Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people. But we’re not your friends either

Journalists are stuck to doing the whims of owners and advertisers. We don't have a funding model purely for journalism as a mainstream practice. We do have federal funding grants for certain journalistic practices, and that journalism tends to be excellent and also completely ignored, such as focused reporting on the intersection of indigenous nationhood and the USA court system. (If that reporting were more widely known, for example, we wouldn't have had the supreme court of the united states questioning whether or not native people are capable of managing cities or what happens to criminals when discussing whether or not half of Oklahoma is native land. These are well-trod reporting subjects by specialist journalists who are highly knowledgeable in the field.)

Investigative journalism still provides excellent explanations- The New York Times reporting on Clearview AI helped explain effects of the algorithm to a layperson accurately.

> It's so important to the function of our society to have an informed population, but we don't, and it's because of the consistent lying that is done by journalists that we don't.

Are you sure it's that important to have an informed citizenry? I'd say we've never had one, anywhere. We've had some people being informed, sure, but the masses have never been informed well. They've been lead and entertained. If it's that important, how have we made it this far?

What's more important for a nation than the media informing people is the media being on the same page and projecting a similar image. Of course, you want them to not report that aliens have landed when they haven't, but you certainly don't want only half of them reporting it. I don't believe that the facts really matter that much overall. But if you lose the "shared reality", you're losing cohesion.

In other words journalism is great if it tells your preferred version of the truth and narrative. It is being disingenuous to disparage centralised journalism and at the same time complain about internet platforms with reduced gatekeeping.

> When was the last time you read a news article about a topic where you are an expert, and walked away from it thinking that it would help laymen better understand the topic?

You don't even need to be an expert. I recall reading about someone who was on trial for downloading terrorism related material, or something like that. The article talked about him using "encryption so powerful that even experts from GCHQ couldn't crack it". I know very little about cryptography, but I do understand the whole point is that nobody can crack it.

I think this kind of low-level misinformation is particularly damaging. It's not even an incorrect statement, technically. But it has the effect of making the guy seem like much more of a mastermind than he really was, and spreading fear about this terrifying "encryption" thing that we all use every day, whether we realise it or not.

And then we all turn the page and read the next story...

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

Every democracy should have a government funded independent news organization, and most do. The major exception being the US. The solution is tried and true but the political will is lacking.

> And while we're at it: shut down twitter. It's the drug dealer give our sensemaking organs the drugs.

If there is one drug dealer it is Facebook. I mean, of course Trump uses Twitter as a megaphone, but your grandparents won't use it. They all use Facebook to stay in contact with relatives and friends, and then get conspiracy theories, xenophobia and other propaganda in their feeds.

> and walked away from it thinking that it would help laymen better understand the topic?

I read a number of articles on the Oracle v Google case that explained the technical aspects of the case and why it had important implications for ordinary people -- why it wasn't just a slap fight between large companies. I am also regularly impressed by the technical coverage in ArsTechnica on a wide variety of topics.

The problem isn't that there's no good reporting, it's that if you're not an expert it's difficult to tell which reporting is good and bad. As a gamedev, I've seen some fantastic articles from tech journalists and games journalists on everything from game modding/emulation, to game design and theme, to the development process behind games, to consumer reviews that really get at the heart of what makes a game special or flawed. I've also seen some really sophomoric content on those same subjects that leaves me feeling unbelievably frustrated. And they come from the same publications.

So it's not as simple as just saying, "here's a good news source, trust what they say." The quality of a given publication can vary wildly. But it's also not as simple as saying, "every journalist is terrible at their job." There's some good content out there.

To add to that, I also kind of agree with this section of the article:

> journalism also has its own weird ideology that doesn’t match up with a party or movement. [...] But those values are rarely the actual reason anyone likes us, or the direction in which praise pulls us.

I think it's unfair for people to look at a culture that has generally shifted towards an attitude of "arguments/sources as soldiers" and say that the reason everything is broken is just because journalists lie. Journalists are part of a vicious cycle that encompasses how we approach education, the way we talk about politics, the way we fund our news sources, the way we conduct elections, and the way we consolidate newsrooms and talk about media antitrust. Journalists are one single part of a very large, complicated problem.

And just like everyone else, journalists respond to the incentives that they're given. The average person on the street doesn't necessarily always want an informed, balanced media source. They want a media source that they can use as a soldier in their political arguments. And in a Capitalist society, their spending habits and viewing habits help to make sure that the news sources that cater to their wants are consistently better funded than the ones that don't.

> and walked away from it thinking that it would help laymen better understand the topic?

