[HN Gopher] How U.S. media lost the trust of the public
___________________________________________________________________
How U.S. media lost the trust of the public
Author : empressplay
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-03-28 18:45 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| sobriquet9 wrote:
| I think this is good in the long run.
|
| People in the US have not been exposed to much propaganda from
| the media before, so tended to trust the news. That's why fake
| news and biased reporting had such an adverse effect.
|
| Now this is changing, as more people realize that New York Times
| or Fox News are not much different from Pravda, and that it's not
| a good idea to blindly trust talking heads on TV.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The problem with this is that there is no alternative. There's
| a theory that QAnon-types are _too shrewd_ about the
| motivations of media, leading them to not trust anything that
| comes off as reasonable.
|
| We interpret world events entirely through the lens of massive,
| politically-embedded corporations. To avoid that lens, we'd
| have to visit those places ourselves and investigate, which, to
| say the absolute least, is not scalable.
|
| The oddest aspect of modern media is that when it comes to
| foreign coverage, the smaller the outlet, the more likely that
| they are actually on the ground where they are reporting from.
| Representatives of large outlets clump together in hotels
| attending press conferences from government representatives and
| interviewing designated sources whose names were passed to the
| journalists by intelligence services. Journalists with no money
| just travel to countries and go to where the action is
| happening.
| sobriquet9 wrote:
| But there are alternatives. Even in the Soviet Union where
| the government controlled all press and TV, it was possible
| to find other sources of information: short wave broadcasts,
| samizdat, word of mouth, etc.
|
| The most important thing is the habit of not trusting any
| sources, official or not, and ability to recognize
| propaganda.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| That is a false equivalency. NYT is biased but it is biased
| towards factual information. Fox is not. Pravda is clearly
| government controlled.
|
| The issue is that if media outlets provide only news their
| viewership wants to hear then it can go very wrong. But there
| is a difference. Some people want to hear accurate information
| while other prefer information that only supports their
| worldview.
|
| This is different from the issue of trust. If you trust a media
| outlet because it always gives you news you want to hear then
| the problem is with you not with media that provides accurate
| information.
|
| Note also that it is in the interests of those who want to
| spread misinformation that the public indeed loses its trust in
| the media. When that happens then anybody's opinion is as good
| as anybody else's.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Note that it is also in the interests of those who want to
| spread misinformation that the public trusts the media that
| they publish, and ascribes its "failures" to incompetence
| rather than intentional manipulation of public opinion.
| sobriquet9 wrote:
| Biased towards factual information would be unbiased.
|
| Do you really need examples of NYT's bias?
| lettergram wrote:
| It's clear that everything from NPR to Fox News is a propaganda
| machine - plain and simple.
|
| Anyone who spends any time investigating any story will quickly
| find the truth.
|
| Take the Capital's mostly peaceful protest on January 6
| (sarcasm), where the 7 people who died. Did you know the only two
| who died violently that day were protestors and many news
| agencies retracted the death of the police officer "hit with a
| fire extinguisher"?
|
| https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2021/02/23/nolte-politif...
|
| Two people died from "medial emergencies" and don't appear to
| have done anything besides attend trumps rally:
|
| https://nypost.com/2021/01/07/who-are-the-four-who-died-in-t...
|
| Officer Brian Sicknick died the following day and there have been
| arrests, supposedly he died of a stroke, but to-date no medical
| report has been released:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/15/politics/brian-sicknick-capit...
|
| Estimates vary, but based on reporting on the ground, it appears
| there were at least 500,000 people there, so it's not super
| surprising that there would be quite a few natural deaths.
|
| Further, it has to be the only armed insurrection in history
| where the insurrectionists primarily left their weapons at home.
|
| Not saying what was done was moral, correct, etc (it wasn't), but
| after watching my own city burn in the BLM "mostly peaceful
| protests" I can't help but recognize the unadulterated falsehoods
| being propagated.
|
| https://twitter.com/JoeConchaTV/status/1298863702272344064?s...
|
| Both are bad, both were riots, and all you have to do is look to
| see how bad it is. We don't need to make the death count worse or
| ignore other riots / crimes.
|
| The general point, if the media would focus on reporting as
| opposed to pandering it would have trust. As the post points out,
| they're trying to sell their narratives to increase viewership.
| However, as soon as people realize they're being sold something,
| they forever lose that viewer.
|
| I tend to trust journalists a bit more, such as Glenn Greenwald:
|
| https://twitter.com/GGreenwald
|
| They appear to be truly investigating.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > As the post points out, they're trying to sell their
| narratives to increase viewership.
|
| This is a red herring - the amount of revenue/profit produced
| by news media outlets is trivial. Not just nominally as
| compared to any other industry, but also as compared to the
| other sources of income that the owners of these outlets have.
|
| The primary reason for the editorial lines that large news
| outlets take is to push ideas through the electorate, and to
| generate references that politicians and businesspeople can use
| to justify their support of certain issues/legislation that the
| owners of those outlets also support.
|
| They're public thinktanks, not carnival barkers.
| Itsdijital wrote:
| >Calls NPR and Fox news propaganda machines
|
| >Talks about finding the truth
|
| >Links to Breitbart.
|
| C'mon man...
| colordrops wrote:
| There may be problems with the OP's argument, but your
| response is fallacious itself and does not address them.
| Linking to Breitbart isn't a great idea, but doesn't
| invalidate everything else that was said.
| Jonnax wrote:
| And what did they say exactly?
|
| That the news lied about the January 6 event and also lied
| about the black lives matter protests?
|
| In their own words 50,000 people were at the capital so
| they said it would be statistically likely for people to
| die. That is ridiculous otherwise large concerts would have
| deaths associated with it.
|
| But they don't apply their logic to the BLM protests where
| estimates of 15 to 26 million people protested [1]. They
| don't think that of those millions it would be a very small
| group causing trouble.
|
| Also. Breitbart is a "news" outlet which has a "black
| crime" section. They are objectively a racist publication
| and it's laughable to use that as a source when calling out
| bias in NPR and Fox news.
|
| It's a transparent if they say "oh it was the first article
| I saw when I searched" they don't think that it's
| indicative of it being untrustworthy reporting but instead
| some truth the "MSM" don't want to tell.
|
| Likewise the Nypost is very much a outlet that spins facts
| to suit their narrative. That isn't a secret.
|
| So OP's argument is just that they prefer when people tell
| them what they want to hear.
|
| [1]
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-
| flo...
| pessimizer wrote:
| These are reasons why it is extremely sad that the larger
| and more consumed outlets are collectively deciding to
| not report on stories, or on each other. If Breitbart is
| the only major outlet reporting on a factually correct
| story, that's a failure of the institution of journalism,
| not a success for Breitbart.
| Jonnax wrote:
| The two protestors that died on the day were reported as
| the two deaths. And the outlet who reported about the
| officer death posted a retraction about the police
| officer being killed by the fire extinguisher.
|
| It's a straight up lie to say that only Breitbart was the
| only website that reported it.
|
| A mistake was made, it was corrected afterwards.
|
| But people that want to downplay Jan6 have jumped on it
| and use it as "evidence" of lies.
| lettergram wrote:
| If people can't click the link and read, there's no hope.
| The breitbart article was just the first thing to pop-up in
| google.
|
| Here's the web archive link to the politifact website (from
| the first sentence of the Breitbart article):
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210222190401/https:/www.polit
| i...
| bsenftner wrote:
| Journalism in 'Merica - the shit show of all shit shows.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I was thinking about Glenn's piece on this topic as I read, I
| have more respect for that guy than ever especially after what
| happened with the Intercept and his Joe Biden article. I
| subscribed to his Substack immediately and intend to continue
| to support him directly.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Yup. Thanks for collecting the links.
|
| Pelosi will go down in history as the worst of demagogues.
| jeremysalwen wrote:
| Perfect example of false equivalency. Setting aside the issue
| of how the protestors were treated differently by capital
| police (many of whom supported Trump), one protest was against
| police brutality, and the other was an attempt to overthrow the
| result of a free and fair democratic election on the basis of a
| lie.
