Was there? Because last I checked all that these so called 'reputable' sources of news seem to put out is biased garbage full of misleading data and often blatant lies.
I've seen better journalism from bloody buzzfeed than I have from some of the "proper" news networks in Australia...
The inculcation of this sentiment is precisely the effect I'm referring to. The waters have become so muddied with nonsense that no one can tell right from wrong anymore. And thus, actual news organizations with trained reporters and fact checkers and a tradition of at least being held to some kind of accountability lose all credibility. It's not a perfect system, but it's one which evolved to solve the exact problems we are facing here. There's a reason Trump attacks the media's credibility on a daily basis. Throwing your hands up and saying "it's all fake news" is precisely what the propagandists want.
The reasons are ratings and political ideology. They know that a lot of people hate Trump so they attack him. Any evidence of wrongdoing on Trump's part is merely a happy extra for the MSM.
If Obama did the same things that Trump does, do you think the MSM would behave the same way?
The MSM have cried wolf so many times that now half the country will not listen if they actually find something solid against Trump.
Whatever your position on Trump, it's hard to think of the MSM as being driven by actual journalism. And that's a real shame for the small number of journalists in the MSM who actually have integrity.
There are plenty of right-wing journalists who have similar quality to left wing. Publishers like The National Review have fine writers and it is hard to argue the a publication founded by William F. Buckley is some liberal organisation.
The "problem" is that all these organizations are critical of Trump too.
And who else?
I do think there is an issue in that these sort of commentators have much less visibility than before in American politics, so it's easy to form a negative opinion about right wing journalism. Partially as a result, I can name several commentators that have migrated from "Republican conservative" to a more "independent" oriented stance. Names like David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, Bruce Bartlett, David Brooks, and George Will come to mind. None of these names are 100% "liberal", neither are still today. They just don't fit well with right-wing media that has increasingly become populist.
It is probably my bias, but I can't think of a similar type of left-wing commentator that's made the same transition. On the other hand, I've noticed increased populism in more left-oriented media too...
This is a shame, because even when these type of commentators were at their most raucous, I always got the impression that both sides respected each other. (You saw the same thing at, say the Supreme Court, where Scalia and Ginsburg were friends.) A lot of media these days in contrast is extremely us vs. them and tribal oriented, with seemingly no respect for the other side at all.
1. He's the most powerful head of state on the planet. 2. He's demonstrably not fit for the job. 3. IT'S THEIR DAMN JOB.
I don't even like the man, yet I am compelled to defend him against what I see as a greater injustice.
Newspapers aren't credible anymore because they continuously make the conscious decision to run bullshit stories full of twisted truths in the pursuit of sales, as they have always done. The only reason they had any credibility before is because people blindly accepted what they said without the tools to verify it.
They've had the same amount of journalistic integrity as they've always had. I.E plenty until there's a buck to be made by forgoing it.
Sources for that claim please?
Of course there were always plenty of papers that operated like that (tabloids etc), but I doubt they were as influential in main political discussion as e.g. Fox News seems to be today.
Why do you assume that? Absolute garbage tabloids have been influencing elections and dominating mainstream political discourse in western countries for decades[1]. In the UK an entire political ideology was created to try and work around the influence of right wing mass media (spoiler: the answer was allowing media barons to dictate policy).
If anything tabloid influence is lower today than in the past. Compare the result of the 1992 UK general election with the 2017 one.
And the more respectable papers have generally had their own problems with reporting standards. The likes of the Guardian and the Telegraph should be on the lower end of what's considered journalism, not the upper one.
Honestly, the introduction of online news sources has probably helped in a lot of ways, because it meant people might at last be checking information from sources other than tabloids. There's at least a niche for good quality journalism online now rather than it being an 'occasional' fixture in some newspapers on a good day.
And I'd also add that the Greek press is also garbage. They don't turn a profit at all and are simply propaganda for their owner's point of view. Their owners usually being family-owned conglomerates. It's as if the Kochs started their own newspaper. I get the impression this is actually pretty common in many countries, particularly eastern European ones.
I find LeMondediplomatique (in all it's countries regions) to be a light in the darkness of propaganda. Check it out
Maybe the US just kind of lucked out there.
I can't think of one "reputable" US news outlet that hasn't knowingly spread misinformation or half-truths at least once over the past year.
The "good" sources are generally the least bad ones that happen to confirm your biases more than the rest.
I can't help laughing at your quaint idea that spreading misinformation "at least once over the past year" is a major offence. Dozens of major inaccuracies (with blatant political motivation) per day is the kind of standard we are talking about here.
Not to mention the abhorrent behaviour of journalists towards victims of crime etc in trying to get stories, which is a whole other side to the UK media which probably isn't appreciated from the outside.
But then there's also The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Economist, the FT – all of which have bias and flaws in their own way, but are indisputably higher-quality.
The mistake is in assuming that there can ever really be a realistic, completely-free-from-influence publication. In reality, we have to rely on a diversity of publications, funding models and political viewpoints, and make informed decisions. This needs to be backed by strong FOI laws and a culture of press freedom, which sadly is something which the UK has not been doing well at recently.
Please point out which stories, specifically, are "blatant lies", or "biased garbage".
WSJ:
- Investors Brace for Clues on ECB’s Tapering Plans
- Fed Faces Inflation Riddle
- Top Court Revises Trump Travel Ban Scope
- Bank Earnings Highlight Diverging Paths Since Crisis
- How a Saudi Prince Unseated Heir Apparent
- Trump Urges GOP to Seek Agreement on Health Measure
- Sen. John McCain Diagnosed With Brain Cancer
- Trump Jr., Kushner, Manafort to Speak to Senate Panels
- Where Will Banks Go After Brexit? Frankfurt Takes Lead
- Tech Stocks Eclipse Record From Dot-Com Era
- Court Overturns Convictions of Two in Libor Scandal
NYT:
- Two Weeks on Ice in McMurdo Station, Antarctica
- McCain Has Brain Cancer; Tumor Was Found in Surgery
- Citing Recusal, Trump Says He Wouldn’t Have Hired Sessions
- Trump Loans From Deutsche Bank Face Regulatory Scrutin
- China Woos Myanmar as U.S. Focus in the Region Wane
- Getting High in Uruguay Is Now a Pharmacy Stop Away
- Somalis in Minneapolis Shocked by Police Shooting
- President Persists on Health Bill, Urging Senators to Revive It
- Opinion: Gustavo Dudamel: A Better Way for Venezuela
- Opinion: Charlie Gard and Our Moral Confusion
- Editorial: The Dark History of Defining ‘Family’
-How Fear of Falling Explains the Love of Trump
-Trump is his own worst enemy.
-If Dr. Trump were your surgeon.
But "Biased garbage" I think was part of the original statement.
If this doesn't speak to bias of a publication I'm not sure what will. Besides I'm not sure all of the general public understands the difference.
That's why many people are on sites like HN: we get often more values from the comments that the articles themself.
That kind of feedback and engagement is the only thing that can keep journalism standards high I think.
I haven't seen any of them make a solid play at community-oriented commentary - things like persistent identities, karma systems, etc. Baffles me when sites like HN and Reddit are visited as much for their comments as the source articles. So many of the comments on mainstream news sites are drive-by insults instead.