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Comment by omnius19 | Hacker News Reader

I completely agree. It is one thing to give reasonable criticism of a specific incidence of news media misconduct. It is another thing to blanket condemn every news organization based on inaccurate hypotheticals and personal opinions with no proof. Democracy is in trouble when people lose faith in the media and independent journalism is suppressed. By all means, be a skeptical and informed consumer of the news, but don't contribute to the discrediting of the fourth estate without good reason.

Edit: I made this comment before the parent added a bunch of, mostly grammatical, complaints about the article. I agree with other posters that those are mostly superficial.

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Democracy is in trouble when people lose faith in the media and independent journalism is suppressed.

Democracy is in trouble. Many people have lost faith in the media. Independent journalism is suppressed. (Though not completely in all the above counts.)

You may be right, but if so, that is quite a self-defeating and unproductive stance to take. If I accidentally start a fire on my stove, I don't say "screw it" and let my whole house burn down. I pull out a fire extinguisher and try to put it out.

By the same token, you don't set a fire to your stove and say, "Nope, everything's fine!"

People lost faith in media after their support for Iraq war. I haven't seen anything from them which shows they are trying to improve.

I would posit that you haven't looked very hard...

http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/206

The issue (in the US) is how many people read those Pulitzer winning stories vs. watched Fox News and other sources that are driven by the Murdoch/Ailes/Koch agenda.

Sadly, a lot of people in the US watch Fox News and think it is the only truth. (Check out mediamatters.org for some agenda monitoring).

> driven by the Murdoch/Ailes/Koch agenda.

David Koch opposes the Iraq War.

There are comfy media bubbles on both sides of the ideological spectrum and it is a serious problem. It is easy to criticize the other bubble while sitting comfortably in your own (please note I don't mean you personally, just a general person). One important step to popping those bubbles is to keep the stream of good journalism flowing. This means protecting the fourth estate from unwarranted attacks and trying to restore people's faith in the media and a basic shared reality.

However that is not the only issue causing these bubbles. People are segregating themselves, both socially and geographically along ideological lines. Print media is increasingly losing subscribers to generally less informative mediums such as tv. Technological advances, many brought about by my own field of software engineering, make it easier and easier for people to wall themselves off from ideas that make them uncomfortable. These are much more difficult problems to solve, and I certainly have no definitive answers for them.

So I start where I can, trying to encourage strangers on the internet (and in real life) to step out of their bubble and read the truly important journalism that still exists in our world. In the meantime, I hope someone much smarter than me can fix the divide in the US that causes these ideological bubbles. Because right now we are sitting on a powder keg, and the media isn't the cause... it's an effect.

> People lost faith in media after their support for Iraq war.

These criticisms toward the media and 'it's not like it used to be' allegations have been going on for generations.

So? Maybe they're valid now.

They were valid 'then' too.

'Yellow journalism' dates back to before the spanish-american war.

You say "media" as if it's a singular entity. It is not. It encompasses Fox News (which I don't watch but I gather is a cesspool), The London Review of Books, Vogue, Infowars, YouTube, etc. A set of _competing_ companies. Not all of them support or supported (the Iraq) war. Like so many others that refer to "the media" in the same way, I have to ask:

Are you sure you're not falling into the trap of "I didn't see it, so it doesn't exist"?

The "media" has a major problem. Its main driver is its entertainment value. News is more entertaining when sensationalised and heavily biased. I don't think there is a conspiracy or negligence causing this. Just simple economic drivers. It's the same thing we see with fast food. Yeah it's bad, but it's exactly what the market demands.

Despite what anyone will claim, good journalism still exists. I am not going to discuss obviously false generalisations.

Good journalism still exists, yes I couldn't agree more. But I don't think it's rewarded as much as poor journalism. This is the problem.

I think that's precisely the trump issue... "Reality" TV costs peanuts and gets more views, even if everything in it is staged.

Yeah politics has had this issue for a while too.