|
| If I believed that the election, and American democracy with
| it, were literally being stolen from me right in front of my
| face, and this was our last chance to stop it, why on earth
| _wouldn 't_ I resort to violence?
| axguscbklp wrote:
| How much would it change your belief that this is false
| equivalency if you thought that the protest against police
| brutality was also based on a lie? There's a good argument to
| be made that it was.
| yesco wrote:
| It was my understanding that the entire point of the protest
| was to publicly demonstrate their frustrations with the
| voting process. The hope was that such protest would give
| Trump the political power to do one of the following:
|
| 1. Pressure Congress to delay counting the elector's votes
| and perform a proper investigation (which they felt hadn't
| happened)
|
| 2. Pressure Congress to count the votes of the "alternate"
| electors sent by some of the disputed states by the losing
| party (who instead supported Trump). I'll stress that this
| was predicated on the idea that, since the election was
| "stolen", these were the "rightful" electors.
|
| 3. Some Q-Anon bullshit I don't care to remember too deeply,
| just that it was something to do with Trump doing some kind
| of secret investigation behind the scenes or something
|
| All of the above (including a few I didn't list since I
| forget the details), were precipitated on the the idea that
| /someone else/ was going to be fixing this. Many left-wing
| people don't seem to understand this, but most modern
| conservatives are not activists at heart, they just roll over
| and let things happen. To be clear this isn't really a
| "right-wing" thing but a "conservative" one, they generally
| don't, at scale, rock the boat.
|
| The truth is the even if there was 100% undeniable evidence
| that the election was blatantly stolen, conservatives would
| do absolutely nothing (unless you include complaining), and
| frankly that's kinda what happened. Looking at it another
| way: to many conservatives, the election really was stolen
| from them, and they aren't doing anything about it. A small
| subset of them loitering around in the capitol was the best
| they had.
|
| > If I believed that the election, and American democracy
| with it, were literally being stolen from me right in front
| of my face, and this was our last chance to stop it, why on
| earth wouldn't I resort to violence?
|
| You said it best yourself, why wouldn't you resort to
| violence? The answers is less exciting: because they are
| afraid and unmotivated.
| jeremysalwen wrote:
| >It was my understanding that the entire point of the
| protest was to publicly demonstrate their frustrations with
| the voting process.
|
| No, it was explicitly to change the outcome of the
| election, by changing the way the election was certified.
| This is why Trump was demanding that Pence attempt to
| change the election outcome as he was presiding over the
| certification process. This is why the crowd was chanting
| "hang Mike pence" when he refused to do so.
|
| This is why Trump told his supporters that they had to be
| strong, to give the Republicans the "courage" to do "what
| they had to do".
|
| See, you bought the lie, so to you, stealing the election
| on the basis of a lie seems legitimate. Stopping counting
| mail in ballots on election night, once Trump had a lead in
| tallied ballots based on the on-person voting (a lead he
| had orchestrated by telling his supporters to vote in
| person), also probably seems reasonable to you.
|
| The problem with "alternative facts" (such as the idea that
| republican officials and Republican poll watchers in 5
| different states all conspired to steal the election from
| Trump) is that when you believe them, all sorts of horrible
| behavior seems justified, and in fact you believe that your
| side "isn't going far enough!"
| yesco wrote:
| > No, it was explicitly to change the outcome of the
| election
|
| Exactly what part of my comment refutes this? Ultimately
| the end result of all outcomes I listed (from the
| perspective of someone who believes the election was
| stolen, aka not me), would lead to a change in the
| outcome of the election.
|
| > See, you bought the lie, so to you, stealing the
| election on the basis of a lie seems legitimate.
|
| I'm uncertain if you are attacking a hypothetical here or
| me personally, but I feel it's the latter. Are you
| implying I "bought into" the lie of Trump's supporters or
| from Trump himself?
|
| > The problem with "alternative facts" (such as the idea
| that republican officials and Republican poll watchers in
| 5 different states all conspired to steal the election
| from Trump) is that when you believe them, all sorts of
| horrible behavior seems justified, and in fact you
| believe that your side "isn't going far enough!"
|
| You say that but is that necessarily true? What exactly
| has the party that always claims to be armed and ready to
| overthrow the government done when faced with a scenario
| where they believe there was a stolen election? We can
| agree to disagree on this but I still have trouble
| wrapping my head around why people are so hysterical
| about random unarmed people loitering around the capitol
| building.
|
| It's certainly a far cry from actual insurrections:
|
| * Like when Puerto Rican nationalists broke in and shot
| at members of the house of representatives (and were
| later pardoned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Unite
| d_States_Capitol_sho...
|
| * Or when the capitol building was bombed by Weather
| Underground (also pardoned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/List_of_Weatherman_actions#197...
|
| To make my position on this more clear, my concern here
| is not the election itself, its this growing anti free
| speech movement spurred by fear of these "Alternative
| Facts". I'll remind that this is in-fact a discussion on
| the public's trust in the media and I believe apologists
| such as yourself are "buying into" their lie that this
| was a bigger deal than it really was. In order to retain
| their position as guardians of the "truth", they spread
| fear to achieve their goals like they always do.
|
| The web provides us direct access to the discussions of
| people from all kinds of backgrounds and political
| ideology. One can easily get a feel for the "other sides"
| perspective on nearly any issue. I'm not talking about
| the issues themselves but the people who believe in them
| and why. Yet far, far too often, people rely on talking
| heads with an agenda, to TELL them what and why people
| believe something, often exaggerating or misrepresenting
| their intentions to make them out to be some kind of
| ultimate evil.
|
| I'm not saying the election was stolen and I'm not saying
| they were right. I'm saying you don't have as complete a
| picture of this as you are suggesting because you didn't
| get your "Facts" from a primary source.
|
| Exhibit A:
|
| > such as the idea that republican officials and
| Republican poll watchers in 5 different states all
| conspired to steal the election from Trump
|
| The impetus of all this, for many conservatives in the
| online discussions I was following (but not
| participating). Was explicitly that Republican poll
| watchers were complaining about their level of access to
| the ballot counters. Their access was restricted due to
| Covid, and they were disputing this restriction directly
| on social media.
|
| This detail is far easier to overlook when you are fed
| all of your positions by journalists spinning a narrative
| that makes this out to be far less complicated than the
| reality of the circumstances. Personally I consider
| "spin" to be functionally the same as lying.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I think readers of your comment should visit your profile,
| click through to your blog and Twitter where you spent most of
| the past half-year repeating conspiracy theories about dead
| people voting in Michigan, then come back here and give you a
| hearty downvote.
| chillwaves wrote:
| How is literally counting the deaths "making the death count
| worse"?
| lettergram wrote:
| Because they're counting deaths that weren't directly related
| to anything. There are supposedly seven people who "died in
| the Jan 6 riot" and yet two were suicides days-to-weeks
| later, three were heart attacks / strokes from physical
| assertions (or gas/spray, we aren't sure) and one died from
| falling / being trampled and one was shot in front of police.
|
| The "7 people died in an armed insurrection" is a lie.
|
| The most accurate statement is:
|
| "one protestor/rioter shot by police at the Capital riot",
|
| "one officer died from suspected injuries sustained",
|
| "two people died in march to capital after trump's speech",
|
| "two officers commit suicide after being investigated in
| connection to Jan 6 riot at the Capital"
|
| "one rioter on Jan 6 fell to their death and were trampled by
| the rioters"
|
| ^ These are all more accurate, but probably reduces
| viewership. The statement was "how did the US news media lose
| their viewers trust". I simply summarized one event which
| highlights it.
| jeremysalwen wrote:
| > "one protestor/rioter shot by police at the Capital riot"
| i.e. one rioter died in the riot.
|
| > "one officer died from suspected injuries sustained",
| i.e. one officer died in the riot.
|
| >"two people died in march to capital after trump's speech"
| i.e. two people died in the riot
|
| >"two officers commit suicide after being investigated in
| connection to Jan 6 riot at the Capital" i.e. two officers
| died in connection with the riot
|
| > "one rioter on Jan 6 fell to their death and were
| trampled by the rioters" i.e. one rioter died in the riot
|
| >"one rioter on Jan 6 fell to their death and were trampled
| by the rioters" i.e. one rioter died in the riot
|
| I'm very confused as to where the media claimed that "7
| people died" as the result of being gunned down in the
| street. Obviously if 7 people died by being gunned down in
| the street, the media headline would be "7 PEOPLE GUNNED
| DOWN BY INSURRECTIONISTS", not "7 PEOPLE DIED IN THE
| INSURRECTION".
