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View Full Version : the media is affecting me on the economy



huggytree
05-08-2009, 12:00 PM
I always thought i couldnt be affected by the media.....i know everything they say has a hidden agenda...its all 1/2 the story to fit their politics.

i swore my company was doing much worse than last year.....everything is just so depressing....i knew i started the year ahead, but felt my gross sales must be way down by now...

i checked my quick books and im only down 2% from last year...i would have guessed 20% or more...funny how feelings and reality are very different....ive been afraid to put some profits from last year into investments...just incase i need it to live on.....i called my investor lady today..all in

im still questioning if were going to do a vacation this year...right now i vote 90% yes

my work load is very different..in 08 -50% of my sales were new homes, now its 10%...ive increased my remodeling(more profitable) and added service work to what i do (instead of giving it away to friends)

vangogh
05-08-2009, 01:21 PM
You make two interesting points.

1. Yes we are affected by the media. Hear something enough times and you start to believe it regardless of how it matches reality. A good example is politics. No matter what side of the fence you sit on, politics seems to have become a game where you take your opponents views and frame them into something negative. If you listen to either party you could be led to believe the world will come to an end if the other party is in control.

2. How you tweaked your business model to help you get though rough economic times


my work load is very different..in 08 -50% of my sales were new homes, now its 10%...ive increased my remodeling(more profitable) and added service work to what i do (instead of giving it away to friends)

Some business think they will always be successful doing things the way they did yesterday. Times change, people change. We all need to be able to adapt to meet today's and tomorrow's needs.

Vivid Color Zack
05-08-2009, 02:10 PM
I thought I was an independent thinker too. I thought the media would never change my thoughts on anything and I was the type of person that was immune to advertising and it's evils.

Yesterday I ordered mini sirloin burgers for lunch.

I am just another victim...

rezzy
05-08-2009, 04:16 PM
We like to think we are impervious to the media, advertising but in reality we cant be.

Businesses that cant adapt will be left behind. Most businesses realize that Twitter is an important marketing tool. So they jump on even if they dont agree with it.

KristineS
05-08-2009, 05:05 PM
It's the same thing with the flu virus. If you listen to what's on television you'd think millions were dying. In reality there have been very few deaths.

The media is looking to get viewers and sell the story. It's unfortunate, but that's the truth.

vangogh
05-08-2009, 06:32 PM
One good thing about having an understanding of marketing is you can see what's happening while it's happening and so it has less power to affect you. Once you become aware of the tactics some media outlets use to try an influence you they lose some of their ability to influence.


The media is looking to get viewers and sell the story.

That's really what it's all about. With the flu right now we're much more likely to watch if we think this could potentially wipe out half of humanity than we are if we think it's just a new strain of the same old thing. So media plays to our fears and that's the story we see.

By the way if you pay attention to what they do and how they do it, you can learn from it and apply it to marketing your business.

nealrm
05-08-2009, 09:24 PM
I have to say I generally distrust the media. For the past several years the focus has been more into selling a story and less about truth. TV news is only good for the weather and sport scores. For everything else I try to get stories from both conservative and liberal new sources. Unfortunately the media on both sides is getting further and further apart. (I don't find this to be true of the public in general) However, if I listen to Rush in one ear and NPR in the other, things balances out.

WARNING: Listening to liberal and conservative propaganda at the same time has been shown to cause whiplash, confusion, mood swings, disorientation, and a tendency to post soapbox comments on forums.:D

Blessed
05-09-2009, 12:12 AM
... I try to get stories from both conservative and liberal new sources. Unfortunately the media on both sides is getting further and further apart. (I don't find this to be true of the public in general) However, if I listen to Rush in one ear and NPR in the other, things balances out.

WARNING: Listening to liberal and conservative propaganda at the same time has been shown to cause whiplash, confusion, mood swings, disorientation, and a tendency to post soapbox comments on forums.:D

Glad to hear that I'm not the only one who does this! Oh and the warning is appropriate :)

Steve B
05-09-2009, 06:29 AM
I agree about listening to both sides. It takes some diligence to piece together a complete picture sometimes.

It's funny how people blame the media for not telling the truth or not telling both sides - then they quote facts they certainly must have gotten from the media to prove their point. What they mean is that various individual media sources don't often tell the complete picture. For instance, I knew that only a few people have died from swine flu and I didn't drive around the country asking hospital administrators. I learned if from the media.

vangogh
05-09-2009, 11:33 AM
It's funny how people blame the media for not telling the truth or not telling both sides - then they quote facts they certainly must have gotten from the media to prove their point.

A bit ironic isn't it? I think sometimes when people say the media isn't telling the truth it's because one (or a few) particular media outlets aren't telling the truth as they want to hear it. It usually comes down to political affiliation too.

We live in an age of information. We now have to take some responsibility for what information we let and also understanding how that information might be biased.

