We need a new media system
taibbi.substack.com
taibbi.substack.com
However, if you watch their interviews, for example, you quickly realize the problem isn't maintaining veracity as a fair source of news. The problem is if the reporters remain intrepid (as they currently seem to be), the people they interview-- like Ted Cruz-- end up looking like complete dumbasses. I'm honestly surprised they continue to get interviews with prominent figures.
That, to me, is the bigger problem. There are plenty of partisan pundits who feel comfortable appearing on the "other" cable news to play the wrestling villain. Nearly none of them will ever appear on Democracy Now, for example, because Amy will:
1. not negotiate ground rules for the interview in advance
2. ask occasional follow-up questions
Amy Goodman clearly sits pretty far on the left. But those two simple rules essentially made her as much of a nuisance to Bill Clinton as to George Bush. (And if you haven't heard it, go on youtube and watch her grill Clinton when he was attempting to campaign during Hilary's Senate run on Democracy Now.)
And that's the bigger issue. I don't really care whether some pundit reinforces my worldview or not. I care whether they fold under pressure when an intrepid reporter reveals they don't know what they're talking about. The problem with MSNBC/Fox/CNN is they don't usually (or even consistently) apply that pressure. (And sometimes actively suppress it, e.g., not telling their audience that one of their military analysts who is arguing for an invasion is also a board member of a defense contractor that would benefit from the invasion.)
Edit: clarifications
All that matters to them is staying relevant. They don't care about friendly or unfriendly interviews.
The figures need the media more than the media needs them.
That's where generalizing to "the media" causes problems, though. They do need some media to stay relevant, but can absolutely stay with sympathetic media outlets that will never challenge them. Ted Cruz need never give an interview to the likes of Axios for the rest of his career and he'll be absolutely fine with just Fox News.
I grew up watching the BBC, and even though I emigrated from the UK before the famed "I ask you again minister, is that a yes or a no" repeats of jeremy paxman, this was something that always struck me about politicians on the BBC: why did they keep coming back?
What I've realized over time was they kept coming back because they had to. If you were a UK politician at least well into the 1990s (and arguably right up to today), both the media infrastructure and the social culture required your appearance, even if you knew that David Marr or Paxman or whoever was going to chew you out.
That's not true anymore in the USA (it may also not be true in the UK either). There's really no reason why anyone needs to appear anywhere. Get a reputation as a fiery take-no-bullshit interviewer, and you won't be doing any interviews.
I don't think there's any way out of this now. The media landscape has exploded, and there's no outlet that is of enough importance anymore to hold people's feet to the fire.
Maybe not, but I'd still like a Fairness Doctrine -aligned news source such that I can do my part in rejecting dubious partisan citations (e.g., "I'm not going to believe your $partisanNewsSource article, but I might be more inclined to believe you you can support yourself with something on $aspirationallyNeutralNewsSource").
In the 1960s and 70s and early 80s, it essentially gave a right of reply on broadcast media. It meant nothing on cable, it mean nothing in the world of books, it didn't mean much for the press (they had to be careful about libel anyway).
If it is raining outside, and there's someone who says "it's raining outside" and someone says "it's not raining outside", how is anyone's life improved by the idea that they should both be given air time?
The job of a journalist/reporter/something is to figure out what is going on, and tell that story (maybe by using quotes from other people).
The problem is that when the story is more complex than "is it raining?" there isn't a single answer, and there isn't a single way to tell the story. In making choices about what to tell and in what order, one becomes "partisan".
I prefer the solution in the UK, where nobody seriously thinks of any newspaper as "neutral", and yet despite their relatively clear biases, they all manage to tell roughly the same stories, albeit with different emphasis.
Contrast that to the US, where mainstream and rightwing-media-claiming-to-be-mainstream don't even tell the same stories, and when they do, they sometimes make essentially opposite claims about them.
There will always be room for "fringe" or "eclectic" takes. The far-left has had to deal with that essentially forever, and the far-right used to. What's really changed IMO is that in the last few decades, approaches to story-telling (which is all journalism really is) that used to be confined to the fringe far-right outlets ended up appearing on mass-audience outlets.
b/c presumably both will be asked to support their respective assertions.
I grew up with a more expansive view of their role as the ideal. Are you saying that a journalist (or anyone, really) can't tell if it's raining outside? That their job is to act as a stenographer of the "it's raining" and the "it's dry" crowd, and leave it at that?
you can either host the debate, or participate in it, but not both. I think there is leeway for a host to chase participants who give inadequate or evasive answers, for a variety of reasons, but there is a limit.
At the end of the day, you can't make anyone say what they don't want to, but you can make it obvious when they refuse to do so.
Consider the role of the host in BBC Question Time, for example.
I think this is excessively narrow. I will admit that I wouldn't rate most journalists as among the experts in the fields that they report on, and I'm not sure they would either. But the good ones know a lot more about those fields than the average reader/listener/viewer.
If you're hosting a discussion or even just interviewing, I find it entirely legitimate to interject and say "wait, wait, you just made a claim that nobody in your field agrees with, how do you justify that?" or something equivalent.
Until very, very recently, it has been extremely hard to find US journalists that will behave this way. A few have done it with respect to election claims and COVID19 related issues. It is the exception rather than the rule.