I would they lost some for their support but also others for later portrayal that was inaccurate in both directions. The media in the last decade has clearly taken a political side and they don't seem to understand that. There were even stories this week of the media reporting on the media! When the press becomes the story it has failed.

> Democracy is in trouble when people lose faith in the media and independent journalism is suppressed

To what extent is reporting skewed/slanted in the direction of the owners interests? Each media outlet still has an owner, hasn't it?

Your question is a red herring. Of course the owners of news organizations have biases, as do the reporters, editors, readers, and everyone else in society. Sometimes the bias is political. Sometimes it is sensationalism. Sometimes the writer doesn't like the color blue.

Every reputable news organization follows the journalistic code of ethics that puts institutional barriers in the way to counteract bias. Reputable outlets require multiple sources to corroborate stories before they go to print. They require printed or verbal disclaimers on any story that could pose a conflict of interest for the outlet or author. They require prompt retractions to be printed if an initial story is found to be factually inaccurate in any way.

It's not a perfect system. No system is. Bad articles can still slip through. Some organizations can adhere to it more than others. But it is way better than anything else humans have come up with to keep the news honest. Most journalists take their roles as arbiters of information very seriously and try to keep their biases out of it, even if they are not always completely successful. That is all anyone could reasonably ask.

Instead of labelling all news media as generically biased and therefore not to be trusted, try to understand that all information will have a bias and learn to identify specific incidents of it. Then learn to work around it by reading other sources with different biases, thereby getting the whole picture of a story. It is the news media's job to TRY to be as unbiased as possible. It is the news reader's job to TRY and be as informed as possible by reading varied news from different sources. Neither side will be perfect, as both are full of imperfect human elements, but overall it leads to a reasonably informed and educated populace, which of course is the goal of journalism.

And if you do not agree with what I have said here, I have a follow up question for you... if the current news organizations are so terrible and inherently biased, what alternative would you propose? What is your idea of a perfect, unbiased media landscape? And would your alternative truly lead to a less biased media or just a media with biases you happen to agree with?

> Every reputable news organization follows the journalistic code of ethics that puts institutional barriers in the way to counteract bias.

What about editorial policy: who decides what item is taking the front page and what is published on page 11? Apparently that also has some importance. Has every journalist the opportunity to embark onto several months of research without editorial oversight? I am not sure about that.

> Instead of labelling all news media as generically biased and therefore not to be trusted,

Red herring, labeling: I haven't labeled anything, why is my question received in such a hostile way?

> It is the news media's job to TRY to be as unbiased as possible. It is the news reader's job to TRY and be as informed as possible by reading varied news from different sources.

I can agree with that. Can we agree that journalistic output cannot be trusted blindly?

> And if you do not agree with what I have said here, I have a follow up question for you... if the current news organizations are so terrible and inherently biased, what alternative would you propose

I think that journalism is currently searching for ways to adjust to the realities of the net: on the one hand established journalists don't quite like the loss of authority and fact checking that does occur, on the other hand established journalists have some codes of conduct that are lacking in the online world. I hope the net result will be more transparency and a higher quality of writing, and a more informed public: the current state of the art is far from an ideal state. However i think that nobody should be exempt from critical questions.

I feel like people have all of a sudden rushed to defend the media now that Trump is attacking it. But I feel like we've lost sight of who is probably chiefly responsible for Trump to begin with: A media framework which rewards views, leading to focus on the most outrageous and entertaining "news" over important information.

The media is VERY important, I agree. But I feel we've recently decided to forget how awful the media actually generally is. The article I noticed this last week that was particularly hilarious: "Trump made me order meatloaf, Christie says". That was CBS. That's what we've sunk to, and in many cases, that feels like the high point of where a lot of our media outlets have been.

There are definitely journalists out there doing a great job. The Intercept, The Guardian, The Information (though I can't afford to read the last one). But a lot of our news has been all hype and no substance, and I don't feel we should be giving them a pass right now, just because Trump's against them.