One thing I'd be careful about if you're alternating between different overly liberal and overly conservative to get your news is you're mainly getting your information at the extremes. Sure it's balanced in the sense that you get both sides, but that still leaves out the middle.

KristineS
05-09-2009, 12:55 PM
The problem is that some people still want to hold on to they myth that the news is neutral, about reporting just the facts, when it isn't that way anymore. Fox News and MSNBC are proof of that. One is blatantly conservative and one is equally blatantly liberal. You're getting a bias when you watch their shows. If you know that and take what is said in that spirit, fine. It's when you're not aware that there is a problem. You have to get your news from several sources, including ones with which you might not agree, if you want to have any hope of getting a real unbiased picture of what's happening.

nealrm
05-09-2009, 01:35 PM
I think the problem is not that the news is bias, it is that the balance of the sides is not close to equal. While all media has sources on both sides, each media type has it's own leaning. On TV and in newspapers, that balance is strongly on the liberal side. Talk radio is balanced toward the conservative side. As a whole, radio does not balance out TV or newspapers. So the overall balance of the media is liberal.

VG - Is there a media outlet that is neutral?

huggytree
05-09-2009, 05:13 PM
Fox news has multple guests on their news & money/investment shows...usually 4-5 people from all political views.

on the nightly 5pm news they have 15 minutes where you get 2 conservative, 1 liberal (wan williams), and 1 liberal light....they make an attempt for that 15 minutes to be neutral...who else does that?

Fox is usually outright conservative....but they do more to give different views than anyone else...they are the only news i watch....other outlets are hostile to my point of view and i do not trust anything they say.

vangogh
05-09-2009, 06:12 PM
s there a media outlet that is neutral?

Everything filtered through a human being is biased to some degree. At the very least there's the choice in what to report and what not to report. I tend to mostly read news through Reuters or the AP. Not completely neutral of course, but I think more so than typical tv or radio news and even more neutral than what you get in any newspaper. Even when getting information from something I know is biased I still try to extract what are facts while casting off the bias. Granted like anyone else I'm going to be influenced by the bias, but I try not to be.

I think it's unfair when people characterize media in general as liberal. By it's very nature it's going to come across as liberal. Media is about freedom of speech and freedom of the press which have now been labeled liberal. It's the same way most big business is going to be labeled conservative. It's the nature of each to come across that way.

I'm not suggesting there's no liberal bias in media. In some places there is and in some places there's conservative bias. How much and where often depends on which side of the fence you already stand on.


other outlets are hostile to my point of view and i do not trust anything they say.

So you judge them not by whether or not they are accurate or fair, but by how much they agree with the point of view you already hold. That's why the news has become less objective over the years. As a group we're less interested in hearing facts than we are in having our world view agreed with. Some media outlets thus take a conservative view to attract a conservative audience and some take a liberal view to attract a liberal audience. Neither seems to want to hear anything that makes the other side look good.

The media is biased because we want it to be biased.

huggytree
05-09-2009, 08:29 PM
if the media is bias because we want them to be then why is every news station (except fox) and almost every news paper liberal?

when the country is equally split...

why is talk radio mostly conservative...when the country is equally split

vangogh
05-10-2009, 01:18 AM
Well I wouldn't say every news station other than Fox is and almost every paper is liberal. I think there are more conservative papers and stations out there, but I didn't say it was about there having to be a 50/50 balance across the board here either per medium either.

Perhaps demographics showed more conservatives listen to talk radio and so talk radio became more conservative while demographics also showed more liberals were watching tv and so tv news leaned liberal.

I'm not sure where the connection is between my suggestion that we want biased news so we get biased news and it having to be an equal split across every medium. All I'm saying is media across the board is still business and is trying to make money. If a newspaper sees most of it's readers leans liberal then the paper will too in order to sell more papers. If the paper sees most of its readers lean conservative...

Steve B
05-10-2009, 07:04 AM
The country has been fairly evenly split over the years and it does seem to defy the math that we don't have a more even split among similar media types. I think the owner's of the instituations seem to get a say in the bias of their product and for some reason TV and newspapers seem to lean one way while talk radio leans another.

It really doesn't matter much to me - I make a point of avoiding all news as much as possible - I like being ignorant. I heard we had a big election recently - who won?

nighthawk
05-10-2009, 08:30 AM
I think we are all guilty of being influenced by the media - right now things are pretty good for myself, and I am considering buying a new computer, however with companies going bust every week, and others cutting back, I cant help but feel I should hold off and make do with what I have just in case things do change for the worse. Businesses seem to be doing the same - a lot of businesses are posting large quarterly profits and reporting no drop in business, yet seem to be axing jobs and cutting back on costs wherever they can. All of this seems to be due to media hype.