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'm confused as to where the comment you replied to
| claimed that the media claimed that "7 people died" as a
| result of being gunned down in the street. Was there an
| edit?
| jeremysalwen wrote:
| The above comment says
|
| > There are supposedly seven people who "died in the Jan
| 6 riot"
|
| And then proceeds to dispute this, by showing that...
| each of those 7 people died as a result of injuries in
| the riot, with the sole exception of the suicides.
|
| The question is what standard of "dying in the riots"
| would satisfy OP, if the literal interpretation (died
| from injuries sustained in the riot) does not satisfy
| him. Presumably if they were gunned down in the streets?
| 01100011 wrote:
| 500,000 people? Source?
|
| https://theconversation.com/it-is-difficult-if-not-impossibl...
| lettergram wrote:
| Can't find the exact segment, but these guys who provided the
| videos to multiple news sources claim minimum over 500k
|
| https://youtu.be/mE-XvGMiyRQ?t=1488
|
| "For sure hundreds of thousands"
|
| Those who went to the Capital are probably less, I'm not sure
| anyone has estimated that. I'm sure many people left after
| Trump's speech.
| titzer wrote:
| Sorry, but a link to a video of two dudes on a podcast
| saying "for sure hundreds of thousands" is not evidence.
| Not even a picture of these hundreds of thousands? Absurd.
| lettergram wrote:
| Those are two registered reporters who provided much of
| the coverage Jan 6.
|
| Edit: registered White House press core
|
| Edit: they had their cameras, that's most of what you see
| on CNN if you saw police scenes of fighting
| jeffbee wrote:
| "Registered" with whom?
| titzer wrote:
| And they what? Forgot their cameras that day?
| jeffbee wrote:
| 500000 people, eh?
|
| Here's a photo of Trump's Jan. 6 2021 crowd:
| https://nxsttv.com/nmw/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/107/2021/01/...
|
| Here's 100000 people at a college football game:
| https://blog.lime.link/content/images/2018/12/100000.jpg
| lettergram wrote:
| This was just a small section:
|
| https://elmoudjaweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Trump-
| add...
|
| All the hotels were booked for 45 min around and in DC.
| That is literally hundreds of thousands of people.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Regarding coverage of the Capitol riots - All Sides called out
| the bias in coverage compared to numerous past riots at the
| Capitol, just two days after the incident:
| https://www.allsides.com/blog/capitol-hill-breach-riot-cover...
|
| The choice of language is also important. Lots of people are
| using terms like "coup" or "insurrection" causally. The experts
| meanwhile note why this is not appropriate, with careful
| comparisons to historical incidents:
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/06/why-this-wasnt-a-coup-c...
|
| Does this matter to anyone? No. After constant amplification of
| a hyperbolic take on the Capitol riot, the truth seemingly
| doesn't matter anymore and instead its derivative stories are
| the new battleground (for example "should social media increase
| censorship of moderates and conservatives"). In short, the
| damage has already been done, seemingly permanently.
|
| We saw bias in the other direction last year, with
| underreporting of criminal political activity. Like you, my
| city has experienced a constant stream of riots from BLM
| activists. In 2020 we literally had daily blockades of
| highways, autonomous zones resulting in deaths (CHAZ),
| widespread destruction of businesses, and more. Seemingly all
| of news media, social media, and even academic research
| studying BLM-associated rioting inaccurately portrays what
| actually happened.
|
| It's scary to see how widespread and unchallenged those
| prevailing narratives are. I think a lot of people forget that
| "propaganda" doesn't have to come just from scary foreign state
| actors - in practice it is much more likely to come from
| domestic sources, such as masses of activists blindly repeating
| falsehoods in unison. The journalism industry is supposed to
| protect against that but it's actually part of the same
| machine. The only way to counter the effect is to read and
| listen to many different sources with different biases.
| chroem- wrote:
| There's a lot of focus on recent events, but surely I'm not the
| only one that remembers when the New York Times almost
| singlehandedly started the Iraq War based on false reporting,
| right?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I think your example helps illustrate how ineptitude is the
| problem that bias is perceived to be.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The NYT's involvement in the Iraq War was not ineptitude, but
| the intentional passing on of administration claims not only
| without criticism, but while also excluding and attacking
| critical voices as borderline seditious.
|
| It was also editorially consistent with the NYT's positions
| before and after the fact.
|
| Painting Judith Miller and her coworkers as a hapless
| accident is defaulting to excusing an outlet you identify
| with. The NYT was not doing good, badly. The NYT was doing
| bad, knowingly.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > the intentional passing on of administration claims not
| only without criticism
|
| This is ineptitude.
|
| > excluding and attacking critical voices as borderline
| seditious
|
| This is also ineptitude.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Most people read ineptitude to mean lack of
| capacity/skill rather than cynicism. If you knowingly do
| something that leads to a (generally) unwanted result,
| that's quite different from wanting to do something else
| but clumsily failing.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Most people read ineptitude to mean lack of
| capacity/skill
|
| That's good because that's what it means.
| raarts wrote:
| I'm convinced this happens all over the (Western?) world, not
| only in the US.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| The press's extra constitutional protections imply a duty to act
| as an adversary to the powerful and to inform the public of what
| they learn.
|
| In as much as news orgs fail to challenge those in power, they
| are abdicating their primary responsibilities - they are earning
| a loss of trust. Publishing press releases by Gov/LEO/Biz
| verbatim, without vetting the info or adding historical context,
| is a polar opposite of what 1A protections imply.
|
| As far as informing the public: One news org publishing 7
| headlines is informing us. Dozens of others who publish those
| same stories, w/o meaningfully different content, is not.
| Bounded, local markets have been gone for a generation. It seems
| delusional to disseminate news as if it were still 30-300 years
| ago.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| I think there should be a government agency that counters mis-
| information in the media just like we have agencies that
| inspect food to be poison-free. Such an agency should be
| independent in the way that Federal reserve or Bank of England
| are independent of the current government.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > I think there should be a government agency that counters
| mis-information in the media
|
| This would in effect have that Gov overseeing itself. I would
| offer that the powerful are exactly who should not oversee
| news orgs.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| It could be called the Ministry of Truth.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Ministry of Approved Truth comes with a good acronym.
| tracer4201 wrote:
| I'm going to off on a tangent here, but what I find amusing is
| the theater circus the American Congress has been putting on with
| CEOs of big tech and social media companies.
|
| Suddenly these people care about misinformation? Really? I mean,
| to an outside observer Fox News and CNN are propaganda machines
| from two different sides of the spectrum. And they push these
| politicians political agenda.
|
| But now we have social media where America's elite can't just
| kill a news story, and suddenly that's so wrong?
|
| I think back to 2003. I was in Asia and flipping between CNN and
| Fox News as Saddams statue was being toppled in Iraq. These media
| organizations peddled lies and were an important cog in the
| machine to reshape the Middle East, which only led to hundreds of
| thousands of deaths or people becoming refugees.
|
| Social media has its own problems, but it's quite insane that the
| same people who peddle lies each and every day have the audacity
| to act like they're on some moral pedestal questioning tech CEOs.
| In fact they're just mad they can't control them. I saw this last
| week and couldn't help but wonder that America can't afford
| healthcare and had homelessness in most metropolitan cities...