Many people, myself included, have supported the media long before Trump became president. It is easy to forget now, but Obama was also known at times for having an adversarial relationship with the media. Of course there are click bait articles and examples of bad journalism to look at. Just as there are examples of good and bad work in every profession. But pointing out singular incidents of questionable journalism to prove that the news media is "all hype and no substance," meanwhile ignoring the important, significant, and often times dangerous work that journalists do to keep the public informed is, at best, ill advised.

Go and read the Pulitzer prize winning journalism that has come out in the last two years. I would be shocked if you could walk away saying it is hype. Or even look at another story from the last few weeks, Michael Flynn's pre-election sanction discussions with the Russian Ambassador and subsequent firing. People might have different opinions on the issue or different feelings on the way the information was leaked, but it can't be argued that it was a serious story of national importance. Meat loaf isn't the only thing out there.

Your criticisms of some media practices are valid and have been made many times before. They will and should be made again. But finding a bad article and saying "see the media is terrible don't trust them" is not the answer. If you see an article that seems silly, look at other sources to find one that's not. If you see an article that seems biased, read about the story from several other sources to get the full picture. Or even better, do that even if you don't think the initial source seems biased. Become a savvy news consumer who stays outside of ideological bubbles by purposely popping them.

And I will also say this... when something important is under attack, it is possible to try and save it even if you have concerns about certain aspects of how it functions. It's hard to prune weeds from a garden that has been burned to the ground.

As I said, I've definitely seen some good journalists persisting to this day. Though it's hard to support and defend what Trump's followers refer to as the "mainstream media" when the outlets I've found producing that great work, like The Guardian or The Intercept, aren't really mainstream.

You're right, the Guardian and the Intercept have done some very good investigative journalism in the last few years, particularly around Snowden and the US surveillance state. However they are certainly not the only ones producing impactful journalism.

http://www.cjr.org/criticism/best_journalism_of_2016.php

Here is a good list of some great journalism from the last year. Some of the media outlets are "mainstream" (note I really dislike that term as it is usually used by people being adversarial towards the media for their own gain). Some are small local papers. Some have what is perceived to be a left leaning ideological bent, and some have a right.

I find that many people laud the journalism and outlets that support their viewpoint. However, they avoid or actively denigrate good journalism and outlets that oppose their viewpoint. From your reading choices, I'm guessing that you probably don't read the Wall Street Journal or other sources with a perceived conservative bent. If not, you should try. And try some sources such as the Associated Press and Reuters which focus on producing content for many media outlets with different viewpoints and biases. Good journalism is being done across the spectrum. It should be supported, regardless of your political leanings, as the basis of a shared reality in which we as humans can make good decisions.

On the contrary, I'm significantly more conservative than most of my friends (heck, I shared a post from National Review yesterday), and don't prescribe to either party. I have a hit and miss chance of reading WSJ because of their paywall.

Fair enough and I apologize for adding that assumption. It was unnecessary for making my point and disrespectful to you. I will leave it in for context but please disregard it.

"But I feel like we've lost sight of who is probably chiefly responsible for Trump to begin with: A media framework which rewards views, leading to focus on the most outrageous and entertaining "news" over important information."

I agree with you on this point, but I'd like to add that this argument can be spun further: the media framework is as rigged for views as it is due to poor prioritization of the media consumers.

Of course, next step in the chain is that it's the media companies that failed to find business models that adapted to digital and retained sufficient journalistic integrity. But I think that's a bit unfair. None of us have figured that out. I highly doubt that journalists are celebrating the new age of clickbait. I'd rather suspect they cry themselves to sleep over it, so it's not for lack of trying.

Sigh. I think I'm going to buy a Guardian subscription now.

I did, in fact, also recently buy a Guardian subscription. :)

Characters like Trump and Farage largely owe their success to 24 hour news channels and their insatiable appetite for soundbites and headlines - those guys are non-stop controversy generators and are, as such the ideal match for rolling news.

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