When it comes to news, I prefer to read forums rather than news websites. As soon as a story breaks, all the news agencies seem to rush to be the first to report it, simply posting whatever they feel like without researching it. If you visit the forums you will soon find people who actually know something about the topic at hand and can correct the inaccuracies - by the time they have done so the true facts begin to emerge and you soon realise it is all a big fuss over nothing.

Being an aviation enthusiast, I tend to see this rather a lot. Quite often a minor event will occur that doesn't even merit a mention in aviation sites, yet the media will grab the story, twist the facts and make it sound as if it was a major disaster. Its all hype and scare mongering with the sole aim of selling newspapers rather than reporting facts.

vangogh
05-11-2009, 09:43 AM
I think it comes down to us to realize that all information we're getting is going to be biased in some way. Maybe not a lot, but the fact that a human being is somewhere in the chain delivering it to us means it's been biased to some degree.

We live in an age of information. Finding information is now the easy part. Deciding which sources to trust is the hard part. It falls on us to be responsible for where we get our news and what we choose to believe as fact and what we can see is opinion.

The media does affect us, but we should keep in mind that we also affect the media. The news is tailored to get us to watch more of it, listen to more of it, and read more of it.

cbscreative
05-11-2009, 04:04 PM
Who needs the news? I'm with SteveB. Besides, if you get the basics of what is going on and read the history books, the slant doesn't matter because you can predict the future rather easily. Is everyone ready for some serious inflation? In the next 18 months or so, that's what the headlines will be reporting. Since it will be significant and real, you can anticipate some serious hype from the media to scare people even more.

Spider
05-11-2009, 08:02 PM
...So you judge them not by whether or not they are accurate or fair, but by how much they agree with the point of view you already hold.....I think this is very insightful. The comments in this thread all suppose that the media is biased one way or the other and the audience is unbiased. Whereas, I suggest, it is the individual members of the audience that is biased. If you had only one news source and that news source was absolutely unquestionably unbiased, the complaints would be exactly the same and every one of the posts in this thread could be posted without alteration.

I find it best not to source a fair selection of different media, but to listen/watch one that I find most acceptable and then take in a smattering of other sources to the left and to the right of my favored position to broaden my outlook.

But each to their own.

Blacktalon
05-11-2009, 09:03 PM
I have to say I generally distrust the media. For the past several years the focus has been more into selling a story and less about truth. TV news is only good for the weather and sport scores. For everything else I try to get stories from both conservative and liberal new sources. Unfortunately the media on both sides is getting further and further apart. (I don't find this to be true of the public in general) However, if I listen to Rush in one ear and NPR in the other, things balances out.

WARNING: Listening to liberal and conservative propaganda at the same time has been shown to cause whiplash, confusion, mood swings, disorientation, and a tendency to post soapbox comments on forums.:D
The media is corporate funded with a specific viewpoint and political angle to promote. Everything you see in the news has been edited to fit this viewpoint and corporate structure when broadcast to the public.

It's clearly evident when you hear the same story being told by different news broadcasters.

Therefore it's always an intelligent practice to avoid reading corporate-funded media and instead look at non-profit organizations or institutions that promote a "neutral" viewpoint.

Which is generally hard to do considering how enveloped we are by it. However you seem to have come to your senses by actually realizing the truth yourself: things just aren't as bad as the media portrays it to be.

Congrats on the "awakening." :)

vangogh
05-12-2009, 11:55 AM
If you had only one news source and that news source was absolutely unquestionably unbiased, the complaints would be exactly the same and every one of the posts in this thread could be posted without alteration

I completely agree. We are all biased. As soon as a human being enters the equation subjectivity enters the equation too. A lot of why we might see media as biased is due to our own biases. If you are very conservative then a moderately conservative newspaper might seem liberal to you. That same paper would come across as very conservative to someone who holds a very liberal worldview.


The media is corporate funded with a specific viewpoint and political angle to promote. Everything you see in the news has been edited to fit this viewpoint and corporate structure when broadcast to the public.

Yes and no. I agree that most media outlets are still a business and thus need to sell. Which means having an overall worldview that matches the worldview of its audience. But I don't think it's so calculated as you might be implying. I think most people enter the field of journalism because they want to report news fairly and honestly. But they happen to be human beings and their own bias shapes the stories they choose to cover and how they cover those stories. And sure every company gains direction from the top. However if ultimately the media is presenting to us what we want them to present to us. In business if you go against your market you'll lose your market.


Therefore it's always an intelligent practice to avoid reading corporate-funded media and instead look at non-profit organizations or institutions that promote a "neutral" viewpoint.

I'd be willing to bet that everyone here who calls themselves conservative would see the non-profit news is highly liberal. Again it comes down to your own worldview.

I try to get my news from sources I consider neutral. Someone else might not see those same sources as neutral. I also try to mix up where I get my information and do my best to extract the news and let the opinion fall away. It's impossible to do completely, but I do try.