I read a number of articles on the Oracle v Google case that explained the technical aspects of the case and why it had important implications for ordinary people -- why it wasn't just a slap fight between large companies. I am also regularly impressed by the technical coverage in ArsTechnica on a wide variety of topics.

The problem isn't that there's no good reporting, it's that if you're not an expert it's difficult to tell which reporting is good and bad. As a gamedev, I've seen some fantastic articles from tech journalists and games journalists on everything from game modding/emulation, to game design and theme, to the development process behind games, to consumer reviews that really get at the heart of what makes a game special or flawed. I've also seen some really sophomoric content on those same subjects that leaves me feeling unbelievably frustrated. And they come from the same publications.

So it's not as simple as just saying, "here's a good news source, trust what they say." The quality of a given publication can vary wildly. But it's also not as simple as saying, "every journalist is terrible at their job." There's some good content out there.

To add to that, I also kind of agree with this section of the article:

> journalism also has its own weird ideology that doesn’t match up with a party or movement. [...] But those values are rarely the actual reason anyone likes us, or the direction in which praise pulls us.

I think it's unfair for people to look at a culture that has generally shifted towards an attitude of "arguments/sources as soldiers" and say that the reason everything is broken is just because journalists lie. Journalists are part of a vicious cycle that encompasses how we approach education, the way we talk about politics, the way we fund our news sources, the way we conduct elections, and the way we consolidate newsrooms and talk about media antitrust. Journalists are one single part of a very large, complicated problem.

And just like everyone else, journalists respond to the incentives that they're given. The average person on the street doesn't necessarily always want an informed, balanced media source. They want a media source that they can use as a soldier in their political arguments. And in a Capitalist society, their spending habits and viewing habits help to make sure that the news sources that cater to their wants are consistently better funded than the ones that don't.

We won't be able to "fix" journalism without fixing the surrounding culture and attitudes of ordinary citizens. Bad journalism is a symptom of that problem. People read and fund the news sources that they want to see.

It might help to draw a distinction between investigative and explanatory journalism.

Explanatory journalism strives to help lay people understand complex topics, like this piece about how undersea cables are laid down:

https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

So to answer your question...25 years ago? But while explanatory journalism is interesting and useful if the author is knowledgeable, it isn't the sort of reporting that people think about when they consider newspapers in the context of an informed electorate.

Investigative reporting involves uncovering an issue which the journalist believes should be corrected. The journalist's goal is to convince people that the issue exists, and to explain why it needs correcting. They don't necessarily need to be an expert on the topic to do that, especially if they can present convincing documentation of the alleged wrongdoing. For example, Glenn Greenwald was able to report on the USA's surveillance of its own citizens without being an expert on how the United States' intelligence agencies operated, because Edward Snowden leaked him a myriad of internal documents describing their programs.

It is a shame that nobody seems to do good investigative journalism anymore; the last good example I remember in the US was the WSJ's reporting on Theranos. But to be fair, if your country's citizens simply do not care about huge and glaring problems which barely need to be explained, why bother with investigative journalism? It's no longer an effective way to correct social issues.

>When was the last time...

Virtually all technical reporting by The Intercept. Most of that is reporting about technology for journalists by journalists. So maybe the exception that proves the rule?

> When was the last time you read a news article about a topic where you are an expert, and walked away from it thinking that it would help laymen better understand the topic?

If you really think there's such a clear connection between your prompt and the claim that follows it, put your money where your mouth is.

On any news article posted here on HN that's outside your field, post a response that the article should not be trusted. Cite as evidence a different article from that news organization that is in your own field where you found glaring errors.

Then judge from the responses and up/downvotes how much HN values your analysis.

I see two orthogonal problems within journalism. Ability and intent.

Ability is due to Journalism being seen as a profession in and of itself. It is very similar to generic MBAs, in that their skills are entirely useless in isolation. They only gain value, when paired with domain knowledge within a certain niche. When journalists without the pre-requisite knowledge of a niche report on it, they inevitably report incorrect information.

Intent is largely a result of the twitter/social-media driven world, where clicks and ads drive money. Some of the best creators/media-sources today are largely subscription driven, and their relative independence allows them to bring relatively neutral news, that is not help captive by advertisers, twitter-cancel-culture or corporate overlords.

I'm not sure that 'news' has ever been anything other than what we see today.

The only exception is the breadth of journalism and news.

Look at the roots of yellow journalism [0]. The issues about headlines over substance are the exact same issues that we have toady with Twitter and the like. Only now, there isn't a fold to worry about.

