Category: Media

The Moreness of Everything

Books & Reviews / Media / Musings / Psychology & Sociology4 Comments

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The title of this post comes from a subhead in Thomas De Zengotita’s book, Mediated: How the Media Shape the World Around You (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005) in which the author writes about choices, and “how much the screen of human consciousness can register at a given moment.” This is an important question for today, with so many people (younger people, especially) glued to their phones, always online, always engaged, always scrolling, clicking, texting. And scrolling past the headlines, not reading the whole story, getting only a few words before scrolling on to the next headline or jumping to another source … click below for more ↓

Normalizing Fascism: The Paradox of Tolerance

Critical Thinking / Media / Politics / Rightwing claptrap6 Comments

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The Brexit campaign succeeded on a platform that cultivated anger, fear, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation. Donald Trump’s campaigns have succeeded twice on platforms that increasingly cultivated anger, fear, misogyny, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation. Pierre PoiLIEvre, head of Canada’s now far-right MAGA-mimicking CONservative Party campaigns on a platform that cultivates anger, fear, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation in the hope of succeeding as the next Prime Minister. If Canada’s electorate is ignorant enough, and has not learned the lessons either of history or the American experience with fascism, he might … click below for more ↓

CBC Strives for Supermarket Tabloid Status

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Media / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery2 Comments

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As a source of credible journalism, CBC used to be one of the standards by which other media measured themselves. It was reliable, honest, and responsible. Oh, how far CBC has fallen from that perch. Decades of (mostly CONservative-implemented) cuts to reporting and editing staff, egregious layoffs too often in parallel with high executive bonuses ($14.9 million paid to roughly 1,100 people in 2023), coupled with an executive management which has clearly lost focus and has been flailing about aimlessly have taken their inevitable toll on the once-great Canadian institution. This week, CBC scraped a new low in the barrel … click below for more ↓

Aptos vs Calibri

Computers & Programming / Media / TypographyOne Comment

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Did you notice the change? Microsoft has made the typeface Aptos the new default for its Office programs, replacing the venerable Calibri after 17 years. Aptos has been rolled out to users since December, 2023, and, at least for me, finally made it to my versions of Office in February. I. like so many others, didn’t notice it right away. I do a lot of my writing online, like this blog, where other typefaces are used. I only twigged onto the change last week when I was working on an older document in MS Word and thought the spacing looked … click below for more ↓

Why Local Media Has Failed Us

Collingwood / Local media / Media / Media Issues8 Comments

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The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2024, released this week, identifies the biggest short-term risk to the planet is from misinformation and disinformation, even above extreme weather events. The risk is highest during the next two years when “more than 3 billion people due to head to the polls in 2024 and 2025, including in major economies like the United States, India and the United Kingdom” where rightwing dictators and fascists like Trump, Putin, Poilievre, and Modi will be on the political stage.* What has the WEF report got to do with local media? Trust. We need to trust … click below for more ↓

The Book of Knowledge: 3

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Learning & Education / Media / Musings / Politics / Reading & Literacy / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Back in the Mesozoic of my life, I came across a quotation from Giacomo Casanova that, as far as I can remember these days, went “No man can know everything, but every man should attempt to.” For many decades, I didn’t know the source, or whether it was misquoted, misattributed, or simply a fake as we experience so often on most internet quote sites (aka clickbait sites). But it stuck with me. I recently found a more fulsome translation of his words from Chapter V of his memoirs: No one in this world can obtain a knowledge of everything, but … click below for more ↓

Smith, Rock, and the Trivialization of Western Culture

Books & Reviews / Culture / Media / Media Issues / Memes; Internet & Social / Musings / Social Order & Disorder / TV / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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If Neil Postman were alive today, sitting in a bar or café with Chris Hedges, I wonder which one would say “I told you so!” first after seeing social media this past week? The story that clogged the social media pipes this week was the slap one actor gave another on stage during the performance of the annual onanism festival called the Oscars. And as soon as it happened, even while it was occurring, a shitstorm of comments, opinions and reportage flooded social media. Every social media feed was clogged with pieces like tarry stercus and then flooded by the … click below for more ↓