Treating interviewees with respect does not preclude treating the audience with respect, and if the interviewee says something the interviewer knows to be nonsense, or at least questionable, it is out of respect for the audience that they should "participate".
I agree, but they never appear to be engaging in advocacy but rather not letting their interviewee get away with lying or deflection. Notably, I would like to see a reporter challenge some of the BLM narrative—at least ask the obvious questions, like “how do we know the police shooting racial disparity is racism and not crime rates or some other factor?” Virtually no journalists touched this issue, and it makes them look like they’re not only partisan, but that the movement itself needs high-profile protection from even the faintest of scrutiny. Small wonder people feel at liberty to find their own “truth sources” when the established ones appear to be dishonest.
Talking about "fields" however only covers academics/experts. in politics, I wouldn't give peer-support so much gravity, especially since GOP and Dems appear to maintain different sets of "facts".
Suppose someone makes the claim that tax cuts for the rich, or for capital gains, improves the economy. Journalist/host says "what evidence do you have of that?". Politician/pundit says something misleading, irrelevant or demonstrably false.
This is the crux point. The journalist/host can at this point either (a) move on (b) drill down into the claim made by the politician/pundit. But (b) will be clearly seen as oppositional by both the politician/pundit and by the audience (and correctly so, because that's the whole point).
In the current media landscape, this journalist/host will shortly end up with no significant guests at all, and will be described as "confrontational" and "partisan".
Misleading statements can be followed with questions seeking clarification. Irrelevant statements can be followed with questions asking relevance.
Demonstrably false statements will require the host to demonstrate the falsehood, otherwise they are not so. At least, questions can be asked clarifying the details of the statement.
> this journalist/host will shortly end up with no significant guests at all
so be it. If politicians don't want to look bad, they won't. But they can also lose face if they only accept softballs.
asking pertinent is not aggressive, nor does it disgust audiences. The problem, as I see it, are that journalists are mistaken wrt to what the facts are or at least what can be demonstrated), and when questions really are pertinent. A host can be as confrontational as they want, so long as they are bi-partisan (i.e fair); It's only when they are not that their manner becomes an issue to an audience.
I often see aggressive questions asked, then don't really serve a useful purpose other than give someone a hard time, e.g loaded questions.
Let's say for sake of argument that the people denying the weather in your metaphor are Trump supporters. TFA's thesis is that Trump (and thus his supporters) are a symptom of the media's rejection of neutrality (and indeed, the pursuit of truth). I would go farther and argue that it's not just the media but epistemological institutions in general. Presumably if someone's viewpoint isn't represented in a debate, but rather outright maligned, then that person isn't going to trust the moderator and is going to feel free to find his own moderator. If rejecting neutrality is the cause, then it stands to reason that we can cure the problem in part or in full by embracing neutrality again.
Of course, Trumpism isn't the only ideology that has prospered in this post-truth landscape, so embracing neutrality is probably a pretty threatening prospect for a lot of people.
So for example, despite me not agreeing with it, and believe it to be completely refutable by looking at the evidence, I will concede that the concept that welfare payments might make at least some people lazy is a position that needs to be accorded roughly the same level of credibility as my own position (it doesn't, and the amounts of money and moral hazard involved make it largely irrelevant). Someone reporting on social policy questions and discussing the pros and cons of a welfare system would be remiss in not mentioning and examining both these perspectives (and others, probably).
In the case of raining/not-raining, this is clearly (to me) absurd. One of the POV's is right and one is wrong. There's no need to say "some people say <wrong thing>". It's just wrong.
The problem IMO is that many issues fall into the gray zone between these sorts of examples. For example, I'd say that people who claim that tax cuts for the wealthy lead to an improved economy really don't have any evidence whatsoever in their favor, and that reporting on their position as if it is somehow a credible economic policy is giving credit to something that is demonstrably false. But there's enough wiggle room there that a journalistic organization might still feel, even after myself or Krugman have shown them the evidence that this view is demonstrably false, that they should cover the position of those who make this claim. They can enuniciate their perspective eloquently and clearly, and they sound as if they have a legitimate position that deserves consideration. Journalists are very reluctant to make this judgement call.
The real problem, I think, is something I alluded to up-thread. It's not really about presenting particular perspectives. It's about critical thinking, both on the part of the audience but also the journalists. It's about challenging the claims made with perspicacious questions, and pushing for answers until they are given, or it becomes clear that someone is unable to justify their beliefs. The problem in the current media landscape is that if someone actually does this, they will rapidly be unable to bring these skills to bear on anyone who actually matters. So they don't. They do what NPR does so often - put the voice in front of the mic, and "let the audience decide". Don't challenge, don't ask difficult questions, don't follow up, don't call out obvious and common logical flaws and fallacies, don't ask for evidence.
That depends on what your goals are.
Let's continue with the above metaphor, and assume "rain skeptics" make up half of the population.
If you want a chance of convincing them that things are more moist than would appear so -- then you get to invite their most credible voices to a stage which they agree is fairly moderated.
Not which you declare to be fair and as-unbiased-as-is-possible.
