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The quote is clearly a complaint about the quality/truthfulness of various media sources in an environment where the listener gets total freedom to choose their

by jbooth 16y ago

The quote is clearly a complaint about the quality/truthfulness of various media sources in an environment where the listener gets total freedom to choose their media. It's a warning to students that with more information comes more responsibility to be skeptical. This has been a theme of a lot of Obama's speeches and it's clearly something that's important to him as a former professor. Now you can get all victimized and complain about how he's singling out talk radio for criticism -- but before you do that, I'd like you to wholeheartedly endorse/defend the content of said talk radio hosts. You know, the ones who continually talk about Obama's birth certificate or draw ridiculous blackboard conspiracy theories based on word association between various boogeymen ("liberals", immigrants, black helicopter plans for global government).. Obama's not saying they should be muzzled or have their right to speech taken away, he's saying they're full of shit.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
JGC criticizes the economist for implying Obama was opposed only to particularly new media (ipads, etc), and not also mentioning TV. I pointed out that they mentioned he also opposes some traditional forms of media (talk radio). The economist said he joined "a long tradition of grumbling about new technologies and new forms of media", not that he wanted to censor anyone. I pointed out that the quote JGC provides suggests the economist is correct: Obama is criticizing a new information delivery system, the "24/7 media environment". No one besides you mentioned censorship.
- jbooth 16y ago
  He's not criticizing any particular information delivery system, he's pointing out that in a 24/7 media environment and given a number of actors who are wholeheartedly committed to ignoring the truth in pursuit of preconceived agendas, students and individuals have a responsibility to filter and not believe everything they hear/read. That's what the quote seemed like it was saying to me.

by jbooth 16y ago

yummyfajitas 16y ago

JGC criticizes the economist for implying Obama was opposed only to particularly new media (ipads, etc), and not also mentioning TV. I pointed out that they mentioned he also opposes some traditional forms of media (talk radio). The economist said he joined "a long tradition of grumbling about new technologies and new forms of media", not that he wanted to censor anyone. I pointed out that the quote JGC provides suggests the economist is correct: Obama is criticizing a new information delivery system, the "24/7 media environment". No one besides you mentioned censorship.

jbooth 16y ago
He's not criticizing any particular information delivery system, he's pointing out that in a 24/7 media environment and given a number of actors who are wholeheartedly committed to ignoring the truth in pursuit of preconceived agendas, students and individuals have a responsibility to filter and not believe everything they hear/read. That's what the quote seemed like it was saying to me.