| Television is altering
the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information
that might properly be called disinformation ... Disinformation
does not mean false information. It means misleading information
- misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information
- information that creates the illusion of knowing something,
but which in fact leads one away from knowing.
- Neil Postman
Experienced travelers refer to this perception problem as 'The
CNN Effect.' You'll hear nothing about a country on the news
until suddenly something bad happens and it's all the perky
newscasters can talk about. A bomb goes off in Casablanca, so
everyone stops going anywhere in Morocco ... Tourism to Bali
dropped after the tsunami hit in Asia, even though it's over
a thousand miles from the affected area.
- Tim Leffel, Make
your travel dollars worth a fortune
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
- Walter Lippmann
La ética no es una condición ocasional, sino
que debe acompañar siempre al periodismo como el zumbido
al moscardón
- Gabriel García Márquez
Without context, a piece of information is just a dot. It floats
in your brain with a lot of other dots and doesn't mean a damn
thing. Knowledge is information-in-context -- connecting the
dots.
- Michael Ventura, Letters
at 3AM
¿Quieren que les cuente un cuento? (Would you like
me to tell you a story?)
- Brozo, Mexico newscaster/clown, aka Victor Trujillo
The function of the press in society is to inform, but its
role is to make money. The monopoly publisher's reactions, on
being told that he ought to spend money on reporting distant
events, is therefore exactly that of a proprietor of a large,
fat cow, who is told that he ought to enter her in a horse race.
- A.J. Liebling, quoted in From Milton to McLuhan
Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible
to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself,
but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be
kept ignorant, he may not be made ignorant.
- Thomas Paine, quoted in From Milton to McLuhan
Physicists calculate that in about 100 years time we will have
a planetary civilization. And that's what all the chaos is all
about. We are witnessing one of the great transitions in human
history from a fragmented savage Type-0 to a planetary and rather
civilized Type-1. It's quite dangerous the transition. Every
single headline I see in the newspapers is related to the birth
pangs of the birth of a Type-1 civilization.
Michio Kaku, BBC
Interview
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