One which they agree is such. And, yes, that means both sides get to sacrifice in equal number several sacred barnyard animals.
Because if not, it doesn't matter what is true or not true. Those rain skeptics will increasingly polarize against you, to the point where you simply can not reach them at all.
If you are fine with this, then you are presumably okay with green-lighting extreme measures to "solve" the "rain skeptic problem", because that's the road the United States is on right now.
That doesn't provide a guide for how to handle cases where the truth is not clear, where there is obviously legitimate grounds for disagreement.
But it's supposed to mark one of the spectrum. Many people would say that journalism has failed badly at the end of the spectrum, by taking things that are clearly true ("it's raining") and behaving as if the skeptics deserve to be heard.
Obviously, the skeptics feel otherwise, but is that relevant and if so, how much attention should we pay it?
I'm pretty sure this has always been so.
> Obviously, the skeptics feel otherwise, but is that relevant and if so, how much attention should we pay it?
Again, this depends on your goals.
As I get closer to 60, I'm swinging more towards simply acquiring and exercising power on behalf of things I believe in.
I say this despite an ironic awareness of how much I despise a movement with opposite ideals to my own for appearing to do the same thing over the last 3-4 decades.
I think people I know have been convinced in this manner. I don't think people necessarily reflect on why they were convinced. They just know that they agree with the "rain skeptics".
I'm not convinced that giving "rain skeptics" a platform would be the right thing to do if they only make up a small percentage of the population. If they make up half the population, I have no idea.
EDIT: My experience above is probably not helped by weak moderation in debates. Moderators with a backbone would probably help in cases where "rain skeptics" are given a platform. Sadly that seems to be rare.
There will be a debate about whether climate change is going to cause huge problems and therefore mitigation measures are needed - some of which may lead to higher taxes. For some people.
Objectively the answer to the first part of that question is "yes". At this point there is no plausible argument to be made for any other position. Denying it makes as much sense as claiming that it's not raining when it is.
But interest groups who are horrified by the second part can use a standard repertoire of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) techniques to persuade less educated voters that it's not true., And also that they are being victimised by the people who are saying it is.
Which is why public debates aren't about facts or evidence. They're about "Who is the victim - and is it going to be you?"
Once that frame has been established it's very difficult to break out of it, because the debate is neither adult nor rational.
And this is the frame in which public debate has operated in the US since at least the 50s, and probably longer.
Which is not to deny that some people are victimised by others, but to point out that it's very easy for those who are perpetrators to claim victimhood too - and to do it convincingly, even when it's nonsense, by using FUD, lies, and other rhetorical tricks in bad faith.
Trying to push for ground truth and pointing out logical fallacies will do less than expected to prevent that, because the rhetorical games that are being played operate on a different level.
I don’t fully understand your point here as it relates to the other poster’s comment. Are you saying that “we should embrace neutrality” in this context by entertaining the idea that it’s not raining outside when it clearly is? I don’t think that’s a solution.
That said, some people in this thread are really stuck on this contrived weather hypothetical; in reality, current events are typically a lot more subjective. Consider BLM—had the media critically considered the conservative position—that perhaps police killing victims skew black for reasons besides police racism—maybe blacks have more frequent interactions with the police or maybe they commit more crimes or both. Perhaps the media could have also considered some of the heinous police killings of whites instead of fueling the narrative that it’s only blacks who are egregiously killed by police. Had the media done these things, it might’ve earned back a bit of trust from some people, and since everyone is absolutely certain about the dynamics of race and policing, it could have been an opportunity to demonstrate to conservatives and skeptical liberals how we know for certain that crime rates, etc don’t drive police killing disparities but rather racism.
To go back to your topic about BLM; your counter-issues have been addressed many times. Remember that Kapernick started kneeling in 2016, during Obama, protesting to criminal justice reform. BLM activists had continually made the case that police reform is needed given:
1. Black communities are over-policed and black Americans were targets, for reasons including generating more revenue. [1]
2. White victims such as Daniel Shaver [2] received major media coverage from BLM and mainstream media.
I could sit here and list of articles and anecdotes about the BLM movement - and you can research them as well; but the solution comes with discussing police reform and as you can imagine they are certain institutions who do not want to have that conversation. The problem is, just how it's raining outside, despite evidence for it, the "not raining outside" crowd will continue to regurgitate the same arguments like the one you have espoused. And in this 4 years of trying to convince them that it's not raining outside we have hardly made a dent in the issue. At this point you can only make the assumption that one side is acting in bad faith; and if that's the case why should anyone give a neutral position to bad faith actors? That's why I don't think it's a solution - it's not that the other side is "misinformed", but they are actively impeding progress with bad faith arguments - in order to prevent having to reform our profitable criminal justice system and their attempts to tell us to be "neutral" is simply an attempt for them to slide us backwards.
How do you play neutral with a corporation that is dumping radioactive waste in your lakes?
[1] https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releas... [2] https://www.theroot.com/horrific-video-showing-arizona-cops-...
His interview with Ben Shapiro [1] where the later accuses him of being a "leftist" is certainly revealing.
So first off, I haven't seen a specific example of this as I'm not a frequenter of Axios interviews. Could you post the interview you're referring to?
