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Comment by randcraw | Hacker News Reader

Of course. By its very nature, outliers are the only thing that news covers. Exceptions make news. Conventions do not. If you're hearing it on the news, it's useless information, like a TouTube video of a cat playing the piano while juggling mice.

Once upon a time, I think news was an invitation to get engaged in your community because change was needed or forthcoming, and as a citizen, it was your duty to know about the subject in order to contribute constructively, perhaps in a town hall meeting or at least in a civic (civil) conversation with neighbors.

Today nobody acts upon what they learn in big media news, other than to form misinformed opinions fraught with bias, to vote only every few years for a bad binary choice in rigged elections fielding untrustworthy candidates who pretend to address problems but actually perpetuate them via myopic self-interested gangsterism.

Pop news is 99% clickbait and 1% fact.

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The point of mass media is propaganda and entertainment in that order.

And given that the point of entertainment, from the perspective of “the elite” (government officials but also other wealthy and powerful individuals who are a part of the same de facto governing system) the primary purpose of entertainment isn’t much different from a form of propaganda anyways. Mass media is largely about programming the populace. Now of course it’s not all produced with malicious intent, but that doesn’t stop the powers that be from influencing them, and by extension “the people” through mass media.

But this is just my relatively uninformed opinion based on casual observation, not any serious study of the issue. Although given that if this were studied and published in a journal it would have likely gone through institutions which are subject to the same system which would be criticized by the research so...how much good could that really do?

I suppose my cynicism towards the people I’m supposed to trust is the primary thing prevents me from having a more fact based view of the world.

> I suppose my cynicism towards the people I’m supposed to trust is the primary thing prevents me from having a more fact based view of the world.

How so? Is it not a fact that politicians can't be trusted, and that, as you said, the mainstream media is largely about programming the populace?

"Cynisism" is what people call realism when they want you to stop talking about reality.

Perhaps at one point I was realistic but I think at this point I’ve seen enough blatant deception that I am overly paranoid as sort of a defense mechanism. This is probably still more accurate than how I viewed things before, but all I really meant by cynicism is that I am conscious of the fact that I am probably even more distrustful than what would be reasonable, just as a result of negative experience. Perhaps I’m right, but I don’t have an objective rationale for this, it’s largely based on heuristics.

To be a bit more concrete, it’s true that politicians and the media are liars, but then to extend that further to education, entertainment, and those who are culturally influential in general can be quite the stretch outside of a few specific data points. And how is it connected? How does this system actually work? It’s so complex it’s almost immeasurable. A critical view of this is necessarily heavily influenced by intuition and emotion IMO since you’re unable to trust a large body of your learned information from that mindset.

> And how is it connected? How does this system actually work?

Look at things and keep asking: "Who benefits?"

The point of mass media is profit.

Consumers with poor sense of perspective and poor critical-thinking skills are more easily manipulated by advertisers. Therefore, dumbing down your viewers is in your direct financial interest.

"By its very nature, outliers are the only thing that news covers. Exceptions make news."

Eventually won't the fact that the news only covers exceptions reverse in on itself when covering a non exception is in itself the exception?

No, because the exception is with respect to people's experiences, not with respect to what the news reports. People experience regular stuff every day, whether the news reports it or not.

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