| yet your leaders put on theater.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Congress and tech CEOs are dancing together. Congress agrees
| not to make any actionable accusations, and tech CEOs agree to
| make a concerned face and promise to do better if given the
| legal tools.
| chinathrow1029 wrote:
| Relevant:
|
| _" For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the
| U.S. government's mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering
| programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came
| silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed
| in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per
| week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S.
| consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for
| U.S. domestic propaganda efforts."_ [1]
|
| [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-
| propaganda-...
| kiba wrote:
| It seems that humans are always barreling to the next crisis with
| no strategic plans in mind. We are always making it up as we go
| along.
| oblio wrote:
| Well, except for some extreme cases (climate change being one),
| it seems to work.
|
| Strategic plans involve some rigidity, so they're not without
| drawbacks.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > Well, except for some extreme cases (climate change being
| one), it seems to work.
|
| Does it, though? It sure seems to me as if our solutions tend
| to introduce ever more drastic problems which dwarf the
| original problem.
| oblio wrote:
| What are our solutions, though? We're attacking this
| problem from a million disjointed fronts. The blessing (and
| peril) of not following a rigid strategy.
|
| Though I think we should have some red lines, some big
| picture initiatives that do need to be planned at a higher
| level. The US dropped the ball on this for a while, for
| example.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Somewhere I heard it said that if you give a government
| emergency powers you will find that there are more often
| emergencies, or something like that.
| pessimizer wrote:
| That may just be how it looks to people who are not involved in
| the decisionmaking, except as observers of what has been
| reported to them by actual decisionmakers.
|
| The consensus reality agreed to between major media outlets may
| well be an epiphenomenon.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| The All Sides blog has been an eye opener when it comes to
| examining biases that permeate virtually all news media (even the
| tenured giants like NYT), understanding how narratives are
| engineered, and how public perceptions are shaped. For example
| they had a recent write up on plug and play journalism
| (https://www.allsides.com/blog/rise-plug-and-play-journalism) and
| media bias regarding violence against Asian Americans
| (https://www.allsides.com/blog/unpacking-media-bias-and-
| narra...).
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| ground.news is even better imo
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I use them too. I love their aggregation and display of news
| articles across the spectrum.
|
| An interesting tool they built is their "Blindspotter", which
| lets you see the bias of who a particular Twitter account
| follows (their news diet). Interestingly a lot of the left
| leaning popular media accounts like Trevor Noah's operate in
| a complete echo chamber whereas many popular right leaning
| accounts like Megyn Kelly are actually very balanced. And as
| you might expect, extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene are
| very biased in their news diet:
| https://ground.news/blindspotter
| luxuryballs wrote:
| NPR got a C rating instead of an L?
| motohagiography wrote:
| This is a bit rich coming from the CBC. They're institutionally
| incapable of understanding the problem because they can't
| comprehend how their perception of themselves as an elite is
| illegitimate, imo.
| danbolt wrote:
| Funny enough, I've never considered the CBC an "elite" source
| of media and didn't get that impression from the CBC itself.
| Maybe you could explain a little? I want up understand what you
| mean better.
| vkou wrote:
| I have heard that idea expressed frequently, and it roughly
| translates to "The CBC craps on the Tories too much, and not
| enough on the Libs."
| danbolt wrote:
| That's interesting to hear, given I've just watched Ms
| Kapelos grill Ng on vaccine shipments and Garneau on
| Chinese-Canadian relations the per week.
| amoorthy wrote:
| There are a lot of good comments here on what's wrong with the
| media and why. A couple posts talk about solutions like AllSides
| or Ground News. Pardon the self-promotion but I'd like to add my
| company's solution: TheFactual.com. Hopefully a solution to help
| people complain less and consume better news :-)
|
| We use technology to rate how informative an article likely is:
| links & quotes analysis, lack of opinion in writing tone,
| author's topical expertise based on historical writing and site
| historical reputation. The result is you can find good articles
| in hundreds of sources without having to brand an entire source
| (Fox, NYT, CNN etc) as good or bad. And by curating a few highly
| rated stories across the political spectrum on each topic you see
| different framings of a story quickly so you get closer to the
| unbiased story.
|
| More here if you're curious: https://thefactual.com/how-it-works
| WalterBright wrote:
| CNN doesn't even report the news anymore. All they have are
| personalities that tell you what your opinion of the news should
| be.
|
| BTW, I regularly read both the WSJ and the NYT. Reading both
| gives one a good idea about how agenda driven the media is.
| eternalban wrote:
| Hierarchy of newspapers according to the headline and tone:
|
| - "These are the facts"
|
| - "This is what you need to know"
|
| - "This is what it means"
|
| - "Explainer: ..."
|
| - Everything you never wanted to know about British Royal
| Family - Women in bikinis - Men engaged in violent sports
| coliveira wrote:
| Nowadays it is much clearer that media is pushing the goals of
| some interest groups. It is obvious in the case of Fox News, but
| similarly for more traditional newspapers and TVs. They're
| pushing the agenda of big business and wealthy individuals, with
| secondary views on popular topics that don't threaten big
| interests.
|
| Another important issue that you'll figure out in mainstream
| media is that they're always pushing the idea of us against other
| countries. They're promoting the underlying notion that we should
| always be at war (or close to that) with countries that are not
| aligned with the current interests of the elites. There is always
| some "enemy" that is a threat to "civilization" and that we
| desperately need to contain or destroy. Not only this benefits
| the big interest groups, but this also creates a fictional
| narrative of reality that keeps viewers interested in learning
| about the latest developments of this "holy crusade for
| civilization".
| LB232323 wrote:
| It has always been this way, there is nothing new under the
| sun. Even the Spanish War was fueled by newspapers.
|
| The media business is a business, it has always been about
| what's profitable. It's not a public service, even hard hitting
| journalism must sell copies.
|
| The closest thing to news media that serves public interest are
| worker owned media companies and socialist magazines.
| sydney6 wrote:
| I understand that this is just the title of the post, but this is
| by far not a U.S. specific issue.
| keiferski wrote:
| I think this is sort of like asking why the Catholic Church lost
| the trust of Northern Christians. Yeah, there were some specific
| actions taken by the Church that led to the seeds of the
| Reformation...but ultimately the printing press and a long-
| growing trend of secular power is what _actually_ caused and
| maintained the larger historical process.
|
| In other words, in a world where the Internet exists, it was
| inevitable that established media powers would eventually erode
| away and lose their position as sole arbiters of information.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Except there is no Pope of Media. There is no single party
| controlling it all. A real problem however is monopolies. That
| is why we need laws that stop companies from becoming
| monopolies. That is why we need regulation.
|
| Personally I think the lawsuit against Fox about mis-
| information they spread about voting machine manufacturers is a
| great remedy and will help restore public's faith in the
| system. It is not that all media are equally bad in spreading
| mis-information. Some are clearly worse than others. How do we
| know that? Lawsuit(s) will prove that, beyond reasonable doubt.
| keiferski wrote:
| I'm talking about the diffusion of technology undermining
| established information sources.
|
| The outcomes of lawsuits are not really relevant to the
| average person.
| threatofrain wrote:
| I'm not sure because most people don't consider fake reviews or
| sponsored Reddit posts or YT people to be part of story, thus I
| feel they will underestimate the degree to which narrative is
| manipulated.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| People shouldn't trust the media. It's filled with people who go
| into it because they want to change the world. There's nothing
| wrong with that but if you consume it thinking that shouldn't be
| or isn't the case you're going to come away feeling betrayed.
|
| The thing that annoys me is people who go into careers that are
| explicitly premised on describing the world only because they
| think they can use the trust that comes from that to change the
| world. Those people aren't in media though.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Presenting the truth honestly and without bias sounds like a
| great way to change the world.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Historically presenting the truth honestly and without bias
| was a great way to lose your head.
|
| I think you overestimate the market for truth.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| If we have learned anything from the past two decades it is
| that anti-bias measures lead to less competent reporting.
|
| The reasonable complaints about bias - those can be much
| better addressed by a focus on competency.
|
| Failing to expose malfeasance within a liked administration
| is primarily an act of ineptitude. Correcting that seems a
| much surer path to less biased journalism.
| pjscott wrote:
| It does sound very worthwhile! But in order for it to be
| useful people need to be able to trust you, and in order to
| build and keep credibility, you need to be able to stick to
| reporting "honestly and without bias" even in the face of
| countless temptations to be a bit dishonest or one-sided in
| your reporting, burning some credibility for short-term gain.
|
| Of the people who want to change the world, how many can be
| convinced of the usefulness of such principled behavior, and
| actually stick to it? How many organizations? Empirically it
| doesn't look like very many.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| With the pay being what it is, why else would you go into that
| field?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It's filled with people who go into it because they want to
| change the world.
|
| You may want to go into journalism to change the world, but you
| get hired in journalism for agreeing with the owners of media
| outlets.