I'm having trouble saying this in a way that isn't flame-bait-ish, so I won't be using your word "dumbasses". Not because I disagree, but because it could be off-putting to Ted Cruz supporters in a way that obviously is intended to outrage them.
Sorry, but I feel it's important to be very careful with our wording here after the events at the Capitol. With that disclaimer out of the way -
Is it a stretch to say that Ted Cruz doesn't really need much help from interviewers to make himself appear unrelatable to average people? From what I've seen of him, that's 100% true.
On the other hand, I can also absolutely see the style of interviewer you're referring to. They're more excited about a "gotcha" moment than they are about an informed discussion with the interviewee. Is that what you're referring to?
Thanks, and again I really hope I haven't offended anyone. If I have feel free to downvote me, I suppose. I'd appreciate a comment explaining why you did so I can work on being less offensive in the future, but if you don't feel like you need to explain yourself, that's also okay.
https://www.axios.com/ted-cruz-axios-on-hbo-bc6addab-ef33-43...
Oh come on. Drop the hysterics and write the name of the person you're talking about.
I don't know enough about US politics to know if that qualifies as being a dumbass, but I don't think this qualifies as "gotcha"-styles interview either. It seems to be quite clearly talking about specific policies and actions, and not simply playing off silly gafs.
Classical example of this "gotcha"/bad-faith style - the infamous interview between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman.
But I don't read it for the interviews. I read it for the brevity and clarity. Interviews are muddier.
An alternate explanation is that these are not news outlets, and haven't been for years. Instead, they are merely editorial outlets.
The nonprofit model encourages much more direct community engagement through conferences, festivals, and long-form interviews with local, state and national leaders.
A major hurdle that nonprofit and higher-quality news outlets face is that the major media players have dopamine-driven news down to a science, and it's a lot easier to consume a small and practically meaningless soundbyte than it is to sit and listen to a politician have a challenging discussion with an interviewer for an hour. The attention span of the average American isn't equipped for higher-level discourse as it's not nearly as exciting and rage-inducing as watching CNN/FOX/ABC/??? network.
On the other hand there's no ready alternative source for restaurant openings and closings. That's just about my favorite topic on Berkeleyside.
This is probably true to degree, although Rogan specifically is a pretty polarizing example due to his proclivity for hosting guests that aren't always welcome elsewhere. It's hard to say how much of his popularity is due to his interview style versus his politics. I also expect that the demographic breakdown of podcast listeners aren't reflective of the country as a whole, it probably skews a bit younger.
Long-form interviews with political leaders aren't a new genre, I suspect they just don't get as much attention as the more soundbite-y forms of news, but I could be wrong.
This nuance is enough for certain trans activists to damn him completely, but that is hardly a universal judgment.
For me it shows that the tribalism has completely overtaken US politics. If everyone was making up their mind independently or even semi-independently the odds of everyone in the same bucket having the same beliefs would be close to 0.
I'm not accusing you of that, btw. Just saying it for me.
Another example, on that spectrum this time : Trump's anti-immigration stance is a very typical leftist position. If this sounds preposterous, see this :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workingmen%27s_A...
But then he got elected, and essentially governed as a standard trickle-down Republican, with a side order of conspiracy theories and showmanship.
Like, it's important to remember that Bernie Sanders was anti-immigration without stronger labour standards, and that many Trump/Sanders voters (in 2016) liked the other candidate more than those in their respective primaries.
The US just needs one set of people who'll actually do good things for the lower half of the populace, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
I'd flip this; Rogan isn't polarizing, so much as a section of society is intolerant of "the marketplace of ideas".
It's not Rogan who has to change, it's his critics.
Put simply, they don't trust fellow Americans to form their own opinions, so feel entitled to control their influences.
Ok, there are also some guests that might make false claims, or misrepresentations. Exposure and open discussion is the prescribed cure for this too.
Also, it's debatable that his podcast promotes higher-level discourse even if it's long in duration.
It definitely kicks the cynical view that people are only interested in bites that satiate a short attention span.
Isn't culture war 95% of what Taibbi writes about?
This isn't the worst diagnosis I've read, but I don't see him offering any solutions.
He’s covering - his beat is - the current media’s stoking of culture war as a commercial reality of modern media tech.
I want to say Glenn Greenwald too, especially for the stuff he did several years ago, but he and Taibbi are sort of occupying the same lane now. I hope he can escape the tomb that "The Intercept" became for him; he should have quit them much earlier.
Absolutely call out the US for the bullshit it does, but whitewashing other countries actions to promote your viewpoint is abhorrent.
Any time I hear the word "abhorrent" I think of all the Native Americans, enslaved Africans, Filipinos, Guatemalans, Colombians, Indonesians, Vietnamese, Afghans, etc. whose lives were ground up in the gristmill of USA capitalism.
He left Intercept 2 months ago. He has a substack newsletter now
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...
In general, rabble-rousers on the internet don't link to original data, because "easily-fooled people" like yourself will just believe your first impression. And helpfully share that with HN!
[0] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1348322148704804864
[1] https://gizmodo.com/every-deleted-parler-post-many-with-user...
