Do you believe the news?

Choice and Bernie. For those of you disappointed with the presidential election, there is hope in the form of a Facebook page, occupydemocrats. To me it is new. Check out https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats/ This is a site for disgruntled, depressed, and disappointed people to vent about the election, basically to continue the debate, to encourage news reports disfavoring Trump, and to support Obama to seize power and allow another election – this time a fair election. It supports my view that bitterness of the losing party has intensified over the past couple of decades. I am certain there are conservative sites, as well, allowing the other camp to vent their opinions on whatever, even the recent election outcomes. However, I don't know of any and won't look.

Bernie Goldberg, a former CBS reporter, understands why. To paraphrase, “People gravitate to sources of information that validate their own viewpoints, favoring what they say and rejecting alternatives.“

We could generalize by saying the more extreme your preferred news source, the more needy you are for validation. Or applying lessons from Psychology 101, the less certain you are in your own convictions.

That aside, personal convictions seem locked in; conversions are rare. A characteristic of religions, this is definitely not a good thing in the secular realm. With news outlets supporting opinion over actual news, there seems no source (I know of) where one can trust anything reported beyond video footage.

Yet, total bias in reporting ebbs and flows over time. This puts me in an interesting position.
I grew into adulthood with reasonably honest news, and having become skeptical and loathe the fake and false stuff, when I can can separate it from actual news. But now we see a new generation having grown up with the fake and the false. Their expectations are different, but how? Toward the more fake and false comforting, or toward disgust, or simply turn off? You can get a glimmer of public attitudes toward news at http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2004/newspapers-intro/public-attitudes/ There it’s revealed in a 2002 survey that

People tend to trust newspapers less than other mediums.
That trust is declining, as it is for other kinds of news mediums.
People think newspaper journalists are out of touch and motivated by commercial imperatives.
But people still turn to newspapers, particularly during certain kinds of news events and particularly for local news and for an opinion forum.

Naturally, you and I are put into a quandary. Can you believe the news about the news? Remember, every survey selects a sample, and here is where the sampling error, such as with recent election polls, has failed. In fact, a new form of sampling error emerged, and that is from those declining to be surveyed, possibly having a much different opinion than the survey-takers.

See more fake-news opinion (different from fake news-opinion) at my post: http://used-ideas.blogspot.com/2016/12/fake-news.html
See also, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/polling-experts-g-donald-allen?trk=pulse_spock-articles which is on polling.

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