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Comment by romaaeterna | Hacker News Reader

Journalism would only be improved if every journalist got off of Twitter tomorrow. It's not representative of mainstream opinion. And the artificially created and cultivated Twitter echo chamber couldn't help but warp anybody's neutrality. Unfortunately, it's still seen as the best way to drive clicks.

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Journalism is over. It doesn't matter what journalists do now. It was a by-product of mass media massive ad business which is being quickly taken over by tech companies.

There's still very important independent journalism payed using donations that uncover the corruption that's going on in my small country (Hungary).

The government took over all media, they are what's left for us, and this year was the first time that they were able to change the result of local elections.

Journalism is not dead, it just won't make any money.

It's not over. Value might appear diluted because of the ever increasing noise, but people will still look to say a Dexter Filkins for signal. Where else are you going to find that kind of signal?

It's more like the veneer of unbiased trustworthy journalism was a by-product of the mass media ad business.

Journalism has reverted back to the journalism mean which was always biased, propagandizing, shoddy, and appealed to the confirmation biases of the target audiences since the 18th century.

That's not to say there are not excellently written and researched articles produced today, but hey, today anyone can be a journalist.

I wonder if there might have only been the appearance of unbiased trustworthy journalism, as the "thought bubble" of a society was so much smaller just 20 years ago, and journalists could get away with much less knowledge on a topic since readers couldn't really fact check them.

Thought Bubbles, Echo Chambers, Circular Sources, Communal Reinforcement, Epistemic Closure, Errors Of Omission, False Consensus Effect, Groupthink, Opinion Corridors, Sleight Of Mouth, Talking Points... all sophistry ("the art of making the lesser argument appear the greater"), call it by whatever name you will, fake news, propaganda, "speaking with a forked tongue" -- or just plain disingenuity...

Media is dead!

Long live the media!

(In case you forgot that old saying, "The King Is Dead... Long Live The King!"... oh forget it! <g>)

Isn't journalism a pillar of democracy? The well educated professionals who deep, lengthy dives into corruption, raw data, etc. How will democracy survive if no is being paid to spends weeks, years, to go deep on a subject and citizens can't be fully informed?

We'll cross our fingers that benevolent general AI overlords are developed before we destroy ourselves.

> Isn't journalism a pillar of democracy?

No. Journalism isn't a pillar of democracy. The ancient greeks who invented democracy didn't have journalism. When the US was founded, we didn't have journalism. Also, dictatorships have journalism. Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, Communist China all had journalism.

> The well educated professionals who deep, lengthy dives into corruption, raw data, etc.

Do you think really think this is what journalists do? The older I get and the more I learn about the history of journalism, the more skeptical I get about this claim.

> How will democracy survive if no is being paid to spends weeks, years, to go deep on a subject and citizens can't be fully informed?

How did democracy come into existence without journalism?

You could argue free speech/free press are one of the pillars of modern democracy. If you look at who is attacking free speech/free press, you'll notice it is idealogically driven corporate journalists.

The US definitely had journalism before it was founded.

"Democracy dies in darkness."

Is that a warning, or a mission objective?

The WaPo's slogan should be "Democracy dies behind paywalls"

There is still public broadcasting and it works pretty good in some places. Germany for example. Even though people tend to lament the fact that they have to pay for it and it's always too much if you have to pay for something, it doesn't look like it's going away soon.

Even I'm not that cynical.

I would agree that ad-founded (engagement-driven) journalism is a dead-end.

Aspiring journalists will need to find other ways to pay the rent.

Twitter is just a portion of the information warfare going on in the media:

https://mobile.twitter.com/TS_SCI_MAJIC12/status/11820084279...

Imagine believing that anyone, anywhere was ever "neutral".

This gets worse in India where IT cells are the ones tweeting!

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