For you to objectively look at a topic you literally have to conciously tune out your own beliefs form what I have come to believe. Because our brains are automatically wired to go toward what we know.

Wow...This class has been great! Not really what I thought it would be based on but I have learned alot and am very happy to have been apart of this class.

"..the effective decision does not, as so many texts on decision-making proclaim, flow from a consensus on the facts.  The understanding that underlies the right decision grows out of the clash and conflict of divergent opinions and out of the serious consideration of competing alternatives."  (p. 143)

If you shelter yourself among others who agree with you, is it therefore likely that your worldviews, perspectives, thoughts, and decisions will become more restricted and less informed?  

Part of the story we like to tell ourselves about the way our democracy works is that the press is supposed to function as a 'watchdog' and to provide a critical counterweight to the government. But it seems to me that the media did not provide much resistance to the Bush Administration's effort to 'sell' the war in Iraq to the American public. The case for war was made to the American people and to the world with a lot of very scary claims about the 'gathering danger' of Iraq -- including the possibility that Saddam Hussein would give a nuclear weapon to terrorists who would use it to blow up an American city. As we have subsequently learned, the evidence for most of their claims was much shakier than they led us to believe. And for the most part the US media simply relayed these claims to the American people, without much analysis and certainly without giving anywhere near the same kind of prominence to the views of people (many of whom had excellent credentials) who had a different view of the nature of the Iraqi threat and what would be the best way to deal with it.

An examination of the paper's coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration's evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.

"The paper was not front-paging stuff," said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. "Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?" ...

As reporter Karen DeYoung put it: "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power. If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said." And if contrary arguments are put "in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read that far."

The Post helps us to understand one of the most problematic features of the American media system: the way it functions all too often as a mouthpiece for the US government by giving statements from high government officials automatic credibility and (usually) front page display, while giving critical and dissenting voices much more skeptical treatment and less prominent placement. But I don't think it's just the current administration that gets this kind of treatment -- it's the political establishment more generally.  If there had been prominent Democrats vigorously dissenting from the Bush Administrations claims, I think the press would have given them prominent coverage.  (A big part of the failure of the press and the political system to challenge the Bush administration's erroneous assumptions about Iraq had to do with the fact that the Democrats chickened out, intimidated by the fear of being labeled unpatriotic.)  And now, certainly Republican critics of the Bush administration get plenty of air time and newspaper space. 

This leads to the problem discussed by Neil Levy in one of the readings for Assignment #7:  that 'balanced' coverage can be just as misleading as 'one-sided' coverage.  That's because 'balance' is often amounts to a lazy reporting of what various people say, with little or no effort to figure out who is telling the truth.  Levy argues that this has seriously undermined the public's understanding of the global warming issue.  The "He said, she said" model of balance gives global warming skeptics a level of prominence in the media that is out of proportion to the scientific credibility of their point of view.

If the media are going to serve us well, it seems they are going to have to try to tell us not just what the administration in power want us to hear, and not just what the party out of power says in 'rebuttal'.  They are going to have to try to discover the truth.  In my ideal world, that would be one of the main functions of journalism: to identify and consult people with real expertise and to pass their expert opinions on to those of us who don't have time to find out for ourselves. Sometimes this happens. But it takes time and effort to develop enough knowledge of an issue to figure out who the real experts are. Lazy or ignorant reporters can end up passing off shills as experts and thereby leave us confused or misled.

Is there any chance they will be up to the job?  (Will their bosses let them do that job?)

I have shared lots of his viewed throughout my life.

I am sorry for I have not been very active in the posting on the blog for this class. All of the post are so well constructed and full of informative information so I comment on some but just read and learn from most. Your post are full of so much informative information!!