There is a reason that both are now self publishing their punditry without editors or fact checkers. I wouldn't really even call it journalism anymore. Neither can still be compared to Ronan Farrow, who is meticulously honest.
You have to write what sells. It's not like there weren't news organizations that followed the old impartial model as best they could, like McClatchy - who went bankrupt continuing to do it. The real issue is that the public wants the entertainment of blood sport in every venue, from e-celeb beefs to politics and because the barriers to entry are so low now, if you don't hot-take it, the next Youtuber will.
Action: X publishes something properly critical of the right/left.
Reaction: The extreme right/left media throws all sorts of criticisms of X's reporting and sees what sticks.
Result: Some fraction of the right/left constituency starts to believe (and voice) that X is biased.
Action: X publishes something wrongly (or at least with more bias than expected) of the right/left
Reaction: All right/left media publishes articles lambasting X's coverage of the item in question.
Result: A fraction of the more moderate right/left constituency starts to think "maybe my extreme friend was right about X"
Cycle through the above a few times, and even though the majority of the country may trust X, most of that majority will be among the least politically engaged (because partisanship and political engagement are correlated), so you are left without much of an audience that cares about what you are reporting.
Until there's a definition of 'neutral' that everyone agrees with, that won't work. It's impossible to avoid making important editorial judgements unless you're going to literally report all information being generated. News organizations are not a substitute for doing research on the things that matter to you.
Start with a firehose stream of "all information being generated" (which, implicit in your comment is neutral) edit it down. The extent to which the edited-down stream pisses off one side more than the firehose stream did is the extent to which your stream is not neutral.
Note that this isn't a suggestion to both-siderism; I'm not suggesting that the resultant stream will treat both sides equally, just that it's precisely as biased as the "firehose."
If you do think reality is neutral, then the neutrality of a source can be measured in the degree to which it distorts the view of reality it presents. It is political in the degree to which it intentionally distorts reality towards or away from some policy goal.
bachmeier agreed with 1, but not 2. The second point is my argument.
I agree with 1.
Of course reporting just this information is non-neutral. You are specifically picking facts that back the policies of one side over the other. That's obviously non-neutral. If you are a weather-service, it might be apolitical, but as a general news organization it's hard not to read that as political.
> Could I make my editing neutral by also including the occasional statement that Trump won the election in a landslide?
I mean if your firehose of all facts includes "Trump won the election in a landslide" then sure, but I don't think you honestly believe that to be true. I suppose you could report on members of the house claiming this to be true? It might make more sense to e.g. report on perverse incentives setup by entitlement programs (to go with the climate-change theme, how about how tax-breaks for clean-fuel vehicles disproportionately benefit the rich?)
2. My comment specifically said it would be apolitical for a weather service to report this
3. If the New York times were to have an entire issue with just the global mean temperatures over time, that would clearly be both politically motivated and non-neutral.
There are 3 things that you seem to be confounding: apolitical, politically neutral, and factual. One can select which facts to report with the intention of motivating specific policies. That is neither apolitical nor politically neutral, but is factual.
The NWS was commissioned to observe the weather long before climate change was on anybody's radar, so it's clearly apolitical that it does so. The fact that some significant fraction of one of the two major political parties in the US wishes it to stop should be clear evidence that it is not politically neutral. That's fine! There is no demand in TFA, or any of my comments that any or all government agencies need be politically neutral.
Wouldn't not reporting that information also be non-neutral? As you are, from one perspective, hiding information that one side doesn't want to be shared, thus favoring their political stances.
You could have very bland neutral reporting by omitting information that offends both sides (as long as you do so in a ratio that is roughly equivalent to how it occurs in the firehose), and you could have extremely provocative neutral by similarly highlighting that information.
There will be times when one side's opinions are more in conflict with facts of current events than the other, so you probably won't be pissing off both sides equally (this is why my original comment was pondering that, in the current environment, a neutral source could not remain trusted), but if you truly act as a service to that strives to fairly convert the "firehose" to a "drinking fountain" then that's what people (or I at least) mean when saying "neutral source."
Most of the news that seems to gain popularity on social networks is not that though. It's not really news, it's pandering and it's reinforced by the echo-chamber nature of said social networks.
I'm lucky enough to be able to read several languages and I found that the best way to find consistently decent news coverage is simply to look for it on the outside. See how the Russians or Brasilians report the Capitol riots. See what the Ukrainians have to say about the British elections. Of course these news outlets are not without their own biases, but at least they tend to be less emotionally involved and don't have a horse in the race, which in my experience leads to more factual reports.
For instance while most European news outlets will lean anti-Trump, they are unlikely to consciously or unconsciously silence or downplay pro-Trump or anti-Democratic news simply because they don't really have any direct influence on American politics. Meanwhile a journalist at CNN or Fox News is in a different position, because their reporting will be de-facto politicized and could have direct consequences one way or an other.
Many politicians are publicly supporting Trump despite sharing none of his values and none of his political stances just because he is branded as a successful right-wing politician. Most people don't know how skewed the political window is in the US anyway.
Even moderate right-wing politician from a European perspective want to be associated with him because he represents the right.
Because of that, news reporters in Europe tend to be gentle with Trump and the Republican party, glossing over their most egregious acts, to not appear biased, despite the small number of people actually supporting the same policies locally. And they still need to report on the USA because of their importance in the world.
