The Media Industry

In my experience I have found few really good attorneys, in reality it’s like most professions it’s a bell curve. I had an aggie attorney one time, I know that’s on me, but where I live very few choices. I know I did most of the lawyering. He even asked what codes they broke, luckily I have UT attorney friends and it was a very small case.
 
humahuma said:
In my experience I have found few really good attorneys, in reality it’s like most professions it’s a bell curve. I had an aggie attorney one time, I know that’s on me, but where I live very few choices. I know I did most of the lawyering. He even asked what codes they broke, luckily I have UT attorney friends and it was a very small case.
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Part of the problem is that it's hard to know when an attorney is good until you've already retained him or her. I think customer reviews help if there are enough of them, but those have their limits. For example, a friend of mine got a bad review from a client. It just said "he lost in court." I called up my friend to tell him about it, and the client no-showed on the morning of trial. Well, that might explain why she lost, but the review said nothing about that.

Positive reviews don't always help either. A friend of my old boss's had a case go to trial. He needed his paralegal to take notes during jury selection. She had a family emergency, so he called my boss and asked for help. We were short-staffed at the time and needed someone to answer the phone, so I went. Well, this dude sucked in the courtroom - crappy questioning of the panel, poor legal arguments on evidentiary issues, and an arrogant attitude in court that had the jury squirming in their seats by the end of the day. Needless to say, he lost. His reviews online? Excellent. He obviously must do something well, but I'd never trust that guy in the courtroom.
 
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There's social media speculation that the settlement was nuisance value.



Hard to know what the truth is because everybody has a reason to lie. However, if it was nuisance value, it's just more evidence that the defamation laws need to be much tougher on the media. It just shouldn't be that easy for them to get away with taking a piss on somebody with no regard for the truth and evidence.
 
According to a Wapo article last week it was 250 million.
That is a lot of nuisances.

I read it wrong. It said they had agreed to settle the 250 mil lawsuit, not that they had agreed to the 250 mil.
 
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Horn6721 said:
According to a Wapo article last week it was 250 million.
That is a lot of nuisances.

I read it wrong. It said they had agreed to settle the 250 mil lawsuit, not that they had agreed to the 250 mil.
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Yep, aways read the language carefully. I filed lots of "million dollar lawsuits" that never got near $1M.
 
Tucker Carlson has been and still is blowing out the cable news ratings
Liberals used to really hate Bill O'Reily and then Sean Hannity but Carlson has now left the best ratings those two ever had in the dust
How does he do it?
The answer is not complicated
People are responding to him because he tells the truth
He is the only person in cable news who does this

Take just a moment and think about that
There is a huge market out here for honesty in news
Be honest, tell the truth and people will flock to you
You would think the others might learn from this. But they wont

Here is one good example. He calls out the normally "Fox-friendly" Jim Jordan for his hypocritical positions on Google
 
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Mr. Deez said:
There's social media speculation that the settlement was nuisance value.....
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My sense is that it was more than just nuisance value, which we will define for this purpose as costs to date plus something for the attorney

I just dont see that Sandmann has any reason to fully capitulate. He could afford to roll the dice. Time is his friend, which is not true for all plaintiffs. Plus, based on his comments, he seems like something of a crusader. He was fighting for principle. So I think the amount must have had some substance. Plus, he can also afford to think of it as $X times 6 more defendants to process, which is something else most plaintiffs dont get to do. In the end, I think he will at least have his college paid.* Maybe something for his folks too, if he is the good boy we think he is.


*I would even encourage UT to offer him a full schollie but he is Catholic so probably dreams of Notre Dame
 
Joe Fan said:
My sense is that it was more than just nuisance value, which we will define for this purpose as costs to date plus something for the attorney

I just dont see that Sandmann has any reason to fully capitulate. He could afford to roll the dice. Time is his friend, which is not true for all plaintiffs. Plus, based on his comments, he seems like something of a crusader. He was fighting for principle. So I think the amount must have had some substance. Plus, he can also afford to think of it as $X times 6 more defendants to process, which is something else most plaintiffs dont get to do. In the end, I think he will at least have his college paid.* Maybe something for his folks too, if he is the good boy we think he is.


*I would even encourage UT to offer him a full schollie but he is Catholic so probably dreams of Notre Dame
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I wonder if there is clawback depending upon what he receives in other settlements. He is potentially unemployable. I would argue for $100k x 30 years or $3m total. Or round it up to $5 mil. Of course you add the legal fees on top. Then $10m fund being pursued among 6 defendants?
 
mchammer said:
I wonder if there is clawback depending upon what he receives in other settlements. He is potentially unemployable. I would argue for $100k x 30 years or $3m total. Or round it up to $5 mil. Of course you add the legal fees on top. Then $10m fund being pursued among 6 defendants?
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Good argument. That's one of the points of defamation law to begin with. An attempted remedy for a wrongfully damaged reputation. How do you ever get that back?

