If you really need to hear from profs, you won't need to pay for these

At "50 Awesome Ivy League Lectures All About the Future" (Jun 3rd, 2009), Meredith Walker introduces the lectures, saying,

These tough times call for forward thinking: looking toward the future, as well as considering how we can improve it. Ivy League lectures online offer a look at issues including science, politics, economics, and more. Here, you’ll find top notch lectures in these topics and beyond that will have you thinking of days to come.

Some look quite interesting, for example "50 years in media: Changes in journalism."

But, it must be said, such programs normally promise far more than they deliver.

I, for example, have been taken aback by the lies I have heard from media panels over the years.

You know the sort of thing: "Journalists are objective, we only report the news, we are not influenced by advertising, we have nothing against traditional ethics and morality, we do not reflexively support the deviant .... " All lies.

And when not lies, sheer fatuity: "Dog bites man is not a story. Man bites dog is a story."

Yeah right. And so? Does that explain why pack journalists targeted a Canadian health minister in the 1970s and made a big deal out of the fact that he was a Catholic and had six kids? - and have done the same sort of thing repeatedly to many others ever since (but only to Christians; they wouldn't dare attack anyone else)?

In my view, traditional media are failing not because their lies and bias are being exposed but simply because the news customer now has many other choices. If anything, they have become more vicious and irresponsible as a result. But they matter much less and will not be missed.

I first started researching the intelligent design controversy because it was difficult to find any media source that cared what was really happening, as opposed to reflexively "framing" the story. = The "smart" Christian prof who knows that Darwin and Jesus would get on like a house on fire takes on the fundie undies who just don't "get it" about anything.

It was ruddy embarrassing to an old news hound to realize that not a single one of the portentous journalists emitting this crap had actually sat down and read a book like Darwin's Black Box or Edge of Evolution, that addressed the science problems with current evolution theory.

In fairness, they probably couldn't afford to, because they would then need to realize that many of their favoured pundits have been covering up a huge deficit for many years, uttering platitudes to the public and outlining problems only among peers.

Now that is genuine news and it happens to be true, but "news" media, of course, didn't want it.

No, the legacy media will not be missed.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: