DISCUSSION: "why does everyone pick at every detail in articles?"

R

radiohead

Bluelighter
Joined
Feb 27, 2004
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why does everyone pick at every detail in articles

I've noticed alot of people on here have some comment against most articles. It seems to me that you guys just like the drug, so you try to stick up for it even though the articles is usually correct.
 
Articles are usually incorrect and biased.

Responses are equally so.

Lets not stick up for either and all will be well.
 
i agree with radiohead that there is a tendency - among many BLers - to dismiss articles with which they disagree out of hand, even if the information contained within has merit.

imho, it's as much as mistake to downplay, for example, risks associated with taking drugs as it is to exaggerate them.

alasdair
 
Let me give you an example, a famous newspaper reporter got canned when they found out that the stories he had been writing for 2 years or so were all made up and not based on facts. The paper published a restraction of all the stories and a public apology to all the readers. Let me assure you, the author has no future in the Journalism industry.

So this is what it comes down to, accountability and facts which we expect from the media, the media is supposed to educate us about various events and topics from a variety of issues politics, religion, health care etc.

However, when it comes to drug issues, the media is encouraged and almost expected to blow the stories out of proportion, exaggerate facts and in most extreme cases blatantly flat out lie to the public. Mass media is used (whether willingly or not) by the government to fight it's futile drug war thru fuelling mass hysteria against drugs and drug users , hence demonizing them as the low lives and the scum of the earth.

I really could not care less what the issue is, I expect ACCOUNTABILITY from the media on any issue. If you are a reporter and you are writing a story on any subject, I expect you (the reporter) to at least check your facts and report on the actual issue, rather than make up blatant lies and write stories based on hearsay and urban legends.

There have been many articles written and well researched about drug issues, read them few times over and you will see that they in no way promote or glamorize drug use/issues but rather take an objective look at the issue at hand.

I think some people here think that we applaud any article that "promotes" drugs and "nit-pick" any that denounces them. That is far from the truth, the articles we "nit-pick" are simply the ones that are obviously made up stories not based on facts, and we simply point out the inaccurracies that could have been easily checked if someone actually talked to any people involved in the issue or even did a simple google search.

We are not here to rip apart well written articles whether critical or not of the drug issues, we are here to simply point out the vast innaccurracies and blatant lies constantly repeated in various media outlets.

If these "journalists" that cover those issues wrote about anything else in the same manner, they would have been fired from their jobs long time ago.
 
I do find people tend to "stick up" for their drug of choice, but a lot of the articles that get posted here have errors in them that make one wonder how much the reporter actually knows/understands/cares about the issue on which they are reporting. I've seen articles with GHB and GBH used interchaneably. Imagine if you were reading an article about the CAI.. or was it the CIA? It's a "nitpicky" issue but it still makes one have less confidence in the information.
 
It's not contending merit of the article (or lack there of) which bothers me. Often the replys start off with pointing out a genuine mistake, but people take it too far. It occurs to me that many people take these slight mistakes and mix their oppositions with their general denial of addiction and discount any worthy facts that they find displeasing. To say that drugs are not the cause of many of the woes and misfortunes in the articles is a denial of the nature of many drug users. While people do live generally productive or "normal" lives, drug use often detracts from key elements in such subtle, sublime ways that the users (including myself) don't see it happen.
When I see replies to this effect, I often do the exact opposite and go too far in defending the article. It is very difficult to find an objective point of view when we all have such strong opinions on topics concerning drugs.
P.S.- fruitfly, I don't exactly agree with your stance, but you argue it very well and with a great vocabulary. You wouldn't believe how the boatloads of grammatical and spelling mistakes on this site get to me.
 
I'm almost shocked that that guy was allowed to publish that article. And the fact that I have to be shocked about that shocks me even more.... :(
 
It makes the discussion very entertaining.. Also the Media's drug articles needs to be strenuously corrected on daily basis.. That leaves us to do that.

I mean who doesn't watch porn with friends and makes fun of it for kicks? ;)
 
Good discussion so far. I think there are a few different issues involved in answering radiohead's initial question and deroxor's reply.

Totally agree with Mindash's comment about how it is our job to do the corrections.

Any kind of discussion about recreational drugs is very emotional, and there are serious social and personal consequences around them. A lot (or proabably all of us) of us are also very alienated by mass media and resent the power that a publication or reporter or someone that the reporter quotes has in society at large. One or two inaccurate or stupid news stories can suddenly criminalize/stigamtize a whole whack of us that should not be forced into being criminals or "deviants". We also need to be aware of the pressures put on journalists and publishers to discourage the use of euphoric or mind expanding drugs in general.

A lot of BLers are drug nerds, and I mean that in a very positive sense. Folks on the board are both concerned about accurate information for personal reasons, and ,in a more general way, concerned about basic honesty and "science"*. Given that we have few spaces to talk about this stuff in a meaningful constructive way, the nitpicking and drive to accuracy becomes really important for us. Even with my friends that either dope or informed about dope, it's not easy to find anyone else that knows the difference between a phenthylamine and a tryptamine, or that there are cannabinoid or GABA receptors, or that serotonin does different things in the body, or that many drugs may be structurally dissimilar, pharmacologically dissimilar, but have very similar subjective responses, or why marijuana tea won't work, but ganja milk will. And it makes us mad when "experts" report things that aren't true.

There are other things I'm nerdish about -- certain political/ social/ historical histories, certain philosophical issues, certain art and music things. I got annoyed by a slight error in a book I was reading yesterday, and I knew it was slight (a date was given as 1869 rather than 1871) and not at all relevant to the theme of the book, but because that date and what it was referring to mattered to me. So I got mad.

I think radiohead's comment about people sticking up for their drug(s) of choice is quite right. On another board, not very friendly to druggy stuff, I kept getting shoved by otherwise reasonable people when I defended the use of marijuana as an intoxicant. It was very frustrating. I don't give a shit whether people toke or not, but it does piss me off when tokers or the shit they toke are dumped in stupid unreasonable ways. There are other drugs, legal or illegal depending on place and time, which I think are great and I do have biases for them. Others I feel are a total waste of time.


* By science I mean the whole of knowledge -- chemical, physical, social, experiential, historical, psychological, &tc.
 
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