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's differnt types of journalism though. Newscasters should
| absolutely be impartial and just a delivery mechanism of news.
| Investigative journalists are supposed to dig deep and get to
| the answers. You can't really be impartial. You're either going
| to prove or disprove something. Once that is done, the
| newscasters can do an impartial coverage of the facts that were
| discovered.
|
| >The thing that annoys me is people who go into careers
|
| because they want to be famous. These people we see on "news"
| programs don't give a rat's ass about the news, and only want
| to be the one people are watching.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > People shouldn't trust the media.
|
| The reasons you offer may be good arguments against unliked
| news but do not seem to follow a path to effectively false
| news.
|
| I would restate the assertion to read: People shouldn't trust
| any news source implicitly - until trust is carefully nurtured
| thru the reader's regular and independent vetting of stories.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Short answer: after the revocation of the fairness doctrine, Rush
| Limbaugh and Roger Ailes/Fox News found a profitable strategy in
| focusing on a specific demographic and telling them what they
| want to hear. Fox led the way, and the polarized template took
| off with Crossfire (on CNN) and further self-sorting by
| audiences.
|
| (This was content in the embedded video--gestured at in the
| text.)
| nostromo wrote:
| Fox didn't create a biased media, which existed long before Fox
| News did, they responded to it.
|
| Most surveys going back decades and decades show that 80 or
| 90%+ of journalists are registered Democrats. That doesn't make
| them bad journalists, but they are a monoculture that doesn't
| represent the diversity of political views in America.
|
| It's notable how it really bothers people that there is one
| right-leaning news network out of a dozen or so left-leaning
| networks. Apparently it's not enough to control 90% of the
| media narrative - it has to be 100%.
| cycomanic wrote:
| From a European perspective there's one bonkers network that
| is nothing but a billionaire's propaganda outlet and many
| conservative to rightwing networks.
|
| Actually, how crazy the situation is, is shown how
| "conservatives" abandoned Fox News because they did not
| reflect their reality distortion and moved to even more
| extreme outlets (I mean who can call newsmax or OAN even
| news). If someone moved from Fox News to OAN, they were never
| interested in news, they were after someone feeding their
| prejudice no matter how unreal they are.
| hash872 wrote:
| The fairness doctrine only applied to broadcast TV, never
| cable. This is a myth that will never ever die and I see
| repeated constantly, even though it's been debunked numerous
| times by Snopes and others. https://www.snopes.com/fact-
| check/ronald-reagan-fairness-doc... The fairness doctrine was
| also abused by multiple administrations to go after
| broadcasters who were overly critical of them- FDR did it, so
| did Kennedy, Nixon, etc. The government is not and should never
| be the arbiter of what's 'true' or 'fair'. I'm always amazed
| that it never occurs to people that the gov't might use this
| power in bad faith, yes?
|
| But no, the fairness doctrine has nothing to do with Fox News,
| it never applied to cable
| GavinMcG wrote:
| It absolutely had to do with Fox News _by way of Rush
| Limbaugh_. The fairness doctrine applied to broadcast _radio_
| as well as television, and the next year after its abolition,
| the Rush Limbaugh Show began airing. His meteoric rise over
| the next couple years demonstrated a large market for
| conservative media, which motivated Murdoch 's and Ailes's
| approach in founding Fox.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This _did_ happen after the revocation of the fairness
| doctrine, but another angle to consider is that the US
| nominally won the Cold War when the USSr disintegrated, and
| reactionaries like Limbaugh and Ailes then rose to popularity
| by identifying and villifying An Enemy Within.
| notafraudster wrote:
| Crossfire (1982) actually substantially predates FOX News
| (1996)... and I also don't think it materially changed in how
| it framed debates after the FD erosion in the mid-80s.
|
| I do agree that the FD revocation leads directly to FOX News
| and AM talk radio, I just don't think CNN or Crossfire are
| examples of the phenomenon being discussed. I think people
| mention Crossfire largely in the context of Jon Stewart
| criticizing the Tucker Carlson era iteration, which fair cop
| was bad, and also coincided with an era where CNN phased out
| real news journalists like Aaron Brown in favour of more idiot
| talking heads. But I'm just not sure you can draw the causal
| graph from fairness doctrine to those events ~18-ish years
| later the same way you can to the rise of talk radio a few
| years after FD was sunset and FOX News 5 or 6 years after that.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The nostalgic pining for the fairness doctrine that you so
| often see at Reddit and sometimes even here slightly reminds me
| of European monarchist movements that idolize the golden times
| of royal rule.
|
| Both seem to ignore the fact that whatever worked in year X
| will not work in year X+50, because the society, technology and
| politics moved on.
|
| One of the defining movements of the last hundred years was the
| fact that the cost of disseminating opinions and news was
| slowly becoming affordable for more and more corporations,
| small teams or even individuals. Thanks to technological
| progress, the voices out there multiplied, as did their
| audience. And people unhappy with a certain journalistic
| narrative found it cheaper and easier to broadcast their
| competing perspective.
|
| Such a chaotic world cannot be subject to effective content
| guidelines such as the defunct fairness doctrine, just like the
| modern world of highly educated professionals cannot be ruled
| by hereditary nobility.
| teawrecks wrote:
| No one (in this thread) said the Fairness doctrine shouldn't
| have been revoked, we're just talking about cause and effect.
| What OP said was accurate.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Both seem to ignore the fact that whatever worked in year X
| will not work in year X+50, because the society, technology
| and politics moved on.
|
| This is true, which means it's important to look at the
| context.
|
| The fairness doctrine was from a time when there was limited
| airtime. Things were broadcast and anything so broadcast
| filled space that couldn't be used by something else. Filling
| the airwaves with a singular opinion literally prevented any
| others from being carried. The fairness doctrine was meant to
| counteract this.
|
| Today that technical problem does not exist. Everything is on
| demand. The economic cost in terms of storage and bandwidth
| is so low that the likes of YouTube and Facebook can carry
| everything published by everyone. Problem solved, right? Just
| carry everything; completely fair.
|
| Except that they reintroduced the scarcity artificially
| through market consolidation. There are effectively three
| major cable news networks and every one of them is aligned
| with a political party.
|
| Because that's what happens when there are so few of them. If
| you have dozens then they each carve out a niche. One caters
| to socialists, another to libertarians, another to moderates
| etc. You get a greater diversity of viewpoints and,
| importantly, less tribal warfare because there is more
| overlap (and therefore trust) between any given pair of
| outlets.
|
| And it thwarts the even more problematic attempts by
| partisans to capture the incumbents and enforce ideological
| conformity through them, because it's not as effective if you
| have a dozen other competitors who aren't just shills for the
| other team rightfully pointing out the lies told by
| competitors on the same team and keeping each other honest.
|
| What we need is less media consolidation. More competition.
| akudha wrote:
| _Such a chaotic world cannot be subject to effective content
| guidelines such as the defunct fairness doctrine_
|
| okay, I'll bite. What is the solution then? We got rid of
| Fairness Doctrine without putting any other check in place
| and Fox News successfully argued that no-one in their right
| mind should take Tucker Carlsen seriously, even though he has
| the biggest talk show on American TV today. I am guessing
| they are gonna argue the same in their voter machine cases
| too.
