Headlines

Chinese ventilator makers desperate for parts as global demand for machines hits 1 million

Senate adjourns after Democrats block McConnell’s bid to add $250 billion in small business aid

Federal stocks of protective equipment nearly depleted ...

Pope says pandemic is ‘certainly nature’s response’ to global warming

Mnuchin: Economy could reopen in May

US weekly jobless claims jump by 6.6 million and we’ve now lost 10% of workforce in 3 weeks

Fed pumps another $2.3 trillion ... Why relief to small businesses has lagged ...

Donald Trump: What does Barack Obama know about Joe Biden?

Fed pulls out $2T lending bazooka to boost businesses, cities

Oil jumps 12% amid report Saudi Arabia and Russia have reached a deal, cut could reach 20 million barrels a day

Crisis devastating news industry. Many newspapers won’t survive ...

Trump: US spent $452 million on W.H.O. in 2019; China $42 million

Buried News

There is hardly a more powerful group of opinion influencers than those invisible backbenchers who write the headlines and synopses for newspapers, websites and cable-news scrolls. In many cases readers get no further than the work product of these news filterers.  And, often, depending upon their biases, these scribes can alter the entire meaning of a story by how they couch it in their headlines and short intros.

So, kind readers, always be on guard for deceptive headlines ... particularly when they run against the grain of the media outlet you are reading ... or the meme you have seen elsewhere. Best to read the rest of the story ... particularly the last few paragraphs where the real news may be buried.

Headlines

House Republicans balk as budget vote looms

Hedge-fund manager Kyle Bass says US-China trade deal can’t be reached

Newspaper circulation lowest level since 1940 ...

Tulsi [Gabbard] sues Google for censorship

Warren: I would’ve accepted VP offer from Clinton

Biden, Harris and Buttigieg rack up donations from big bank executives on Wall Street

Europe struggles to conserve water amid record heat ...

Rashida Tlaib in 2015 on Donald Trump: ‘Deport this asshole!’

McConnell moves to confirm 19 judges next week

Goldman sees stronger second-half growth, says buy cyclical companies

POLL: Biden only Dem leading Trump in OH ...

‘Disaster’: Robert Mueller testimony backfires on Democrats

Filters

“And that’s the way it is”  Walter Cronkite

Traditional news outlets, radio, TV and newspapers have acted as our information filters to the world. Their value-added has been the collection, collating and prioritizing of supposed facts about what was happening around us  ... for which they were paid, often handsomely. Basically, we consumers of news relied on these filters to present us a consistent and reliable view of things so that we might take action. And, in exchange, we bought and perused their ink or listened to their advertisers. There was a certain comfort in knowing what slant a particular outlet would bring to their reporting ... and this slant or filter often became more important than the facts themselves.

No matter how much such media claim to be fair and balanced, they always slip back into a point of view. And the only way that consumers can get a rounded view of things is to partake of multiple news outlets ... a time taxing task ... one that too few choose.  So we live and have lived on a politically polarized nation. And even more so now that many additional internet news channels, Twitter, Google, Facebook, blogs, etc. have appeared. This seems a good development, not a bad one. Variety is the spice of life. The shortest route to national consensus would be a state-sponsored  media (like PBS or NPR) as the only news filter ... a bad thing.

Our founding fathers designed our government to be inefficient and contain opposing forces. And so constant conflict within our media is also a good thing. The danger posed is that one news filter (like Facebook) becomes so dominant as to overwhelm all others. This  should worry us all.

reddit Pic

Media update ...