within the next couple of days and… the majority of the taxes we pay supports the military. Don’t you want to know what you are paying for? I personally think you should.
This morning on the Melissa Harris Parry show the topic that grabbed my attention and shook me by the shoulders was child sexual trafficking. This show has become my new MUST watch television program because it covers major issues that impact women and families that no one else seems to care about enough to cover. I watch it every Saturday and Sunday morning because the panels are balanced, the facts are spot on, and it provides me with information I do not already have.
So back to the topic of the day…. The Letter M…
MSNBC is a network devoted to political commentary for the most part. Fox is a network devoted to political commentary for the most part. News, let’s see, a news channel would be… uh, well, um, er, I cannot think of a mainstream network or cable program that is dedicated to news. I often watch local news and BBC International news to see what is happening in the world that is not one of the three sound bytes that the commentators are flapping their jaws about. I read lots of stuff on news sites from lots of different sources. It is not easy to find unbiased accounts of what is happening outside of our doors and windows. The effort to inform yourself is well worth the time it takes. You and your family are worth it.
I’m getting down off the soap box because my stiletto heel is caught in a knot hole up here and I might lose my balance at any second.
I do encourage you to make the effort to open those doors and windows and take stock of what is happening outside. Do not take the word of anyone else at face value without running your own fact checker on the info. Critical thinking takes time. Critical thinking is more important than the Kardashians. Give some of your time to figuring out if what you are being told is true, and while you are at it, think about the difference between fact and commentary.
The True Enemy of the Little Gal and True Small Locally-based Business
If you don’t know who the Koch Brothers are, that is understandable. Most folks don’t even know who lives next door to them these days, let alone who is financing the nationally coordinated assault on their local political candidates who truly just want to support their communities through public service. Basically the Koch Brothers dreamed up the Tea Party and funded it to feed the frustrations and misinformation of regular Jane and Joe Six-packs so they would buy into voting against their own interests in this and the next elections.
Unfortunately they learned from the likes of the left leaning folks who protested at the 2004 Presidential debates like me, PDA folks, some youthful rabble rouser artist types and CODEPINK. We had a cardboard cake puppet (let them eat cake) and chanted outside a hotel where McCain and Napolitano were meeting up, “We’re Joe Six Pack and we’ve come to take our country back. This is the same message the Tea Partiers think they came up with, but the difference is their grassroots aka astroturf movement is being funded by The Koch Brothers of Koch Industries.
You need to know who the Koch brothers are. They are eating cake and taunting us. We do not want blood n the streets or a revolution. And that is what happened in France after the aristocrats pushed the little guy over the line.
At least I sure don’t want to see civil war in our country and that is what is going to happen if we let the Koch brothers continue to manipulate, with the help of their brother in kind Rupert Murdoch, manipulate the media and the political system. When the little guy finally figures out what Big Business (remember that term?) and Big Media has done to them there will be rioting in the streets. When the streets explode for whatever reason, religious intolerance and racial hatred will come out in force too. We don’t take to the streets as quickly as say our European brothers and sisters, but when we do – it is real serious, real fast. We can’t blame ourselves for this — we work more hours than any other group of people in the Developed World and just don’t have time to research behind the news. Most of Koch Industries is involved in non-consumer level production and manufacturing: petroleum and chemical industries, and the paper and cattle industries.
But we women are smarter than that. We have to take both long and short term views simultaneously or we would have died out as a species millennia ago. We can send signals and we can subvert the dominant paradigm so to speak as we and our collective feminine actions are THE dominant paradigm, no matter what.
First step… boycott Georgia Pacific, the main consumer brand of the Koch Brothers.
Georgia-Pacific’s familiar consumer brands in North America include
Quilted Northern®,
Angel Soft®,
Brawny®,
Sparkle® ,
Soft ‘n Gentle®,
Mardi Gras®,
Vanity Fair®,
and the Dixie® brand of tabletop products.
The company’s leading European brands include
Lotus®,
Colhogar®,
Delica®,
Tenderly®
and the Demak’Up® brand of facial cleansing products.
Koch Industries also manufacture LYCRA® fiber and COOLMAX® fabric.
Consumer brands include STAINMASTER ®carpet, ANTRON® carpet fiber, CORDURA® fabric, and COMFOREL® fiberfill.
Don’t buy this crap!
Don’t eat beef. Or only buy local organic beef so you know you aren’t buying from Matador. “The Matador Cattle Company is one of the ten largest cow/calf operations in the U.S.” and yep it is Koch-owned.
The second thing I would do is to ask Managers anywhere and everywhere that you come across showing Fox News in a public area to please turn it to a station that doesn’t support hate speech and incite violence You can see that advertisers have left Glenn beck for the most part but Fox still has major advertisers. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Fox News (aka News Corpse and Faux News) is another story. Basically foreign nationals used to be banned, before the 1980s, from owning controlling interests of our print and broadcast media. Rupert Murdoch got kicked out of Australian media for being too conservative and trying to subvert their media. So we change the laws to allow him to own our media and now a Saudi Arabian princes is the second largest shareholder.
This has to stop. Women have to take back the remote and boycott the Koch Bros.–for starters.