|
| There should be some way to regulate the news media, no?
| specialist wrote:
| Eliminating the Fairness Doctrine left only Pay to Play.
| Broadcast content moderation simply shifted further towards
| advertisers.
|
| Instead of censorship, Capital simply hoarded all the
| bandwidth, starving alternative voices of attention.
|
| How now are us newly ennobled modern highly educated
| professionals supposed to hear voices which no longer exist?
|
| The hysterical bit is social media swiped the control away
| from advertisers. We've replaced your dreaded hereditary
| nobility with the mythical meritocracy.
| hikingsimulator wrote:
| I find your comparison rather dubious and far-fetched.
|
| That aside, it's not because there is a higher diversity of
| sources at more diverse scales tosay that the answer is not
| to look at what worked in the past. Or to simply throw one's
| hands in the air.
|
| It is not because small ISPs, tech companies, etc. exist that
| the large conglomerates that impact our daily lives should be
| left untouched and unregulated. Same goes with news, or
| masquerades of news.
|
| A good start for instance would to untie news media from the
| profit motive. NPR exists, the French Radio Publique exists,
| etc. and they output great content, independently more often
| than not. It shows that public investment into newsmaking is
| worthwhile and has often a better quality to it. News
| reporting should be seen as of public interest, and treated
| as such rather than as a commodity. Breaking news
| conglomerates should also be explored.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| I've heard the argument on the right that the fairness doctrine
| was in name only, as in it gave the news media monopolistic
| power while they showed a skewed perspective of what the other
| side actually believed. Consequently, Rush Limbaugh grow so big
| so quickly because someone was finally representing this
| audience
| teawrecks wrote:
| In other words, people who wanted their bad faith arguments
| represented in a world of _mostly_ good faith journalism got
| their way. "Mostly" because obviously there have always been
| journalists who were clearly disingenuous, but they took the
| hit to their reputation in kind. Reputation is barely a thing
| worth caring about anymore. Everyone takes a hit to their rep
| no matter what they say, so now they just focus on raking in
| advertising dollars.
| willis936 wrote:
| We are all eventually in service to the truth. Misinformation
| can cause real damage. A surge of misinformation calls for
| more aggressive appeals to free speech to keep society
| stable.
|
| What would have protected free speech in the first place? Not
| allowing the dangerous fantasies supplant fact.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Dangerous fantasies" are a mixed bunch.
|
| Once upon a time, emancipation of slaves or universal
| suffrage were dangerous fantasies. In China as of today,
| democratic ideas are a dangerous fantasy.
|
| It is not as if contemporary West is the only society in
| history that has everything figured out and can only get
| worse through entertainment of "dangerous fantasies". To
| the watchers of status quo, every potential change is at
| least suspect, if not outright dangerous.
| hobs wrote:
| In America today, the dangerous fantasy is that voting is
| not safe, the election was stolen, and that we need an
| armed uprising to manage that.
|
| So, do you think those ideas deserve to be held up next
| things like suffrage or the abolishing of slavery?
| Please, no.
| wincy wrote:
| Dangerous fantasies like "thalidomide is perfectly safe" or
| "smoking is good for your health"? How about "fat makes you
| fat"?
|
| There's plenty of statements that the mainstream media
| supported that were either flat out wrong and harmful to
| the American public. We're still feeling the repercussions
| of a government hellbent against saturated fats.
|
| At least allowing people to indulge in "dangerous
| fantasies" lets some of the people be right some of the
| time, instead of the entire monoculture being dangerously
| wrong.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Ironically Rush Limbaugh did very well out of disputing
| any link between smoking and lung cancer. I was mightily
| amused that it was the latter which carries him off.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Not all misinformation is the same, there's a difference
| between science got it wrong and society eventually
| corrected it self and being wrong on purpose or
| misleading to pander to an audience.
| Fellshard wrote:
| You are a wiser person than I if you can tell the
| difference while it's happening.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Maybe I am lol, but thats not important. I think it's
| fairly easy to differentiate people trying their best
| from bullshit peddlers. Look at the recent controversial
| topics vaccines, global warming, masks. Is it really
| unclear to see who is putting in a genuine effort?
| fancyfish wrote:
| You're right - section 3 very purposefully doesn't set
| guidelines for what's "fair" so you get many liberal outlets
| presenting just right-of-center as the opposing viewpoint.
|
| In many ways it accelerated Limbaugh et al because viewers
| could see they weren't getting an accurate conservative
| viewpoint in the mainstream and thus trusted it less, leading
| to other outlets.
| lettergram wrote:
| The issue with the "fairness doctrine" is what is fair? Why is
| free speech curtailed?
|
| I'm not saying anything was good vs bad, but it's clear why it
| was a perceived an issue. One political party was taking
| advantage to revoke the speech of another. Put simply, I could
| put two left leaning people on my show, but claim one was
| "conservative" and that was "fair". Honestly, it's no better
| than now, but at least we all know the truth.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Side note: it's bizarre to me that Fox News gets a pass on being
| part of "the media". The article says that "73 percent of
| Republicans say news media don't understand people like them."
| But Fox News has been the most-watched news source in the United
| States for nearly two decades!
| lettergram wrote:
| For reference, most of the "right" / "conservatives" don't
| actually watch Fox...
|
| Primarily, it's OAN, Newsmax, and radio. Fox has some people
| who are watched (Tucker Carlson, Hannity).
| tomrod wrote:
| I disagree. They start on Fox and, after addicted, seek more
| outrage venues.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Fox News is trash too, it's not as Republican loved as it is
| made out to be, not even close. It may even be more of a
| lightning rod for taking jabs at Republicans than it is
| actually trusted.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Is Fox too "left" for them? What do they prefer instead, OAN?
| ipaddr wrote:
| It's too in favor of the elite or powerful. It's the heart
| of the deep state politics.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's not "right enough" so much as it's
| just mostly low quality content, many see it lumped
| together with CNN/NBC/ABC/etc as just another bunch of
| talking heads to manufacture consent on behalf of the
| American political oligarchy.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Fox News has built their business on portraying themselves as
| the victim.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > But Fox News has been the most-watched news source in the
| United States for nearly two decades!
|
| Why does watching a news channel necessarily mean that you
| think that the news channel understands you? Maybe they're
| watching it and from that deciding it doesn't understand them.
| In fact... if they didn't watch it they wouldn't know that it
| doesn't understand them so they must be watching it...
| Grim-444 wrote:
| Even if it's an awful news source, which it is, it's the only
| place to receive the other side of stories, or alternative
| viewpoints, as biased as they are. Fox News and CNN are the
| same in my book. You can disagree with that, which is fine,
| to each their own, but I see them both as insanely biased,
| politicized, monetized, having given up on actual journalism
| long ago. I watch them both just to see what the extremes of
| both sides are up to, with the truth being a combination of
| bits and pieces from both sides. I literally have to
| incorporate Fox News in, as horrible as it is, because it's
| the only way to be exposed to any other data.
|
| So yes, I watch it, and yes, I don't think it's good or
| understands me, but there's no other choice; the alternative
| is to be awash in one ideology's propaganda 24/7, to only
| ever receive information from sources that are horribly
| biased one way.
| spamizbad wrote:
| But you're not receiving "the other side" because news
| stories aren't binary. You're simply consuming an alternate
| take on the matter.
| chillwaves wrote:
| Here is an alternative idea: don't watch any of these
| "horribly biased" news sources.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| That seems like sticking your head in sand. I want to
| know how other people are talking and thinking, so it's
| not a surprise later on!
| ekianjo wrote:
| As a single source yes. But if you count all the other media
| with a different take on news Fox is a minority viewpoint.
| cosmotic wrote:
| Most watched is an ambiguous statement. Was fox news the top of
| the sorted list of channels or were they over 50% of all
| watching?