Look at the Jefferson v Adams 1800 election [1]. It was nasty. The mudslinging, theft, and accusations feel right at home with today's political press. Such 'news' isn't much different than today, maybe with the exceptions of Benjamin Franklin running the presses.

Look at Cicero after the Social War [2]. He took on explicitly political cases and his life was on the line for doing so. Roman politics is cut-throat, for sure, but this just shows how humans do or do not change. The rumors, oration, and 'news' of those pre-printing press times sure sounds a lot like any talking-head cable news show. Though I imagine that the Latin is somewhat lost in translation.

The point is: News and journalism has always been like this. The technology is sure a lot different. You can get endless front-pages from every hamlet on the globe. But the underlying mechanism, that of yellow-journalism, rage, emotion, etc. That is an underlying part of us and is likely to remain so.

One book I love about the deep-down mechanics is John Quincy Adam's Rhetoric and Oratory [3]. It's a great dive into the nuts and bolts of getting an audience to listen to you.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidentia...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero#Public_career

[3] https://archive.org/details/lecturesonrheto02adamgoog/page/n...

Former journalist here.

Spot. On.

Trump mentions Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, all the time. But of course journalists themselves also have power. The power to decide what information reaches their readers, how it is presented - that is power. Not bossing around mail clerks.

The workers are always the easy targets.

The software engineers, the police, the journalists etc.

Meanwhile the puppeteers sit behind the curtains pulling the strings creating the system for everyone to be at each other's throats and no one even questions them.

Manufactured consent, anybody...?

> 2004

A year or two before that you had Judith Miller at the New York Times uncritically helping the American government start a war on false pretexts. And more than a century before then, American newspapers were hard at work starting the Spanish-American War for bullshit reasons.

This has always been the case. Thomas Jefferson called newspapers a “polluted vehicle.” Hearst and yellow journalism. Mcarthy is was not a high point in journalistic integrity - the press propelled him before Murrow took him down.

You're off by a century or two, but otherwise...

In all seriousness, the press has always been the friend of the powerful - whether moneyed interests, politicians, academics and so on. You don't write for the NYT or WP or Fox News or whatever you want unless your beliefs align with the interests of their owners, their advertisers, their lobby groups etc. And even if you may write for them, you'll absolutely not be editing for them unless your beliefs align with all of the above.

It's not some massive conspiracy or anything like that - it's just the way people and organizations work. No manager will hire or promote (or continue paying) someone whose opinions significantly disagree with their own, and the same is true of the manager's manager and so on.

Much of this is also highly related to the owners of the media outlet. There have been historical examples of moguls buying newspapers and requiring gushing reviews of any of their businesses, and vitriolic attacks of their competitors - political partisanship is a step down from that as freedom of the press goes.

> Personal opinion: I think it was around 2004 when the media slowly stopped being the journalists that protect our democracy, and instead corporations and individuals with political agendas.

It's literally always been that way.

For a while in the late 20th Century US, the alignment of the propaganda interests of the major US media was such that it spoke with almost a single voice, but the homogeneity wasn't some kind of virtuous objectivity.

Thank you for many pointing out that I'm off by a century or two, please allow me to clarify: The growth of the internet and corporate controlled media may have made the problem significantly worse, and more encompassing of the nation. I had completely forgotten about Judith Millar, thank you for point that out. I guess I remember a time when there were newspapers, and journalists were above the fray of politics. Something dragged the entire profession of journalism into the dregs and I'm at a loss to pinpoint exactly what that is.

Power doesn't breed restraint.

unscrupulous people will do unscrupulous things regardless of where they work.

> Now, you'll have to read two news outlets

You already can read multiple outlets for different perspectives. Most people don't. Why would that change?

>If you want the Democratic coverage, you'll go to CNN or the NY Times... * MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, Wash Post, LA Times, PBS, NPR, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google, Spotify..

There are sides to a story, and then there's false information. But on the lines of what you're saying, I think that education should probably train students in that style of media literacy: reading both sides of an issue from neutral, partisan and extremist perspectives, and reasoning about how to synthesize them.

> Before, it used to be that you'd present side A and side B, without taking any stance.

I feel that this era was a historical anomaly, brought on by the limited distribution of national TV networks, and the trust Americans had in institutions after the successes of WWII.

> Or look how long the Russiagate narrative dominated the headlines, only to dissolve in a day.

I've heard that the word "impeachment" was not mentioned once during the Democratic convention. Six months after the trial that we were told over and over again the evidence was so, so, so convincing toward a guilty verdict!