Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for September 10, 2021

Why listen to doctors when you can get medical advice from comedians on podcasts?

This just in: A large number of foxes have attacked and killed everyone at FOX News. Their official spokes-fox says that they just couldn’t stand the implied insult any longer.

Part of the problem, seems to me, is that even the pros are being forced to treat any opinion as though it’s as good as any other. Which is very clearly NOT a good thing.

whoop-tee-doo for you, Rat

Our politicians are basing their positions and actions on their Twitter feeds and re-tweets.

Problem is that those likes and tweets are far from being representative of the real constituents needs. The real constituents are too busy working to eke out a living.

Suppose you happen to know a lot about science. You will notice that the “people who are trained to gather news” know nothing about science, and they frequently make huge blunders when reporting on it. Or maybe you know a lot about the military; you will notice that the “people who are trained to gather news” know nothing about the military, and they frequently make huge blunders when reporting on it. As far as I can tell, this applies to every field and just about every question beyond, “What was the score in last night’s Tampa Bay vs Dallas game?” These “people who are trained to gather news” often even struggle to write grammatically, let alone coherently.

And then there are issues of bias, not all of which is Republican vs Democrat. Whenever there is a near-collision between a US warship or aircraft and those of a foreign power, somehow it is ALWAYS the other nation’s fault. It is harder to interview the Chinese about their side of the story, and I’m sure the DOD would NEVER slant the account to favor its own forces, right? This is also how you have stories about American planes boldly defending freedom of navigation by flying up to the edge of Russian airspace in the Black Sea, and right next to that story is another about the dangerous provocation of Russian planes coming as close as 100 miles from the US coast. My point isn’t about the right or wrong of any of these incidents, nor about the DOD telling its story the way it sees fit, but about the “trained people” being too lazy to investigate or even consider the other side of each story.

Maybe the people “trained to gather news” should have done their jobs instead of lying. Just sayin’.

They may be trained to gather news, but they’re paid for generating advertising revenue.

First two words of the second panel sum it up.

The big problem is they threw objectivity out the window!

It’s because of bad financial models for journalism. The two big ones these days are disaster porn (e.g. CNN) and (poorly) disguised propaganda (e.g. FAUX). But the distribution is largely handled by Facebook, Twitter, et alia based on financial models of compulsive behaviors that are closest to online gambling websites.

Twitter: giving voice to the witless.

Politics are the worst.

Goat in Panel Three!!!

He does has plenty of time for his own type of sarcasm.

His sarcasm is way superior to snooty sarcasm.

For this reason, I don’t watch the news. Only the sports and comics.

It’s never been easy to sort out truth from fact in news. Even back before the internet. I used to read stories about things I was involved in years ago in the major news papers and often did not know whether to laugh about it or get angry about it. My letters to the editors did nothing to stop people from buying into what they’d read as the whole truth. It’s more massive now with social media, but it’s the very same thing; people seek out stories that’ll validate what they have in their heads already to some measure, truth or lies, it’s all truth to them if they agree with it and lies if they don’t like what they see.

Amazing how many Turd Reich Trolls pop up to defend the Rump by saying he lives in rekam’s head while pretty clearly he’s crawled so far up their own collective a**. Then they totally ignore that the strip is very, very, very likely pointined directly at aGolf Twitler simply by its depiction. Name another candidate that depends so heavily on social media? Go ahead, name one. And one who does so by tweeting such addled, rambling, and often semi-coherent gibberish (at best) constantly and often during the dead of night? As if that behavior all on its own shouldn’t have raised a dozen red flags for the BLO-TUS. If anyone else did that they’d scream he was unstable and/or on drugs. But not their favorite lil’ Mango Menace. That’s just his normal psychotic behavior.

Gosh, if only people were smart enough to get news from different sources and compare them instead of sitting their lard butts down in front of one entertainment network and leaving it on hour after hour after hour.

Journalism is dead; propaganda rises.

"Mis"informed, more like.

“The people who are trained to gather news” don’t do that anymore. They just give us their opinion. If you ever take the time to read a news story with a critical eye you will spot all sorts of slanted and loaded words.

New troll names but the same old ignorant, presumptuous BS. The mental midgets think folks watch CNN, MSM, MSNBC, as much or more than they watch FOX NOOSE, Newsmax, or OAN. Check the level of media bias even in those biased sources to see which ones might be far out vs which ones that are definitely from another universe. Idiots. Instead of jumping to conclusions try jumping from your ego down to your IQ. It’ll make a much bigger splat. They cannot conceive that someone would take the time to get information from multiple sources and fact check it because your rights, freedom, and the nation aren’t worth more than simply leaving the boobtube on, let alone on and tuned to only one entertainment network.

“Journalists” haven’t gathered news in a long time. They’ve been making it up for years. See Walter Duranty….

