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Comment by read_if_gay_ | Hacker News Reader

The issue is the right feels underrepresented in the MSM, so they move on to alternative media which are echo chambers, which leads to things like these riots, and the response from the left creates further segregation and more echo chambers. Both sides remain confident they are completely, 100% in the right, because each is living in their own universe. This feedback loop has been going on for a while now and right now it's just going crazy.

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> which are echo chambers

I mean, let's be honest here. There is a lot of good journalism in MSM; just about everything reported on from leaks and "anonymous" sources leading up to the Mueller report was later confirmed in the report or by first-hand witnesses(the matter-of-fact stuff, not necessarily the conclusions). Buutttt... CNN still has their "outrage" segments and echo chambers..

You’re almost close at the end there. The echo chamber of the MSM is worse because it has an air of legitimacy afforded by a history of journalism that doesn’t exist anymore. Once great institutions like NYT and NPR are scant more than propaganda arms for the left’s authoritarian communist regime. And you guys don’t realize you’re part of the echo. IMO the left is no different from us, we’re all trying to navigate this strange post truth world.

Neither accepts that it’s not just the other side distorting reality; both are oblivious to their own distortion.

> the left’s authoritarian communist regime

> you guys don’t realize you’re part of the echo

> we’re all trying to navigate this strange post truth world

I see what you did there, do you?

Hopefully you see what you did there as well.

Makes sense to me in the context of an assault on speech. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> authoritarian communist regime

Breitbart is leaking.

But honestly, care to elaborate? I'm genuinely curious.

NPR? I think that at a certain point you might realize that it would be worth taking a step back and reevaluating your information diet. When you accuse NPR of being a propaganda arm for the left's "authoritarian communist regime" is probably about that time. Way past it, in fact.

I'm really not sure where the whole communist thing came from, anyway. Go to the far left of the Democratic Party and you are still pretty far to the right of communists.

If you think that NPR is close to a balanced outlet, I'd venture you're unfortunately the one off. I wouldn't call them communist for sure, but more times than I can count they've shocked me with partisan or incorrect reporting.

What is your idea of a balanced outlet, then?

None! I wouldn't claim any outlet is. Read from many sources, from all over the spectrum, build a model of each ones moral foundations, find reporters who seem to be in it for good reasons and model them. There's no bastions of reliable news, just you vs a stochastic void of political claptrap, your only hope is to Thompson Sample the widest set of half-popular sources for nourishment.

This is related to another point that's been floating around in my head for a while. The amount of effort involved in just trying to get a balanced view of our political situation is insane, and few people are willing to spend that much energy. But even though few see the whole picture, most have very strongly held political opinions. This naturally tends towards echo chambers which is obviously really bad if you're in a democracy which vitally depends on everyone being well informed.

I think this is mainly because we set the wrong incentives, for example outrage drives clicks which drives ad money, though we can also throw evolution some shade for lacking foresight when it made outrage such a strong emotion and gave us a tendency towards reaffirming our own views.

In any case, I don't know how to solve it, and it's certainly not a new problem (I guess it's been a thing since democracy is a thing), but it seems the web amplified it a lot, to the point where I think it's to blame for our current political division.

> authoritarian communist regime

That's where you completely lost me. Yet another person who doesn't know what communism is and just uses it as a blanket, non-sense label for leftists.

Literally the biggest cable news channel in America represents their views 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. What in the world are you even going on about?

This is countering my point how?

RWNJ media is the MSM

My surprise that this acronym is even a thing aside, do you actually buy this?

Even if you do, the right pretty obviously doesn't agree, and you don't have to look far for evidence. If they wouldn't feel like they're represented unfairly in the MSM, they wouldn't keep complaining about fake news and the MSM in general.

Talk radio and the Murdoch empire are a large part of the MSM.

You have basically just repeated your previous point.

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