As to the actual numbers, its impossible to know. Maybe 30 years from now, the details might emerge in a book.
 
mchammer said:
I wonder if there is clawback depending upon what he receives in other settlements. He is potentially unemployable. I would argue for $100k x 30 years or $3m total. Or round it up to $5 mil. Of course you add the legal fees on top. Then $10m fund being pursued among 6 defendants?
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You generally don't recover attorney's fees in a defamation or other tort action.
 
If only there existed a single word for "Individuals with a cervix."
Think of all the trees we could save
Who can help our media friends out?
 
I laughed
This is the WAPO
Again
EeQmqNYXkAMTdpI
 
Maybe there is some hope for Fox News after all?

Left-winger James Murdoch has resigned from News Corp (parent of FOX News) over “Differences in Editorial Content”
Hopefully this includes his wife who works at the "Clinton Climate Initiative" - lol
 
"An MSNBC producer who resigned last month published a scathing resignation letter Monday in which she blasted the television news industry for blocking “diversity of thought and content” while amplifying “fringe voices and events … all because it pumps up the ratings.”
* * *

Pekary said her colleagues sought content that would boost the network’s ratings rather than inform viewers. “Context and factual data are often considered too cumbersome for the audience,” Pekary said. “There may be some truth to that (our education system really should improve the critical thinking skills of Americans) – but another hard truth is that it is the job of journalists to teach and inform, which means they might need to figure out a better way to do that.”

She added: “Occasionally, the producers will choose to do a topic or story without regard for how they think it will rate, but that is the exception, not the rule. Due to the simple structure of the industry – the desire to charge more money for commercials, as well as the ratings bonuses that top-tier decision-makers earn – they always relapse into their old profitable programming habits.” ...."​

MSNBC Producer Ariana Pekary Resignation Letter: TV News is a 'Cancer'
 
Joe Fan said:
"An MSNBC producer who resigned last month published a scathing resignation letter Monday in which she blasted the television news industry for blocking “diversity of thought and content” while amplifying “fringe voices and events … all because it pumps up the ratings.”
* * *

Pekary said her colleagues sought content that would boost the network’s ratings rather than inform viewers. “Context and factual data are often considered too cumbersome for the audience,” Pekary said. “There may be some truth to that (our education system really should improve the critical thinking skills of Americans) – but another hard truth is that it is the job of journalists to teach and inform, which means they might need to figure out a better way to do that.”

She added: “Occasionally, the producers will choose to do a topic or story without regard for how they think it will rate, but that is the exception, not the rule. Due to the simple structure of the industry – the desire to charge more money for commercials, as well as the ratings bonuses that top-tier decision-makers earn – they always relapse into their old profitable programming habits.” ...."​

MSNBC Producer Ariana Pekary Resignation Letter: TV News is a 'Cancer'
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Her reasons are based solely around ratings and profit margin and ignore the real reason, which is because they have an agenda to advance. If it leads to more profit because they are giving the sheep what they want then so much the better for them.
 
TxnByBirth said:
Her reasons are based solely around ratings and profit margin and ignore the real reason, which is because they have an agenda to advance. If it leads to more profit because they are giving the sheep what they want then so much the better for them.
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Besides her suggestion that the people there are singular focused, she also raises the possibility that the people there are so dumb they dont know how they are being used
 
A large poll on the media shows, among other things, 84% of Americans blame the media for creating corrosive political divisions in the country.
54% believe fake news is reported deliberately
74% believe media owners are influencing news coverage.

Other findings

Half (49%) of all Americans think the media is very biased. Fifty-six percent say their own news sources are biased, and seven in 10 are concerned about bias in the news others are getting. Eight percent — driven largely by conservatives — say distrusted media are trying to ruin the country.

Americans think the media is pushing an agenda. Three in four people (74%) worry that owners of media companies are influencing coverage, up five points since 2017. They also suspect that inaccuracies in reporting are purposeful, with 54% believing that reporters misrepresent the facts, and 28% believing reporters make them up entirely.​

Gallup/Knight Poll: Americans’ concerns about media bias deepen, even as they see it as vital for democracy
 
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TxnByBirth said:
Her reasons are based solely around ratings and profit margin and ignore the real reason, which is because they have an agenda to advance. If it leads to more profit because they are giving the sheep what they want then so much the better for them.
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I think they go hand in hand. Advancing an agenda increases ratings and profit because most people would rather watch/read news with an agenda than news without an agenda.
 