Also at play, the incomprehension in translating American problems to other countries'. In other events, the BLM movements was imported to other countries with little knowledge of the US systemic problems and used/criticized in different ways.
This is how American politics can drag the political discussion over the world and impact the political spectrum everywhere.
Here's an example from Europe :
https://www.worldstockmarket.net/twitter-when-francois-ruffi...
In any case far left leaning activists have always expressed that the mega caps have too much power; but they were called communists until it started affected people on the right.
> "Freedom of speech isn't without limits", I know, but it falls to the people, the tribunals and the officials to decide those limits. Not private companies.
He's not saying these are good people, he's saying the arbitrary nature of these decisions, and the fact that they're being made by unaccountable corporations, is dangerous.
Humans aren't neutral. The way we interpret events isn't neutral. It is difficult to be brief or put this down to any one event/cause but, ultimately, media is just a reflection of what people want.
Weakening bonds between people in society, an education system that teach facts over nuance (this is interesting, lots of lawyers in politics in the US which generally builds a culture that permits resonable disagreement...hasn't happened), low levels of respect for other people, etc.
Neutrality is not realistic though, and isn't required. Res
I didn't ask for the source to be perfectly neutral, just "mostly neutral." I'm pretty sure I won't make the best choices all of the time, but I still strive to make good choices.
Furthermore the idea of a neutral source comes from TFA; I was merely trying to point out that, even if such a source were to emerge, there doesn't appear to be a stable equilibrium in which that source can persist to exist and be trusted.
Twitter / Reddit / YouTube / management is CHOOSING to make their platforms into liberal-or-die echo chambers because their upper management leans left. No one is forcing their hands.
People here will first play the gambit "there is not such thing as an objective/impartial press" knowing that that will lead to a neverending philosophical debate with no conclusions.
Then you will say, "fine, at least give me some journo that exposes a Democratic senator with the same ferocity of a Republican senator who did the same thing and vice versa" And you will be received with this line "You are an enlightened centrist, both sides will never be the same and if A says the earth is flat and B says is kind of a sphere there is not a valid C ,middle-of-the-road both-sides position" and they will act as if they gave a fatal blow to your argument.
People love love love to be reassured they (and the people they chose to support) have the moral high-ground.
https://eatliver.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/flat-t...
Like, there's a very common narrative of "when side A has a large proportion of climate change deniers and anti-masks and anti-vaxxers and Young Earth creationists, and side B doesn't, there's no point pretending these sides are symmetrical", which I mostly agree with.
But somehow that narrative quickly becomes "therefore we should suppress all Joe Biden scandals (including corruption and sexual harassment), encourage all corporations to deny service to Republican partisans, and brand anyone trying to bridge the gap as a class traitor" and I'm left wondering what the fuck is your country doing.
(antivax used to be a non-partisan position, by the way, but since the Trump administration I've seen some data that suggests it's becoming a mostly Republican one)
I think Taibbi, whom I’m not generally a fan but do believe strives to be intellectually honest, makes a really unfortunate statement here. First, Rolling Stone would have only allowed your opinionated voice as long as it was generally an opinion the editors shared. Second, the idea that you did it the right way but the current breed is nothing but shallow polemics is tremendously arrogant. Third, “taking sides” means you are no longer a reliable reporter, as you unavoidably feel compelled to report things that justify the side you’ve selected.
Really, Matt and others who took off their masks of objectivity during the Bush presidency (Dan Rather, Helen Thomas, Bill O’Reilly to name a few) were the ones that opened the gates to the journalists of today that wear their bias and ignorance on their sleeve. “They literally know nothing”, as Ben Rhodes famously said.
I lament the same things in the article that Taibbi laments. The fear merchants selling wall-to-wall panic porn (from the Russians are coming! to Birtherism to whatever the lie du jour happens to be) have significantly damaged American culture and American politics. And all for clicks and eyeballs! But Taibbi, despite his attempts to distance himself, deserves a measure of blame for leading the way.
I know journalism has always had bias, but there was an incentive to make sure the bias wasn’t overt. Because overt bias would have been considered unethical. I don’t think we are better for it now the pretense of objectivity is gone.
It's an absolutely marvelous political narrative, and Hunter S was one hell of a writer.
Of course, our solution is not for everyone. If you have a well-tuned Twitter feed, or have figured out forums like HN/Reddit where you get news and commentary you trust, then we may not be as useful for you. But for the vast majority that just want the facts on topics of importance our daily newsletter is an easy way to stay informed and then get on with life. And we've priced it to be affordable for everyone so that factual news is not just for the rich.
> The Factual automatically analyzes how credible a story is based on diversity of sources, factual tone of writing, author's expertise, and more.
It also costs $5/mo, FWIW.
By curating the above on each topic our readers tell us they get closer to the unbiased story.
It would also be awesome if you could post a few examples of news you consider 'minimally biased'.
As for best unbiased sources, here's a blog post that draws from our dataset: https://blog.thefactual.com/what-are-the-best-nonpartisan-ne...
