Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!gatech!bbn!bbn.com!levin
From: levin@bbn.com (Joel B Levin)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Is the news media really that stupid?
Keywords: ignornace, money, power, the usual stuff
Message-ID: <33346@bbn.COM>
Date: 9 Dec 88 21:01:59 GMT
References: <33065@bbn.COM> <4355@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> <5999@hoptoad.uucp> <1942@sigma.UUCP> <6023@hoptoad.uucp> <885@hdr.UUCP>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: levin@BBN.COM (Joel B Levin)
Organization: BBN Communications Corporation
Lines: 26

In article <885@hdr.UUCP> eric@hdr.UUCP (Eric J. Johnson) writes:
|             . . .  For a start, I can see two reasons for this
|alleged occurence:
|
|    One: Ignorance.  News professionals do not know about USENET
|and bulletin boards, and if they did, they couldn't understand them anyway.
|
|Computer professionals often flatter themselves into thinking that 
|they hold some special 'magical' ability to understand the uses of their
|computers that 'mere mortals' could not possible achieve. 
|This, more often than not, leads to a condescending attitude towards
|non-techies on or off USENET.  Take a look around you. Computers are being
|used everywhere by non-computer professionals, ESPECIALLY THE NEWS 
|MEDIA!  . . .

Yes, computers are everywhere, and people use them as tools.  But what
they don't understand, most of them, are networks.  I believe computer
communications media like Usenet go way beyond what a user who does
his or her newpaper article or checkbook on a computer might
comprehend.  Communications to them is dialling a number to download
the stock market data or upload the article.

	/JBL

UUCP:     {backbone}!bbn!levin		POTS: (617) 873-3463
INTERNET: levin@bbn.com