Joe Fan said:
Tucker Carlson has been and still is blowing out the cable news ratings
Liberals used to really hate Bill O'Reily and then Sean Hannity but Carlson has now left the best ratings those two ever had in the dust
How does he do it?
The answer is not complicated
People are responding to him because he tells the truth
He is the only person in cable news who does this

Take just a moment and think about that
There is a huge market out here for honesty in news
Be honest, tell the truth and people will flock to you
You would think the others might learn from this. But they wont

Here is one good example. He calls out the normally "Fox-friendly" Jim Jordan for his hypocritical positions on Google
Click to expand...

"We're working on it."
"Bill Barr is looking at it."

Blah blah blah. I have been saying now for a while that guys like this spew all this crap all the time and do nothing. Glad Tucker is calling him out, but even that won't matter.
 
horninchicago said:
"We're working on it."
"Bill Barr is looking at it."
Blah blah blah. I have been saying now for a while that guys like this spew all this crap all the time and do nothing. Glad Tucker is calling him out, but even that won't matter.
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Graham was vomit-inducing today with Yates
 
TxnByBirth said:
Her reasons are based solely around ratings and profit margin and ignore the real reason, which is because they have an agenda to advance. If it leads to more profit because they are giving the sheep what they want then so much the better for them.
Click to expand...

Both can be true at the same time. Yes, most of the news media is ideologically liberal especially on cultural and social issues, and I'm sure they prefer to report things that support their bias. However, that doesn't have to keep them from fairly reporting the news. Plenty have done it over the years. It reminds me of Tim Russert. He worked for Mario Cuomo. I'm sure he was a pretty liberal guy, but on Meet the Press, he was pretty fair.

Nevertheless, news is a business first. They get paid according to how many people watch or read them. What I suspect they're learning is that the market for fair and accurate reporting of political news is pretty weak. Most people who are going to consistently watch have strong opinions, and they aren't really watching to learn what's going on. They're watching to have their opinions corroborated and reinforced and their egos stroked.

If you are a coastal liberal, CNN and MSNBC will cater to you. They'll tell you how immoral and stupid Republicans and "middle Americans" are and how righteous and erudite coastal liberals are. Obviously, Fox News and OAN largely do the reverse. Might these outlets occasionally give you a brief and obligatory viewing of the opposition's view? Yes, because they don't want to be accused of being raw partisans. However, they'll dismantle their arguments (both fairly and unfairly) and largely leave the preferred side unscrutinized. Both sides win. The networks make money, and their viewers feel good about themselves. But of course, the culture gets dumber and more toxic.
 
Mr. Deez said:
Both can be true at the same time. Yes, most of the news media is ideologically liberal especially on cultural and social issues, and I'm sure they prefer to report things that support their bias. However, that doesn't have to keep them from fairly reporting the news. Plenty have done it over the years. It reminds me of Tim Russert. He worked for Mario Cuomo. I'm sure he was a pretty liberal guy, but on Meet the Press, he was pretty fair.

Nevertheless, news is a business first. They get paid according to how many people watch or read them. What I suspect they're learning is that the market for fair and accurate reporting of political news is pretty weak. Most people who are going to consistently watch have strong opinions, and they aren't really watching to learn what's going on. They're watching to have their opinions corroborated and reinforced and their egos stroked.

If you are a coastal liberal, CNN and MSNBC will cater to you. They'll tell you how immoral and stupid Republicans and "middle Americans" are and how righteous and erudite coastal liberals are. Obviously, Fox News and OAN largely do the reverse. Might these outlets occasionally give you a brief and obligatory viewing of the opposition's view? Yes, because they don't want to be accused of being raw partisans. However, they'll dismantle their arguments (both fairly and unfairly) and largely leave the preferred side unscrutinized. Both sides win. The networks make money, and their viewers feel good about themselves. But of course, the culture gets dumber and more toxic.
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I agree with this. I suppose that my point is that the ideological chicken comes before the profit-seeking egg. I'm not going to give her props for essentially burying (or completely ignoring) the lede in her diatribe, true as her other observations were.
 
It would be nice if CNN took a moment to explain to its audience all the data the Chinese scoop up on Tik Tok users. But they wont because that would require some work and at least some level of honesty. All they do is look at something, see what side Trump takes, then reflexively take the other side. It's all so retarded

 
horninchicago said:
This is why I believe the silent majority will be out in force on Election Day. Guessing most of those viewers aren't Biden people.
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It is a pretty remarkable statistic

If I were on the board of one of the other cable news networks, I would raise the question to current leadership, "Have we considered telling the truth more as a method to raise out own sagging ratings?"
 
Joe Fan said:
It is a pretty remarkable statistic

If I were on the board of one of the other cable news networks, I would raise the question to current leadership, "Have we considered telling the truth more as a method to raise out own sagging ratings?"
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Something about a nose and a face something something comes to mind.
 
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