There are also great sources on the left and right, namely: https://blog.thefactual.com/what-are-the-most-credible-conse... https://blog.thefactual.com/what-are-the-most-credible-liber...
Sometimes there is not a clear both sides.
If you click on the rating you'll see details on the four factors we rate for each article: site reputation (historical score), author's topical expertise, diversity of sources, neutrality of tone. Collectively these produce a probability of being credible. So we don't fact check individual statements (very difficult to do via an algorithm) but rather we assess the likelihood of an article being credible in aggregate.
I'm not convinced that downplaying facts just to make a headline read more friendly to a group that quite literally threatened to kill politicians is what I would call journalistic integrity. Sometimes the headlines are alarmist because something alarming happened and we saw it coming on the internet from months away.
“Conservative media outlets accused of stoking baseless election fraud claims”
Then the article should lay out what they did. Not “here is how they stoked baseless claims”, but exactly what they did. “Conservative websites repeated a claim of fraud that had already been proven false by election officials.”
And it should include comments from those websites on their response to the accusation.
Then let the reader make up their own mind. I’m an adult. I don’t need a reporter who barely knows more than I do about a subject to tell me how to interpret the world. Save that for opinion pieces.
Not too hard is it?
This. This is how it's done. You go into technical details, not just "fact-checkers proved this was false", but "here's a link to a fact-checker proving this was false".
If reality is one-sided, then you expose the facts of reality. Adding a "Reality is obviously one-sided and anyone who disagrees is a manipulating liar" headline is both superfluous and self-destructive.
Would be ridiculous and offensive, no?
It's really not all that different...
On our main homepage (landing page) we've found it better to ask for email because our daily newsletter is even more polished than our site as it adds an editorial layer atop the ratings/curation so as to deliver a world-class product. (And, in a bit of marketing it seems like preserving some intrigue is better... though I haven't A/B tested this).
When we had people go straight the site (thefactual.com/news) it did not convert as well to the newsletter and retention wasn't as great. But to be honest that was a while ago when I tested this. Maybe we should revisit.
#1 - Allocate a share of money and create a BBC like news source totally un-biased and pay the reporters extremely well(to attract good reporters). Have decent UI on the web, well produced shows and a mandate that both sides are allocated equal time.(PBS does this but is not very well produced, it needs more money)
#2 - Have "Bias" flags mandated on each article(or visual bubbles on TV), reflecting the authors political persuasion. This would be similar to responsible business reporting where the author states whether he has a position(shares) in the company or industry he reports on.
#3 - Require that whenever a article is posting a position, a opposite view point is required to be tagged next to said article.
#2 isn't too bad, but how about only listing information related to the content? I don't care about the author's political leaning for an article on good travel destinations. I might care about which countries they or their family have lived in (e.g., a South Korean immigrant comparing trips to South Korea and Japan).
For #3, it should be an alternate position, not opposite. "Showing both sides" is how we've perpetuated climate denial. There is much debate to be had on the topic, but showing the "opposite view" too often leads to cranks being given air time.
Facts aren't actually Democratic or Republican, and there's not a single consensus opinion for each party. But slap a party or ideological label on an article and it will appear to indicate the article is aligned with that bias label (even if it isn't). And people will conflate the contents of the article with the appropriate side even more than they already do.
What might be more successful would be to include a neutral fact check-style notice like "This article presents the majority Republican opinion on ___" or "This article uses widely-disputed claims to justify a fringe Democratic position". That would provide more context to the actual content of the article and how to interpret it.
Is this pressure coming from editors or from readers?
Would an outlet that dispassionately reported the fact that Trump lost the election truly have been able to have been "perceived as neutral arbiters" by Trump supporters?
Considering Trump and his supporters are a symptom, not a cause (although at this point it's a feedback loop) of our broader post-truth environment, I think the minimum is a newspaper with a track record of neutrality (i.e., it's not sufficient for any reasonable person to completely change their opinion of NYT or MSNBC or whomever based on a single dispassionate piece). I think the extent to which our society esteems neutral institutions ("neutral" within some reasonable error margin) is the extent to which we can see a reversal of Trumpism (and probably the woke progressivism that preceded it). There's always a fringe, but I yearn for the days when extremist viewpoints were (rightly) marginalized.
It would only need to reports the facts, WP-style, about what various election officials/authorities say.
I don't have it on hand, but remember that whole bit about him calling veterans losers and weak? Yeah, so if you start digging for the full transcript, you get to see just how taken out of context that was. I just can no longer trust the established media not to have a huge agenda and be constantly on the lookout for a "spin."
Trump may have been an emabarrassment, but the media has actively made me lose faith in reporting. He'll be out of the office soon, but my ability to trust in reporting has been forever tarnished. Decades of reputation have been squandered by these acts.
Ironically, she now works for Fox News.
Okay, so what is the truth? Isn’t that what everybody’s looking for? Give an uncontroversially factual explanation of that and people will start looking for solutions instead of problems. Unless they are the problem, and then they’ll be forced to engage in all-out propaganda war to convince people otherwise.
It seems to me that the truth is usually cheap and unprofitable. So if you want to know what the biggest lies are, see how much is being spent to convince you of something. Truth may often be associated with somebody losing a lot of money. These are GDP destroyers, stock market crashes waiting to happen. We’re all socially invested in preventing them.