The Hermeneutics of Suspicion

Local media / Media / Politics / Style & usage / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymologyLeave a comment

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The title is a phrase I encountered while reading Mark Thompson’s excellent book on political rhetoric, Enough Said: What’s Wrong With the Language of Politics? Thompson’s book is both about the current and historic use of political rhetoric (from Aristotle forward), but also about the role of journalists in covering it. Thompson — a former new editor and executive in the BBC and now with the New York Times — maintains we are in  “a crisis of political language” that comes from a combination of modern media, social media use, and also in the changing way politicians speak (“characterised by … click below for more ↓

Lessons from History

History & Biography / Media / Political philosophy / Politics / US PoliticsLeave a comment

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It is common practice to look back and conflate the events of the past with those of the present, seeking parallels, resonance, and answers from previous events that help explain today’s. We learn from others, from their experiences, and we like to find commonalities in our shared experiences, even from our or other’s historic past. We see ourselves reflected in our past and we sometimes mistake that reflection for the reality. Machiavelli did it in both The Prince and The Discourses, didactically using examples from classical Greek and Roman texts to explore the events, politics, and governance in his contemporary … click below for more ↓

Decades, centuries and millennia

Critical Thinking / Culture / History & Biography / Logic and reason / Media / Style & usageOne Comment

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January 1 is NOT the start of a new decade. To the CBC and the other arithmetically-challenged media who insist otherwise: it isn’t. You just don’t understand how to count to 10. No matter how you spin it, 9 years is not 10. And even if it was, starting or ending a decade or any other period of time has no magical significance. Neither history nor culture, neither politics nor science work along calendrical timelines and our own calendar is an arbitrary construct for convenience only. But back to the numbers. It all comes down to simple numbers. I get … click below for more ↓

Goodbye, Information Age

Critical Thinking / Culture / Internet & Social Media / Literature / Media / Social Order & Disorder / US PoliticsLeave a comment

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“Say goodbye to the information age: it’s all about reputation now,” is the headline of an article by Italian philosopher and professor Gloria Origgi, published recently on Aeon Magazine’s website. She writes: …the vastly increased access to information and knowledge we have today does not empower us or make us more cognitively autonomous. Rather, it renders us more dependent on other people’s judgments and evaluations of the information with which we are faced. I no longer need to open a computer, go online and type my questions into Google if I want to know something: I can simply ask it. … click below for more ↓

The slow death of media credibility

Collingwood / Culture / Local media / Media / Municipal Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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A story in the recent issue of New Republic opens: “A decade of turmoil has left a weakened press vulnerable to political attacks, forced into ethical compromises, and increasingly outstripped by new forms of digital media.” This points to the continuing erosion of public confidence in traditional media. While this piece refers to national (American) and international media, it applies equally to local media – all types. Traditional media has been disappearing under the waves of digital media for the past two decades. In its fight to stay afloat and retain audience, a lot of media outlets have tried to … click below for more ↓

What’s wrong with local media?

Collingwood / Media / Media Issues / PoliticsLeave a comment

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“It’s about trust. Our relationship with our readers is built on transparency, honesty and integrity.” So opens the front-page piece in this weekend’s Connection, titled in all-caps, “Local News Needs Support ‘Now More Than Ever’”. It echoes the theme of”now more than ever” written for National Newspaper Week, Oct. 1-7. And some of it is eerily similar to what Bob Cox wrote about journalism on Oct. 2. Imitation is the sincerest form, I suppose. Apparently the Connection only climbed on board six weeks later. But I suppose it’s better late than… well, no it’s not. At least during National Newspaper … click below for more ↓

Reading as a forgotten art

Books & Reviews / Culture / Literature / Media / Reading & Literacy / TV / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Earlier this month (February, 2018), the Globe & Mail published an essay by author Michael Harris titled, “I have forgotten how to read.” In it, he recounted how he recently tried to read a single chapter of a book, but failed. Frustrated, instead turned to TV: Paragraphs swirled; sentences snapped like twigs; and sentiments bled out. The usual, these days. I drag my vision across the page and process little. Half an hour later, I throw down the book and watch some Netflix. Which, I think, is the poor choice of alternatives. Giving up doesn’t improve the skill set or … click below for more ↓

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