Friday, April 26, 2013

Marijuana use=the cause of violence and ignorance of certain world issues?

In order to please Bill O'Reilly and his fans, Jesse Watters went to the Colorado Pot Convention to interview its attendees, which was shown on The O'Reilly Factor. But instead of showing viewers questions being asked that were relevant to this kind of meeting, such as why they were so passionate and grateful about marijuana becoming legal in that state that they're having a whole convention about it, the video there was mostly shown of some attendees not knowing the facts of a couple of world issues. The whole video made it seem as if this ignorance was only due to them being pot-smokers. Furthermore, the shootings near this location seemed to be contributed to the convention being about marijuana use.

As usual, The O'Reilly Factor was being biased in their conservative "values." Marijuana being illegal in all of the U.S. for almost a century, with the exception of Washington and Colorado the past few months, has given it a bad stigma towards those who do not have much experience or knowledge of it. Bill O'Reilly also seemed to confuse correlation with causation in what people smoke compared to what knowledge they have and how violent they are. I personally would reason some attendees not knowing the answers to the world news questions being asked to them being young adults, and as one myself I understand the disinterest in what's happening in the world that doesn't affect me, especially compared to those older. The shootings that were near the convention also could not be contributed to marijuana use necessarily because it was not as if everyone or even most were being violent there.

3 comments:

  1. It would be extremely easy at an event like this to take a lot of footage and show the dummest stuff possible. I'v known a lot of razor sharp pot smokers in my life- little intelligence indicated here... but I think the editing must be rather selective Mr. O'Reilly (et al)'s part. Doesn't seem very balanced. But that is never the point on this show. Fox is just too easy to pick on, but then, so are some of the people in the footage.. I couldn't even watch the whole video for both reasons...

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  2. I agree that especially for those who try to have more of a progressive, liberal viewpoint, Fox News is really easy to criticize. This is why after seeing that the third blog assignment was to write about something online to do so with, I couldn't think of anything else BUT their website. The interviewer did say that most of the people he spoke with there didn't know the answers to his world-news questions, but even if that is true, again, it could just be other factors such as people their age in general don't care about them like those older. It also should not matter necessarily that they do not know everything news-worthy in the world because it's not like most who do know are changing any of it for the better, either. Nor does it mean they are not smart in other ways.

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  3. Yeah it's a bit of a ridiculous way to cover an event for anything that attempts to portray itself as "news." On the plus side, O'Reilly is once again on the losing side of the issues. Both a recent Pew Research Poll and a 2011 Gallup Poll show that the majority of Americans realize marijuana is not dangerous and should be legalized. And the numbers are just going to go up. Obviously O'Reilly's audience is largely the 65 and older generation who are firmly opposed to it. They're just looking for O'Reilly to confirm what they already believe.

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