(no subject)

[shadowkat]

1. Apparently I'm not the only one who didn't enjoy this week's Who all that much and had issues with it.

I didn't hate it. But, I'm admittedly not quite as fannish about the series as others. But I did think it was rather clumsily written.

Hmmm, while hunting down the listing of this season's Doctor Who episodes (hard to do when you have no clue which season this is supposed to be), I stumbled upon an announcement of the NEW DOCTOR or rather who will be replacing Capadali and when it will happen.[ETA: Fake announcement. Just found out it was fake. So never mind.]

Looked up Peter Harness, who co-wrote Pyramid at the End of the World, and yep I don't like his writing. He'd also wrote the Zygon invasion episodes, which I also had issues with. In fact, I think I gave up on Doctor Who during that season in part because of those episodes.

2. Dinner was lovely with U last night. She's very wise. She refuses to discuss or talk about politics at all. With anyone. I'd bring it up. She'd say nothing. Or change the subject. (U voted for Clinton.) Avoids it completely in every way.

3. My crazy church friends on FB are still throwing cats at me. The latest is a poor cat who is depressed after just losing her owner of ten or twelve years. This is getting ridiculous. Although it is rather amusing. My friends on Dreamwidth are trying to talk me out of it, while my friends on FB are trying to guilt me into adopting a cat right this very second. Who knew adopting a cat was such a controversial subject? I blame all those cat videos.

Comments

[ex_peasant441]

So less National Enquirer and more Daily News, New York Post, and Newsday?

Having glanced very briefly at some of their websites, I think that is correct. The Sun is probably the least respectable of ours, focusing mostly on celebrity stuff and sports.

if any of them are owned by Rupert Murdoch, I'll question them, because Murdoch is the king of yellow journalism.
Murdoch owns the Sun. He also owns The Times - which is about as reputable as journalism comes. So it goes to show you never can tell.

I know the Guardian and Telegraph are very liberal biased

Actually the Guardian is left wing and the Telegraph is right wing. The Guardian is catering for the classic urban intelligentsia Anywhere types. It would be characterised as supporting the Liberal Democrats (since the Labour Party got taken over by terrorist-supporting extremists) and unreconciled Remain voters. The Telegraph has a much bigger readership and is more rural and small town Somewhere types, characterised as voting Tory and Leave. The Times has about the same readership as the Telegraph but is more London, especially city workers, centre right, and voted Remain but is now reconciled and pragmatic about it.

Snopse and Fact Check.org are our friends
Except I learnt the hard way that Fact Check.org is very left biased and not reliable itself :D

It's surprisingly easy to hood-wink the press. They don't fact-check things like they should.
This is true. And whenever you know anything about something in the press it is always slightly wrong. Journalists are drawn from a limited pool of backgrounds and they really don't understand any subject outside their own. But I guess we can say that the noise and bluster generally seems to spit the truth out along the way. And sometimes a good bit of journalism really can change history. Watergate in your country is the obvious example. In this country it was the Telegraph investigation into Parliamentary Expenses, which completely changed how everyone viewed MPs. The repercussions are still with us.

In the 1990s, my brother conducted an experiment of sorts...it was performance art project in Ohio, to see if he could hood-wink the press with just a few press releases and wandering around doing a performance. He accomplished it. He completely fooled every Ohio newspaper and broadcast network in the area within the space of two weeks. No one fact-checked or investigated it. When he revealed it, they got upset and screamed bloody murder -- because obviously it was all his fault for fooling them, they weren't responsible at all.
That is brilliant!

People on both sides of the political spectrum think the fake news is proliferated by just one side, it really isn't.
Full disclosure time: I am descended from a long line of journalists and news editors, and my grandfather was head of BBC news. It is family legend that after any significant news broadcast he would be rung up by both the chairmen of the Tory and Labour parties, both claiming the report had been completely biased against their own party. Of course nowadays the BBC is completely biased, but we often forget the problem has been around for a very long time.