For most people, news is just a social object. Something to talk about with family, co-workers, etc. Whether or not any particular story is true doesn't matter - what matters is that everyone in their circle is aware of the described event (whether they read the same story, or a different one).
Humans are pretty good at fact-checking and critical thinking when getting it wrong means some immediate loss. But most news stories are irrelevant to almost everyone's lives, and those few that are, don't have a direct and immediate impact.
Seemingly yes.
A murder in the closest largest city/town has NO IMPACT on my life (unless I know the victim) but yet tax or health policy changes on the national level do in fact have a direct impact. Guess which one gets run on the evening news? Which one does your family talk about at the dinner table?
Nightly network news should be focusing (and condensing unlike "cable news") on national/state and local laws, policies etc. not fire/murder/theft.
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How about this crazy cold weather?
So much for global warming huh! har har har
That's not how it works Dad!
I know I know but still...
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Harmless maybe, but it doesn't stop Dad from sharing a climate change denial piece or voting for a candidate who doesn't believe (or pretends to not believe) the science.
In fact, I suspect that even Hacker News and this very story itself (now I'm getting meta) are mostly the same: interesting, but often doesn't have any immediate impact and not actionable. I read biology/physics articles on HN because they're cool, but I don't work in those domains. We can hold some discussion about it, but there isn't anything that I can really do about it.
People have often defended the average voter with "people have busy lives and don't have time to think about this stuff" (and as you point out, don't really have the will to), but I've never understood how it's defensible to treat policies that affect other people's lives as idle fun.
Refraining to take part in that (or even worse being a spoil sport) is met with the same disdain as naysaying at any celebration. It's the difference between someone saying they root for a different team or saying they don't care much for baseball - the latter is going to sour the conversation pretty quick. At least with sports it's clear that the outcome is essentially frivolous.
> There are a lot of reasons why democracy as it stands today doesn't work as well but I don't think ill informed voters is one of them.
I agree with you in that I don't think it's a "voters these days" problems as much as a "most people's moral reasoning is horrifically stunted, in any population and time period". This is a baseline flaw of democracy, and one of the things that made Churchill call it "the worst form of government, except for all others that have been tried". But the inevitability of it across a population doesn't mean it can't be criticized at the individual level.
Your point is true of many people, but I think even more do want good information and there is the possibility to improve journalism going forward. Snopes is a good example that fact checking is useful, desired, and can help drive consensus. I can't count the number of stupid Facebook threads I've seen get resolved by a Snopes link.
Your concern about the first-order effects of this are valid. If we're very lucky, the second-order effects may prevail. Yes, shady news sites won't want to be validated by Credder at all, leaving only better news to be critically examined and thus potentially undermined. But, if the system works, the absence of something like Credder on an article may itself become a signal of disreputability.
The odds of this panning out are slim, but I think it's important to keep trying until something works. Democracy cannot function without citizens having accurate, relevant information in their heads.
This could even be made off reddit using lobste.rs source code as it’s open source, thoughts?
Were your "reputable news sources" promising you up, down, left, right, backwards and forwards that the Mueller report was going to end Trump and conclusively prove that his Presidency was the result of Russian collusion?
Maybe not for you as an individual. Mine were a great deal more mixed, for instance. But I suspect for a lot of people, the reason they find it easy to find "reputable news sources" is that they never hold their news sources to account for being wrong.
I use this example merely as the most temporally-handy example of when a lot of "reputable sources" got it very, very wrong. There are many.
No? News shouldn't "promise you" anything. Maybe you're reading too many opinion pieces? 50-75% of the news I see shared online seems to be opinion pieces attempting to "synthesize" the current news of the day. If you focus on journalists (including following them directly), and just pure news you won't be promised anything.
One of the most important aspects of the scientific mindset is to attempt to disprove one's own beliefs... I'd argue that that alone is enough to derive the most important aspects of scientific practice from.
Your challenge for the next couple of months is to read your own sources and actively seek out reasons why they are trying to lead you to certain things.
In particular, the question to be focusing on is "What conclusions am I expected to be drawing from this story?"
If you don't find them, I'd like to hear about your sources. They must be something exotic and small, because every name brand I've ever examined is pretty busy telling me what to think, not neutrally reporting news.
Exactly. It's not as if there haven't been any high-quality news sources around; quite the contrary. But quality has steadily been losing to whatever the consumers want to here.
Just compare 1980's CNN with today's CNN.
And, as you said, most people don't care. Its why cat videos or toy review videos get more views than educational or philosophical videos.
Expert curation is better than a democratized system. The problem is how the curators are curated.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/243665/media-trust-continues-re...
> Most people are unaware
I just don't buy this based on the content that I see shared.
When corruption (for example) is exposed it should be a slam dunk for both sides of the political debate. However, this is no longer happening, with each side digging in deeper.
The first step is to educate people this is not inevitable. No, don't trust authorities, but trust your ability to research and verify and spot faulty or unsupported arguments and assertions.
I'm pretty sure the reason this is being prominently discussed on Hacker News today is because of the criticism of "the media" around the Mueller report. But an equal emphasis needs to be placed on praising Mueller for the thorough job he performed, and the credibility and integrity which he invested into this task as an act of service to the nation. I think it will be very difficult now for anyone to argue there was not a massive effort from the Russians to help elect Trump, that there was a disregard and contempt for the law from many people in the Trump administration who have been found guilty of crimes or await trial, but also that there is insufficient evidence to prove Trump personally committed a crime with regard to the Russian interference.
The investigation is a shining example it is still possible to establish facts and evidence with some level of objectivity, if one is willing to be patient and wait for the process to play out before coming to conclusions.
Sounds familiar, almost like it's from some sort of playbook...
> I think it will be very difficult now for anyone to argue there was not a massive effort from the Russians to help elect Trump
Oof, I wish.
Statements like this are exactly why people are cynical of the mainstream news. There is no evidence of "massive" efforts from Russia to get Trump elected, yet you state it as a fact and that we should trust mainstream news.
The tighter people cling to false narratives pushed by the media, the more you'll see trust drop through the floor. Since not only is the media lying to people, but there's are large groups of people that will believe anything that fits their political view regardless of information that comes to light that contradicts it.
This is the opposite of what I said, I said we should trust the process Mueller used to reach his conclusions, NOT the media, who got a lot wrong.
Please refute the indictments Mueller issued for Russian nationals working to influence the outcome of the election, to back your claim Russia did not make an effort to influence the election.
Unless you are hung up on how massive counts as "massive", which is a pointless and stupid debate.
The media clearly got a lot wrong, but rejecting the Mueller report's conclusions is a much higher bar, and I will want to know how you have more information about the topic or more credibility than Mueller and his team and specifics about which parts of the indictments were incorrect.