OMG LIBERAL MEDIA AT IT AGAIN!

Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
STOMP said:
just curious, what % of American's with cable TV watch any of the news channels an hour+ a week? I'd guess that most who follow the news get it through other media outlets.

STOMP
Click to expand...

The figures I see are about 10M for the three cable networks combined, with Fox typically at 6M.

And I'd guess that most who follow the news get it through Comedy Channel.
 
Denny Crane said:
The figures I see are about 10M for the three cable networks combined, with Fox typically at 6M.

And I'd guess that most who follow the news get it through Comedy Channel.
Click to expand...

Wow, only 10 mil? Hardly worth worrying about.

barfo
 
Denny Crane said:
The network news (combined) has only a slightly larger audience.
Click to expand...

So let's not worry about that anymore. The question is, where do the unwashed masses get their info?

barfo
 
barfo said:
So let's not worry about that anymore. The question is, where do the unwashed masses get their info?

barfo
Click to expand...

Online.

Or the Jon Stewart show.
 
yakbladder said:
Just because he's funny doesn't mean he's not correct...
Click to expand...

And just because it's entertaining doesn't mean it's informative. Sometimes the truth gets sacrificed at the expense of a cheap joke.
 
maxiep said:
And just because it's entertaining doesn't mean it's informative. Sometimes the truth gets sacrificed at the expense of a cheap joke.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised you're so strongly against Glenn Beck :ghoti:
 
maxiep said:
And just because it's entertaining doesn't mean it's informative. Sometimes the truth gets sacrificed at the expense of a cheap joke.
Click to expand...
the truth gets sacrificed often and for many reasons, but I occasionally enjoy jokes... sometimes even cheap ones.

STOMP
 
okay, none of you are addressing my link in the OP
 
STOMP said:
the truth gets sacrificed often and for many reasons, but I occasionally enjoy jokes... sometimes even cheap ones.

STOMP
Click to expand...

I don't mind satire either, but throw in some NPR or The Economist once in a while.
 
westnob said:
okay, none of you are addressing my link in the OP
Click to expand...

I don't have much to add on the issue of climate change as it's not my bailiwick. I do wonder what kind of statistics were provided to these people, however.
 
barfo said:
Where online?



Those would be the washed masses.

barfo
Click to expand...

Google news? Last year it was DailyKOS and HuffPost, but those sites' traffic has taken a dive since the election.

yakbladder said:
Just because he's funny doesn't mean he's not correct...
Click to expand...

But people go out and vote based upon what he says, and I've certainly seen his jokes used as talking points.

He's not the only one.
 
westnob said:
okay, none of you are addressing my link in the OP
Click to expand...

Found this on FoxNews.com:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6

Statistics needed

Prominent statistician Edward Wegman says climate scientists have done an inadequate job of incorporating statistical know-how

Many in the "science is settled" camp claim that the skeptics are untrustworthy -- that they are either cranks or otherwise at the periphery of their profession, or that they are in the pockets of Exxon or other corporate interests. The skeptics are increasingly being called Deniers, a term used by analogy to the Holocaust, to convey the catastrophe that could befall mankind if action is not taken. Increasingly, too, the press is taking up the Denier theme, convincing the public that the global-warming debate is over.

In this, the first of a series, I examine The Deniers, starting with Edward Wegman. Dr. Wegman is a professor at the Center for Computational Statistics at George Mason University, chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and board member of the American Statistical Association. Few statisticians in the world have CVs to rival his (excerpts appear nearby).

Wegman became involved in the global-warming debate after the energy and commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives asked him to assess one of the hottest debates in the global-warming controversy: the statistical validity of work by Michael Mann. You may not have heard of Mann or read Mann's study but you have often heard its famous conclusion: that the temperature increases that we have been experiencing are "likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years" and that the "1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year" of the millennium. You may have also heard of Mann's hockey-stick shaped graph, which showed relatively stable temperatures over most of the last millennium (the hockey stick's long handle), followed by a sharp increase (the hockey stick's blade) this century.

Mann's findings were arguably the single most influential study in swaying the public debate, and in 2001 they became the official view of the International Panel for Climate Change, the UN body that is organizing the worldwide effort to combat global warming. But Mann's work also had its critics, particularly two Canadians, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who published peer-reviewed critiques of their own.

Wegman accepted the energy and commerce committee's assignment, and agreed to assess the Mann controversy pro bono. He conducted his third-party review by assembling an expert panel of statisticians, who also agreed to work pro bono. Wegman also consulted outside statisticians, including the Board of the American Statistical Association. At its conclusion, the Wegman review entirely vindicated the Canadian critics and repudiated Mann's work.

"Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported," Wegman stated, adding that "The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable." When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the hockey stick disappeared.

Wegman found that Mann made a basic error that "may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimate studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians." Instead, this small group of climate scientists were working on their own, largely in isolation, and without the academic scrutiny needed to ferret out false assumptions.

Worse, the problem also applied more generally, to the broader climate-change and meteorological community, which also relied on statistical techniques in their studies. "f statistical methods are being used, then statisticians ought to be funded partners engaged in the research to insure as best we possibly can that the best quality science is being done," Wegman recommended, noting that "there are a host of fundamental statistical questions that beg answers in understanding climate dynamics."

