News Around The World

[Rifraf]

I didn't know what to title this thread, but it's something I've been thinking about asking as we went through our recent political season ad nauseam the last 6 months. I'm not looking to make this thread political, but what I wanted to ask of our members outside the US was in regards to one aspect of your culture which is your news.

Do you have local and national news? Are some geared towards one political party in general while others simply report the news and don't offer opinions or bias? I know that seems out of nowhere, but may lead to more questions. I've just been meaning to ask and gather thoughts and educate myself.

 

[Jetfreak]

My armchair take: It's really more biased news than fake news. There's always a slant for sure.

In my country, there's two major news outlets. One is utterly pro-govt and the other is a little more balanced, but that's not saying much. They do have one thing in common though: so much ass-covering for our current president. His war on the drugs keeps getting a lot of flak from Human Rights groups.

 

[kjc733]

Agreed. The news networks report with a bias. Even the BBC is heavy anti-government at the moment and will jump on and twist any story to meet their slant, even if it doesn't make sense. I also don't like the way that news agencies try to drive policy instead of just reporting it and I think modern editorial standards are terrible. Web articles especially, if you look at them you'll see they all copy each other, spelling mistakes and all, and the BBC has gotten into the bad habit of mixing author opinion with fact.

I gave up on believing news reporting when I saw a Channel 4 news interview with the chief engineer for the A380 programme. I can't remember the specifics of it but the presenter was saying things that (as an aeronautical engineer myself) I knew was utter nonsense yet when the engineer she was interviewing tried to correct her she kept cutting him off and claiming that he was biased and was lying. Basically she wanted to make a name for reporting that the A380 was a deathtrap and was willing to repeat any old nonsense to make her point.
(Now I'm not a fan of the A380 and think it was a huge mistake on the part of Airbus - not least because if one goes down they'll hit the headlines as having the worst flight catastrophe in history - but it isn't a deathtrap).

 

[CABAL]

our current president

Your location says New Zealand, but your title thing says Philippine Ingenuity, and I don't think NZ has a president. Duterte, then? Your last sentence certainly sounds like Duterte.

@kjc733 - So what do you believe are the issues with the A380?

 

[kjc733]

I have two problems with the A380.
1. They are banking on the "hub and spoke" model of air transport, assuming that operators will only use major hubs for long distance flights and then will use smaller aircraft to go from those hub locations to satellite locations. The A380 is just too big for anything but a big major airport. Unfortunately the competition (and Airbus as well) has gone for smaller ultra long range aircraft which means that they can go from smaller airfields to any other smaller airfield. It makes more business sense to buy a larger fleet of smaller aircraft that can go anywhere rather than two fleets with one of those constrained to only a limited number of routes - especially given the move towards "Open Skies" type flight management to decongest airspace.

2. As I alluded to in my previous comment, those things can carry around 800 passengers. There was talk of a 1000 seat version. Accidents happen. If one of those things go down that's 800 dead people in one go and that will kill the A380s reputation regardless of the cause. People are quite willing to fly B737s despite how many of those have gone down over the years because that's "routine", 800 in one go would be the biggest air disaster ever and would be front page news everywhere. So called experts would be on the TV decrying them as death traps, every single fault the A380 has ever had would be dragged out, the aircraft would never fly again and Airbus would be hit hard. Look at Concorde. It had one accident and that was due to bad maintenance on a different (not Concorde) aircraft that had left titanium debris on the runway.

 

[CABAL]

I thought the Concorde was retired for impracticality. Could only fly it over oceans because of regulations regarding supersonic flight because of potential damage to things on the ground from sonic booms, and it was spectacularly expensive to operate.

 

[Hellkite]

Your location says New Zealand, but your title thing says Philippine Ingenuity, and I don't think NZ has a president. Duterte, then? Your last sentence certainly sounds like Duterte.

Jet is a Philippine ex-pat working & living in New Zealand

 

[kjc733]

I thought the Concorde was retired for impracticality. Could only fly it over oceans because of regulations regarding supersonic flight because of potential damage to things on the ground from sonic booms, and it was spectacularly expensive to operate.

