re can t have it both ways news as enemy news as supporter in article optilink com walsh optilink com mark walsh writes from article qvampinnmhf darkstar ucsc edu by stephen orchid ucsc edu now which is it are you going to comdemn national media then turn around and use it to support some position you present seems somewhat contradictory doesn t it i believe that this is not contradictory on the basis that the quality of media reporting varies greatly based on the subject at hand the media has proven itself very accurate is the areas of presenting raw undisputed data one good example would be the weather page in which high and low temperatures of the previous day for a large number of locations are posting there is little evidence to show that they are in error i believe this true when we speak of physical data in the sense of pure science but when we speak of data that revolve around social sciences then we have to be careful the american media has failed us in its analysis of complex events however i m sure that we can come up with many news stories that have left us angry because so many facts have been ommitted cases that come to mind are the invasion of panama the war with iraq the disaster in waco the issues surrounding the acceptance of gays into the military the war on drugs and many others i quite agree but these are cases or news events that contain politics social science information sociology etc and at best are reflections of the group that reports them as you have pointed out it is difficult to report that the temperature was degrees when it was degrees and have people believe you the story that you bring to light was regarding the new sex survey while i m sure that due to lazyness some of the data was ommitted from the article i would venture to guess that the data that was presented did not deviate from the survey i do however think that it would be folly to have blind faith in a single newswriter s analysis of this data in this particular case there was little analysis and the reader was left to draw his her own convictions yes and no the survey presented according to mr cramer a value called the median which one used this makes us believe that of the males had plus sex partners and of the males had or less sex partners homosexuals are purported to make up only in this case the majority of people with plus sex partners are heterosexual it is my feeling that median was not the intended word usage but if it is then we have little evidence to support mr cramer claims about gay promiscuity hetero promiscuity many netters mr cramer included often forget that the american media are merely a number of businesses who s purpose in life is to make money for their owners and stockholders revenues come largely from advertisers who merely want maximum useful exposure per dollar the media is like fast food the quality of the food or of the reporting will improve only if the customers demand as such otherwise it is business as usual very good this is a point that i have tried to bring out and as any network news program will show you it is true the news media is a business and as such becomes skewed because of where its loyalties lie there is an old statement by a man and i cannot remember him or his statment exactly but it warns against the merger of business and news reporting because of the obvious consequences what master is news going to serve in the end the advertiser and the bias of the news group