In other words, Wegman believes that much of the climate science that has been done should be taken with a grain of salt -- although the studies may have been peer reviewed, the reviewers were often unqualified in statistics. Past studies, he believes, should be reassessed by competent statisticians and in future, the climate science world should do better at incorporating statistical know-how.

One place to start is with the American Meteorological Society, which has a committee on probability and statistics. "I believe it is amazing for a committee whose focus is on statistics and probability that of the nine members only two are also members of the American Statistical Association, the premier statistical association in the United States, and one of those is a recent PhD with an assistant-professor appointment in a medical school." As an example of the statistical barrenness of the climate-change world, Wegman cited the American Meteorological Association's 2006 Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric Sciences, where only eight presenters out of 62 were members of the American Statistical Association.

While Wegman's advice -- to use trained statisticians in studies reliant on statistics -- may seem too obvious to need stating, the "science is settled" camp resists it. Mann's hockey-stick graph may be wrong, many experts now acknowledge, but they assert that he nevertheless came to the right conclusion.

To which Wegman, and doubtless others who want more rigourous science, shake their heads in disbelief. As Wegman summed it up to the energy and commerce committee in later testimony: "I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science." With bad science, only true believers can assert that they nevertheless obtained the right answer.
 
Oh yeah, that's canada.com, not foxnews.com. What was I thinking?

:biglaugh:

Wegman's CV:

Edward Wegman received his Ph.D. degree in mathematical statistics from the University of Iowa. In 1978, he went to the Office of Naval Research, where he headed the Mathematical Sciences Division with responsibility Navy-wide for basic research programs. He coined the phrase computational statistics, and developed a high-profile research area around this concept, which focused on techniques and methodologies that could not be achieved without the capabilities of modern computing resources and led to a revolution in contemporary statistical graphics. Dr. Wegman was the original program director of the basic research program in Ultra High Speed Computing at the Strategic Defense Initiative's Innovative Science and Technology Office. He has served as editor or associate editor of numerous prestigious journals and has published more than 160 papers and eight books.
 
westnob said:
okay, none of you are addressing my link in the OP
Click to expand...

I've noticed some posters do that. They read the title, look at who's posting and blast away. It doesn't matter what article has been linked, that person is a "socialist liberal" or a "heartless conservative"
 
bluefrog said:
I've noticed some posters do that. They read the title, look at who's posting and blast away. It doesn't matter what article has been linked, that person is a "socialist liberal" or a "heartless conservative"
Click to expand...
Blazerprophet rightly called me out for my tone in another thread. I'm going to really work on that. I see folks who are effected by the economy every day and I'm quite worried about environmental matters and am prone to fly off the handle about those two subjects. I also really despise certain oft repeated inaccuracies about settled fact like Clinton being very pro-active in the fight against Al Qaeda. That said I'm someone who needs to work on their tone. I usually don't have a beef with the posters themselves rather then the hateful leadership that spreads lies in the media whether it's democrats like Barney Frank or republican mouth pieces like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. Unfortunately, I often get suckered in to what is destroying this country which is a lack of civil discourse. I need to change my own behavior before I can expect anyone else too.
 
Denny Crane said:
Google news? Last year it was DailyKOS and HuffPost, but those sites' traffic has taken a dive since the election.
Click to expand...

You really think most people, aka average Americans, got their news from DailyKOS and HuffPost? Seems highly implausible.

barfo
 
barfo said:
You really think most people, aka average Americans, got their news from DailyKOS and HuffPost? Seems highly implausible.

barfo
Click to expand...

A lot of the ones who voted for Obama, yes.

I posted this about CNN in another thread:

When I watched AC360 four nights in a row, it was 45 minutes of balloon boy. If you broadcast crap, your ratings turn to crap.
 
Denny Crane said:
A lot of the ones who voted for Obama, yes.

I posted this about CNN in another thread:

When I watched AC360 four nights in a row, it was 45 minutes of balloon boy. If you broadcast crap, your ratings turn to crap.
Click to expand...

Says here that Huffington was the 18th most read online news site in Oct. 2008. So, I think your claim is without basis.

linky

As for broadcasting crap, that's not the way it works. People like crap, people watch crap, that's why they broadcast crap. The networks aren't stupid.

barfo
 
barfo said:
Says here that Huffington was the 18th most read online news site in Oct. 2008. So, I think your claim is without basis.

linky

As for broadcasting crap, that's not the way it works. People like crap, people watch crap, that's why they broadcast crap. The networks aren't stupid.

barfo
Click to expand...

18th most read is enormous. If you add up huffpost, dailykos, and a few other blowhard type sites, you'll see they outnumber the biggest news sites.

The flipside is drudgereport is right up there with ESPN in terms of traffic.

Whatever CNN is broadcasting, the public isn't so interested.
 
Denny Crane said:
18th most read is enormous. If you add up huffpost, dailykos, and a few other blowhard type sites, you'll see they outnumber the biggest news sites.
Click to expand...

Go ahead and show me that addition. I don't believe it.

barfo
 
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/nytimes.com+dailykos.com+huffingtonpost.com

graph


The loony left sites' traffic is way down from the election.

A good read:
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/d...-blogs-are-killing-the-new-york-times-online/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)
Back
Top