Yes and no.
It was expensive to operate yes. And yes legislation prohibits operation overland, which is why there were very few routes open to it. But that is more to do with people wanting to kill it than practicality (you may note that there are several companies now pitching supersonic airliners...) It was a unique way to get across the Atlantic quickly.
It was grounded because it was deemed unsafe to operate. The aircraft ran over a piece of titanium on the runway that had dropped off another aircraft (it should have been aluminium which would have just been crushed which is why people got arrested, and the runway should have been FOD checked). The piece of titanium was flicked up by the wheels into the wing, piercing a fuel tank. Fuel from the tank was ignited by the engine.
All the "experts" crawled out of the woodwork claiming it was a bad design, unsafe, etc etc. However if any aircraft had suffered that set of circumstances it would have suffered a similar fate. But you can damn well bet it wouldn't have been permanently grounded.

 

[Jetfreak]

I think modern editorial standards are terrible. Web articles especially ...mixing author opinion with fact.

I've noticed this too. They say its to appeal to my "millennial" generation which I absolutely hate. I'm a bit old school where I don't want my news to look like some blog entry from the mid-2000's.

Oh yes, I was referring to Duterte, sorry about the confusion. But that brings up another point for me. Living in NZ has given me some perspective as well. Back in the Philippines, domestic news keeps you drowned with negative coverage. Like people dying in accidents every other day, some showbiz fluff and the fear mongering of the muslim insurgency at the Mindanao area. It gets more infuriating knowing that this is just a typical news cycle.

It's a lot different here in New Zealand. News is decidedly dull in contrast. Like an organic farm story, a Maori hertiage museum or just the lady Prime Minister having her baby. That, or they're just trying their best to hide Middle Earth from the public's attention...

NZ media has its own bias regardless. Leftist to a T and from what I've heard from Kiwis, they'd rather sweep some hot-seat issues under the rug. Like the Chinese buying huge tracts of land and the increasing homeless problems.

PS
Just reading about what kjc said on the A380 "reporter" made me cringe. I've noticed a lot of "modern" journalists do that cognitive dissonance thing, god that's annoying.

 

[Rifraf]

Appreciate the replies. I watch a variety of news here and steer clear of others that are blatantly pro-whoever. I've always been curious if other countries face similar issues as here.

I never realized about the A380 either so that was interesting kjc. I can certainly see the point of the how things would transpire with the huge loss of life in the event of a disaster with one.

 

[Archonon]

It is an unfortunate state of affairs but at this point journalists have lost their purest form of definition which is an impartial reporting of the news without any personal bias. That doesn't exist anymore; at least from the US and what news I see from other parts of the world.

Journalism has dissolved into agenda pushing propaganda on both sides, there is no objectivity or middle ground; and journalists continue to push increasingly into into politicizing the coverage they offer. Everything is opinion passed on as fact with simple accusations, finger pointing and anger with no room for respectful and civilized debate. Frankly, it is depressing.

At this moment in time I trust journalists with equal amount of confidence as I trust politicians. All that journalists do now is toot the horn of the faction they serve, the truth or the needs of the citizenry be damned.

 

[Rifraf]

You know it's interesting how our culture has changed and how we watch/get our news. If others have seen different please prove me wrong, but as "one" example one show I watch is ABC World news after work. Sometimes on for background noise and other times I do watch. David Muir hosts. Anyway, he simply reports the news, reads the story, the video shows then next and so on. No opinion, no judgement, no eye rolling, no counter point, etc. Some happy stories and of course the tragedies. Basically you watch to find out the days events then it's over. And I can see how in some aspects that's pretty boring if you will.

But we had the rise of shows that cater to one demographic or political base and all of a sudden people don't have to decide the merits of a story on their own. All of a sudden it's fed to them and if you say something enough times people believe it and it starts to get under their skin until we have what we see today where people can't contain themselves any longer or conduct themselves in a decent manner and instead of simply reporting the news with fact based information you get arguments, and counter opinions and stretching of the truth and hiding of the truth. And the stories are repeated minute after minute, day after day over and over.