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Comment by matklnz | Hacker News Reader

But that's the job of a journalist... to create controversies where there are none. To divide society to get you hooked on news.

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> But that's the job of a journalist... to create controversies where there are none. To divide society to get you hooked on news.

Is it, though?

Does every journalist really "create controversies where there are none?"

Is every news story really an attempt to "divide society to get you hooked on news?"

Do you also believe meteorologists gin up their weather forecasts with storms for better ratings?

Don't confuse cynicism with intellectual rigor, please. The world - even media and social media - are more nuanced than that.

>Does every journalist really "create controversies where there are none?"

Yes.

>Is every news story really an attempt to "divide society to get you hooked on news?"

Maybe not every, but yes. Not only to get you hooked on news, also to advance certain political ideas which depend on the journalist/medium.

>Do you also believe meteorologists gin up their weather forecasts with storms for better ratings?

I do. I'm not saying they make up storms, but they could very well make things look more grave than they are so people listen to them.

Regarding meteorologists “ginning it up”: maybe not to the degree of making storms up, but here’s a recent, widely covered example of sensational reporting: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/09/...

Sure, but that doesn't prove that the purpose of weather reporting is to alter forecasts for dramatic effect, just as the existence of sensationalist reporting doesn't justify the claim that the purpose of journalism is to divide society, advance political agendas and get people hooked on news. The effect of a process is not necessarily its purpose, nor the purpose of those involved in that process.

It's like saying all bankers are greedy, all politicians are corrupt, all doctors are stooges for big pharma, all police are psychopaths, etc. Maximal cynicism and minimal insight... it gets tedious after a while.

I agree that to generalize to all is pointless. Furthermore, it’s likely that in many cases the implicit goal of reporting is to rally public support, or to mollify public concerns over some government activity—-the division only seems productive for selling more papers/ad displays on some situations, or to agitate the public in others. Chomsky’s “Manufacturjng Consent” examines the propagandistic element of reporting in a US context.

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