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Majority vs plurality
| rabbitrecon wrote:
| This coming from CBC, HA!!!
| sparker72678 wrote:
| The real problem is us, humans. We really struggle when all our
| coefficients and denominators go to 0 (cost) or [?]
| (availability)
|
| The Internet is Pandora's box. It's been wide open for 20+ years,
| and we just don't know what do about it, or even if anything
| _should_ be done about it. Infinite information is something
| humans have never had before, and its greatest strengths are its
| greatest weaknesses.
|
| This thread craps all over media (and with good reason), but the
| same force that makes that media available is the one that gives
| us hyper-local, unmediated information in near-realtime through
| Twitter, Facebook, et. al. You can't have the one without the
| other.
| pluc wrote:
| This should be a really short article:
|
| Because US media is legally allowed to lie on air.
|
| Make lying, or knowingly propagating information you know to be
| wrong illegal - as it is in civilized countries - and the problem
| goes away. But you'd rather have guns and lies.
| nostromo wrote:
| This isn't true. Media orgs get sued all the time for
| defamation and libel.
| buu700 wrote:
| Defamation only applies when the lie is causing harm to a
| specific person. It's just a special case of lying. As far as
| I'm aware, there's no existing law in the US that would
| penalize lies (from the media or otherwise) in general.
|
| I don't see this as a particularly problematic idea. Assuming
| a high burden of proof, why shouldn't a deliberate hoax from
| a news organization be treated as a kind of fraud or
| "malpractice"?
|
| An alternate implementation would be for the FCC to regulate
| this and unilaterally issue fines for broadcasting fake news,
| but that seems ripe for abuse and more against the spirit of
| 1A.
|
| Instead, I like the idea that anyone (either the state or a
| private citizen) could sue any news outlet for publication of
| a hoax; not necessarily claiming any direct or personal harm
| caused, but just to defend the principle of truth. The
| process would be as fair as possible -- requiring evidence of
| willful intent to the standards of a court of law, allowing
| appeals all the way up to the Supreme Court, etc. -- but in
| return the consequences would actually have teeth. Offhand,
| I'd say fines roughly comparable to securities fraud and a
| journalistic equivalent of disbarment for individuals
| responsible.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| The First Amendment is an enemy to that solution.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Banning lying means allowing the government to determine the
| truth. Many, if not all, dictatorships ban the truth under the
| guise of banning the truth.
| slibhb wrote:
| If there's some event, you can often find a video of it. When you
| compare the video to whatever "the media" says, and you quickly
| notice that they don't match up. Either "the media" is lying or
| the event is not clear-cut and there are multiple valid
| interpretations.
|
| This only has to happen once for you to stop trusting "the
| media".
| dgudkov wrote:
| This is actually good news. It means people are still capable of
| distinguishing between propaganda and real journalism even when
| the former disguises as the latter. Which means the market forces
| will soon do their job. The rapid rise of Substack only confirms
| that.
| Animats wrote:
| Less news, more opinion.
|
| Try to find out what's happening with the ship stuck in the Suez
| Canal. The amount of punditry and opinion far exceeds the actual
| info.
|
| One of the few useful reports today is from Al-arabiya.[1] They
| probably have people on site.
|
| [1] https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-
| east/2021/03/28/Tu...
|
| [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/28/tugs-dredgers-
| still...
| Black101 wrote:
| All these millions lost daily and we can't even get a live
| video feed....
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWPbXJ0AqIs
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyLeJUHuOGM
| gruez wrote:
| What's the point of getting live video feed of a static ship?
| beloch wrote:
| If you're a penny-pinching American news channel, a panel of
| pundits is a _lot_ cheaper than having somebody in the field,
| whether that 's a field correspondent or just a freelancer.
| Every time something happens in some far-flung corner of the
| globe you need new people and equipment on the spot, but your
| in-house pundits are always ready to show up to the studio and
| bloviate.
|
| Talking about other people's reporting is cheaper than doing
| your own reporting. The question is, can American news
| conglomerates not afford to do proper reporting, or have they
| just found that it's more profitable to leave that to others?
|
| To put it another way, if we found ways to bring more money
| back into journalism (e.g. By making companies like Google and
| facebook to pay for news content), how much of that money is
| likely to be spent on actual reporting?
|
| I have a sinking feeling that the pundits are here to stay.
| ergocoder wrote:
| If it is more news, it will be like "A former US president said
| covid wasn't real".
|
| The news reports accurately what happens. But we would still
| hate it.
|
| But tbh I actually prefer reporting the news, not opinion.
|
| If Donald Trump (a former president) causes lives with his
| lies, we should handle him through a legal mean, not through
| blackmailing a news channel to ban what he says.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Opinion would be OK if it did not pose as news.
|
| People can see the attempt at cloaking subjective opinion as
| objective news and do not like it.
| marcusverus wrote:
| The real kicker is that the most respected publications are
| also guilty of this. The New York Times is currently being
| sued for defamation by Project Veritas. The NYT argued, on
| the public record, that they should be able to state opinions
| as fact _outside of the Op-Ed section_ [0]. I read this as
| the NYT arguing that they have a license to lie with impunity
| on the front page.
|
| If we live in a post-truth era, it's not because of the
| internet or the shitty click-bait 'news' sources that
| proliferate. It's because these institutions, like the NYT
| and WaPo, in which we used to be able to expect an objective
| accounting of the facts, have devolved into the personal
| Pravdas of a few well-educated idiots who thought that they
| could steer the country in a better direction, but only
| managed to drive us into a ditch.
|
| [0](see p. 5/16)https://assets.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/maE
| y58HDFCR7qdtFOb...
| jolux wrote:
| No, it's actually a fact that Veritas is deceptive. They
| have been caught in the act of attempting to deceive
| multiple times. At some point you lose the benefit of the
| doubt with regards to your credibility.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Let's say you're NYT counsel, and you're arguing this
| case. You have two arguments:
|
| Argument 1) This isn't libel because it's true, and
|
| Argument 2) This isn't libel because we're allowed to lie
| to our readership.
|
| Argument 1 causes you no reputational harm. Arguement 2
| is an announcement to the world that you've abdicated all
| journalistic integrity.
|
| Do you make argument 2 if you're confident in argument 1?
|
| Regardless, argument 1 must not be bullet proof, because
| their motion to dismiss was rejected and the suit is
| moving forward.
| unanswered wrote:
| How does "Project Veritas bad" erase the fact that the
| NYT argued in front of a judge that what is on its front
| page should be understood to be opinion and not fact,
| even when it appears in the form of facts? That claim has
| nothing at all to do with Project Veritas; the NYT just
| happened to say it in a related context.
| pydry wrote:
| Claiming first amendment rights is the easiest and lowest
| risk route to winning the case. What would be the point
| of fighting the case on the basis that you do not have
| rights that you actually do?
|
| Fox News also did the exact same thing on a similar
| lawsuit. It was used as a "gotcha" moment, but it still
| wasn't very meaningful.
| salawat wrote:
| Because there's a point where you end up going full
| ouruboros, which undermines the integrity of the
| institution all tpgether. The major established players
| want to be able to say other attempts at news outlets are
| deceptive, then turn around and do the same stuff, and
| yet still not be subject to the same loss of credibility.
| unanswered wrote:
| What part of my comment has anything to do with first
| amendment rights? What comment are you replying to?
| [deleted]
| hobs wrote:
| Complaining about the quality of mainstream media while
| quoting project vertias as your source shows your bias in
| the extreme - they are not someone you'd present as a
| trusted source, and in fact present extreme versions of the
| biases you are purporting others hold.
| goostavos wrote:
| Why isn't Veritas a trusted news source? What does
| "trusted" mean in this instance? My biases: I tend to
| think the corporate press has less rigor in terms of
| sourcing/reporting claims than your average high school
| homework paper, which makes most of it not trustworthy
| 'news' to me.
| jolux wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas#Incidents
| panny wrote:
| That's a locked page. English Wikipedia is well known for
| left bias.
| raarts wrote:
| Polarization knows many victims. Important drivers are
| outrage, othering and dismissal.
|
| I've followed Project Veritas and yes they go undercover
| for right-wing causes, but I haven't seen evidence of
| them being deliberately untruthful in their reporting.
|
| The real case here is that imho we should all start to
| (1) withdraw from outrage, (2) expand our bubble to cover
| all sides.
|
| I've done the latter, it helped with the former, although
| I'm not there yet.
| [deleted]
| orwin wrote:
| Wasn't the sting OP to protect an alleged pedophile (or
| almost) organized by project Veritas? I saw this on a
| rightwing media in France, so unless there is no honor
| among thieves, this must be close to the truth, no?