Witticism from Turd Reich trolls never rises above “Oh yeah, well so are you.” That’s just pitiful. I might admire a troll who ever once at least posted a factual, verifiable quote or source. Or even a rational response above the level of a six year old. Haven’t seen one yet though.

do any local journalists ever write critically of the latest local white elephant project?. . ..no, hardly ever

i thought this was funny, not political

Sarcasm and irony are wasted on the ignorant. The Twitter twits wouldn’t recognize the truth if it jumped up and bit them in the butt.

Goat left out a step in panel three. Trained to gather news → hired to push a narrative → know nothings. Like he says, what could go wrong?

We’ve gone from ""You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war." to “Journalists were pristine professionals!”

Who trained them? Every event different stories. It’s all BS. Do your own research.

The problem is that we went from “people who are trained to gather news” to people who have strong political ideological biases and interpret news according to their biases. It’s why news outlets are no longer trusted, at least by me.

Unfortunately, the people who are trained to gather news seem to be ALSO replacing journalism with clickbait.

It’s more like going from centralized gossip to daisy-chained gossip. Are we actually worse off?

“Goat” you are talking about journalists, not reporters. They went to “J-school”, not reporter school. We haven’t had news reports for a very long time. Journalists write options. Journalists are trained to write about what they want to write. They are not trained to be reporters. Bloggers, twitterers, Youtubers, Facebookers, and all the rest are also writing in journals that are public media of a different sort than TV, radio, and newspapers. I find it humorous that your friend “Rat” is the one defending free speech and calling others “snooty”.

Oh how I wish there were an unbiased ,trustworthy news station which would JUST report the news. No opinionated commentary, and no curating. If it happens, put it out there.

being “informed” and being “well-informed” are two vastly different things

It’s the game of Chinese whispers.

News the way the MAN wants you to hear it….

If our ‘news’ had simply reported the news rather than their opinions, it might have helped a lot

Living in an alternate, twisted universe, with no real facts and truth! Pitiful RATs

If the alligators want to eat something,there are some great prospects at 48th Street and 6th Avenue.

Goat should have put quotes around “informed”…

Day one, professor in entry level journalism class, 1980: “Journalism is no longer about getting the facts, it is about setting the agenda.” Changed my major.

“I don’t have time for real information.”

Farmed Zebras big market for zebra meat? Among crocs for sure.

From The New York Times:

Runaways in Stripes: Five Zebras Are on the Loose in Maryland

The zebras, which have been wandering freely along the byways of Prince George’s County, were part of a herd of 39 that belonged to a privately owned farm, officials said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/us/zebras-maryland.html?smid=em-share

My favorite of this genre was the Nancy Pelosi stan who told me “I don’t get my news from twitter” when I posted the twitter status from Nancy Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff Drew Hammill, where he said something exactly opposite what the stan was trying to pretend was real.

“People who know nothing” also applies to Fox and their copycats, MSNBC, and CNN.

We made that transition already with the rise of cable “news”

Gotta go with Paris on this one!

“Television is like a steak.It’s a medium that’s rarely well done”—-FRED ALLEN

Somwhere I once read ‘Sarcasm is the humor of stupid people’.Well personally I think whoever said that believed that ‘humor’ is some kind of sickness.

Sadly, we already know the answer to the question.

Panel 3 was a much deserved dig at “Fox News”.

TIME FOR SOME PLAIN OLD PUNS

1.)Man sees another man carrying a soda crate,asks why.I’m taking my case to court!

2.)Later,man sees same man carrying soda crate and a stepladder,asks why.I’m taking my case to a higher court!

3.)Later later,man sees same man carrying an empty coat hanger,asks whyI lost the suit!!.

Since journalism died awhile back, mainstream media is not reliable, so what’s the difference?

Yeah, accurate.If you’re some dumbass with a podcast in your parents basement you’re a genius now.

Sorta like having a fire/police scanner going in the background in the old days. Then they went digital and all we get now is hisses, beeps and tones..

Journalists write stories in journals or diaries, also known as the mainstream media. Sometimes they even include reality. For instance, many news outlets recently quoted Dr. Jason McElyea that thousands of people were dying of Ivermectin overdoses in a rural Oklahoma hospital. The reality? There is something called Ivermectin! We are giving it to Afghan refugees right now. And they aren’t even cows! The rest? A story for diaries and journals.

BTW. Why is Rat the one promoting freedom of speech and against sarcasm? Didn’t Stephan make him president or something recently? ;-)

Legitimate journalism was not always so truthful, and still isn’t. The real problem of the so-called information is we swapped quality for quantity.

Oh, Goat, Goat, Goat! —As though barely-adult “reporters” were really so “well” trained! Mostly, they’ve been indoctrinated for the last generation with “advocacy journalism,” which is a euphemism for mixing up your opinions and preferences with the news….

Too busy being informed, or too busy being uninformed?

Mr. Goat, don’t you mean misinformed?

Ah well, it happened about the same time the “people who are trained to gather news” were replaced by a generation of “people who are trained to twist the news into propaganda.”

That’s because journalists have gone from people trained to gather the news to to Democrat propagandists