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| Perhaps it is time to actually start paying for news, like
| Bloomberg and the finance industry.
| [deleted]
| totalZero wrote:
| Nowadays, it's hard to make money by simply telling readers
| the truth.
| ridethebike wrote:
| "Readers" become "costumers" "Telling readers the truth"
| => "satisfying the customers" Subtle but important
| differences
| fermienrico wrote:
| It needs to go in the reverse direction to correct. We need
| less opinions than ever.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Opinions are fine in places like Substack, where people
| actually pay to read them.
|
| Out in the ad-supported world of supposedly free content,
| yes, fewer opinions would be a boon.
| noxer wrote:
| Opinions backed by facts would be fine. If someone
| explains why he has the opinion he has then I can
| agree/disagree/provide a better reasoning for another
| opinion etc. But most of the opinions voiced are either
| not backed by anything or backed by one of the most
| common logical fallacy.
| parineum wrote:
| It's not just that, opinions are intertwined with (often)
| cherry picked facts in such a way that it blurs the line
| between them.
|
| When writing in a style that I'd closely associate with
| how I'd like journalism written, I often find myself
| taking the beginning few sentences/paragraph to explain
| the facts of the situation as I understand it and the
| rest on what I think about it or why I think it occurred,
| etc.
|
| I write this way because I am very open to corrections on
| the facts and my opinions may change wildly if those
| facts are corrected or updated so stated the basis for my
| thoughts up front helps provide context. My opinions and
| explanations are a lot less malleable if the facts don't
| change. I'm open to expanding and discussing my opinions
| but they usually evolve rather than fully change.
|
| It's hard for me to really speculate on the driving force
| or the motive behind what we see in journalism today (or
| whether it's new) but it's very clear to me that the
| intent of the articles written don't seem to be clarity
| between fact and opinion.
| noxer wrote:
| The classic is "backed by statistics" so both sides pick
| the statistics that confirms their opinion.
|
| Last seen just these days in US media about guns/gun
| crime/shootings etc. etc. There are so many statistics
| which all define mass shootings however they want and its
| super easy to find the "facts" you need for whatever
| point you wanna bring across.
| SllX wrote:
| I want fewer opinions in any publication I'm paying for
| news _reports_. I _also_ pay for entertainment, and even
| to read someone 's opinion, but these are separate
| products for separate purposes. The revenue model is
| really beside the point.
|
| Opinion-infested reports where the writer is casting
| aspersions, making judgements, serving vanguard for some
| cause or presenting the writer's own opinion as part of
| the narrative are worthless to me. It's fine to have
| opinions as long as 1. that is what you are intending to
| sell and 2. you acknowledge this and are upfront about
| it.
| koolba wrote:
| Opinion is fine. The more opinions the better.
|
| But claiming some opinions are verboten or others must be
| accepted as fact rapidly destroys any historical reputation
| for a media organization.
|
| It's gotten so bad that a the NYT apologized for letting a
| _sitting_ US Senator publish an op-ed that diverged with
| the views of its subscribers.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/business/new-york-
| times-o...
| jostmey wrote:
| That is a symptom not the cause. News agencies have had to
| slash their budgets and can no longer afford to send journalist
| to cover stories
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If only we had some kind of organization that would let news
| outfits pool their resources. Some kind of "associated press"
| or something.
| raarts wrote:
| True. Newspapers, radio and TV used to be on the receiving
| end of most of the ad money. That has gone away almost
| completely over the last 25 years. And now they have to fight
| for clicks.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| I think you are close.
|
| The reality is they can sale sensationalism at dime store
| prices. There is no need to be a real news outlet when they
| can mimic "The Sun."
|
| There is no cost and all profit to just printing garbage. In
| the short term.
|
| This is trading your credentials for cash. Eventually, people
| will wisen and realize this is not journalism. It will cost
| them dearly then, but that is the future.
|
| Who worries about the future?
| axiolite wrote:
| The Al-arabiya article even references Reuters. They've been my
| go-to news source for many years:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-egypt-suezcanal-ship/digg...
| alacombe wrote:
| Rather funny coming from CBC which is really nothing but a
| mouthpiece for the Canadian woke-left given the billions received
| in public funding from the current government to stay relevant...
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Nothing says "objective reporting" like a government-funded
| news publisher. That's why I always get my news from Russia
| Today, so I know it's objective.
|
| (Word to the literalnet: I thought we were all adults here and
| we didn't need a /s. Apparently I was wrong.)
| alacombe wrote:
| This sure will never be a headlines on western media:
|
| https://www.rt.com/usa/519414-cnn-carjacking-death-accident/
|
| But of course, black female teen can not commit felonies, it
| would be racist to think otherwise, and even if they did, it
| would certain be linked to their ancestor being forced into
| slavery by evil white people (omitting the mention they were
| likely first sold by blacks in Africa)...
|
| or this: https://www.rt.com/news/519412-makassar-catholic-
| church-bomb...
|
| If it's a mosque in NZ, it's western news worthy, but nobody
| gives a rat fuck about a catholic church being bombed.
| rhodozelia wrote:
| I read the CBC regularly and listen to the radio as well
| and agree it is not objective and is always pushing a
| social objective.
|
| If you could remove the inflammatory tone from your posts
| and just state the facts there might be an interesting
| discussion to have.
|
| If the CBC is someone's only source of news it is a
| handicap to them as there is very little business reporting
| except from the point of view that some people having some
| success is bad because others didn't have any.
|
| At least the old newspapers had a business section that
| celebrated success and gave one a window in to that world.
| If all you consume is CBC you aren't shown a path in to
| markets but are shown that they exclude you and there is
| nothing you can do about it. CBC creates victims.
| alacombe wrote:
| > If you could remove the inflammatory tone from your
| posts and just state the facts there might be an
| interesting discussion to have.
|
| One comes with the other, not my fault if you can't deal
| with it ;-)
| fwip wrote:
| I think this is more a reflection of car culture - we call
| car crashes "accidents" more often than we call them
| crashes.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| American politics, only 2 items on the menu WW2 and the cold
| war.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| underseacables wrote:
| Journalists inserting their personal opinions and passing it off
| as fact, while working to manipulate public opinion of hot button
| issues for the sake of clicks.
| [deleted]
| donmcronald wrote:
| Yeah, and everyone is guilty of it IMO. I would love to see an
| analysis of news articles over the last few decades where
| someone counts the adjectives.
| Spivak wrote:
| So I know what you mean but the issue is more complicated than
| that. The implication is that if only journalists would stop
| doing inserting their opinions that the problem would go away.
|
| This is technically true but also misses the point by a mile.
| The dry work of journalists hasn't at all changed. News is just
| as boring and impartial as it always has been but nobody
| consumes it. It's been there the whole time and hasn't gone
| away. But television radically disrupted what we call news and
| proved that what people wanted wasn't actually news but
| storytellers who consume the news and present it as a cohesive
| narrative that has the benefit of context (historical,
| cultural, political). _This is totally rational_. It's why
| reading news reports and case files about criminals is niche
| but true crime podcasts are hugely popular.
|
| These aren't and can't be apolitical in nature but that isn't
| the same thing as "injecting opinion into fact" which is
| something that doesn't really happen all that often. It's very
| rare that you know a journalist's opinion on a topic (outside
| of their personal Twitter) but how they assemble a narrative is
| ultimately informed by their views as an individual.
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