Like PBS? Turns out if you’re not sensationalist, and others are, you lose viewership.
my personal preference would be a world where we just have like reuters and AP sources that try to give purely factual info..(though even they are biased somewhat) and then just substack. we don’t need nyt
If there are more than two "teams" it's much more difficult to just be against the "other side" and you can see that while other countries certainly have their problems, places with multiparty systems have significantly less "hatred" against the "other" side.
I'd love if there was an alternative in the Bay Area, something truly more neutral or at least right leaning so I can listen to both points of view.
Also ban news outlets from social media.
1. Government journalists (the equivalent of prosecutors). Not getting any explicit special protection, but that's not the point. Your job is to present government's position and actions.
2. Anti-government journalists (the equivalent of advocates). Those would get explicit special protection. You could only be one as long as you're not taking government money. You would be obliged to control the government.
They should have completely different job titles.
Then in the second column is the commentary. Its where "journalists" and the community discuss the event.
A clear separation of "reality" and our interpretation of that reality.
It's going to need editing no matter what, and any process of editing introduces bias.
Data goes into database by trusted people of some sort with something to lose if the data is misleading or inaccurate. Employees for a start, them something larger once the system is working. (Wikipedia / Wikidata is not perfect, but it mostly works. )
There are other challenges like identifying interesting events of the day, and promoting them to be headlines.
I don't think there is a perfect solution, but I'm interested in exploring possible solutions.
The right in the US right now sees "dry facts" as biased. Thinking there is a middle ground in them right now is missing what is going on.
Your solution either leads to giving conspiracy theory and lies legitimacy, or having to make calls that will be seen as biased anyway.
We have right leaning people jumping ship from Fox News for not being pro-Trump enough. I would love for people like Taibbi to address how to reach those people, not rehash the same tired argument of complaining about the media.
- Twitter permanently suspended President Trump’s account, citing "risk of further incitement of violence" (source). Several other social media and technology companies (including Facebook, Instagram, Shopify, and Stripe) took similar measures against President Trump, his campaign, and related accounts and websites.
That's it - that's all that's written on that particular event. No "interpretation" on what the implications on free speech or whatever are - that's left up to you, the reader. The source linked is Twitter's blog.
I've been using it for a few months now and I love it.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com
I have no affiliation with them, just perplexed by the same problems everyone else here is mentioning, and it has been helpful to use.
I also think it would be helpful if reporters listed their registered political party on their bylines, ie, "John Smith, Democrat/Republican/Libertarian/etc". Or if the TV reporters wore a sign stating as much.
After Trump won, story after story, show after show in the MSM and beyond was about reaching out and talking to the Trump voters. Famously left-wing people went out to speak with Trump voters to get to know them, to understand why they voted, and made sure to humanize them. They went out of their way to not be negative. This went on for a long time.
This was on CNN, NYTimes, Washington Post, and other MSM outlets.
The flaw in this article is reading only the negative headlines, and ignoring all the reporting that is done.
If that is true - and I don't remember it that way at all - it clearly doesn't make a difference now.
> The flaw in this article is reading only the negative headlines, and ignoring all the reporting that is done.
That's how news is consumed though, so what little reporting and journalism actually occurs can safely be ignored for the sake of his argument.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-ris...
Here is a fair summary of the "real americans in diners" genre of post-Trump jounalism.
https://thecounter.org/trump-rust-belt-diner-presidential-ra...
You're also feeding into the "basket of deplorables" view of things, which is an image constructed to explain Trump the way certain people want him explained: A convenient narrative that lets the reader claim the moral high ground effortlessly. Racists are easily dismissed, one does not need to bother hearing them out. Fast food for the mind.
"Who are these strange and mysterious people who call themselves 'Iowans'? Why are they so different from we civilised folk? Tonight at 8PM, Sienna Cichlid has an exclusive report."
Plenty of people voted for Trump for non-racist reasons. You might try to understand why...
And you seem to be trying to paint the same picture. And I'm pretty sure that you're wrong.
Or do you think the image is not cherry-picked? That a representative majority of white Americans fly the same flag?
Wait...
“That’s how news is consumed... can safely be ignored.”
I think I found your problem. You don’t remember it at all because you ignored it. I wonder what else you ignore that causes you to be massively misinformed.
Perhaps I'm indeed massively misinformed, but then again that is the problem. That problem doesn't disappear just because according to you all this more nuanced reporting exists. People just don't read it, it's not dramatic enough.
What happened to the days when these party leaders were decrying relativism?
I never found anything.
I’ve concluded that people mask their feelings with ambiguity. It’s really just a matter I don’t agree with their policies, but can’t be enough of an adult to say so.
It took a few years before I decided to dig in. Now, I am surprised at the number of people who either lie or have been mislead.
Media manipulation is real.
Let's take a trivial example: the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Did Trump violate this or not? If you're looking for a simple factual answer, you cannot get one, because this is a legal question, and will only ever (if ever) decided by an actual court case. There are arguments that he did, based on some data, and there are arguments that he didn't, based on beliefs that the data isn't relevant. Only an actual court case will ever come to a conclusion (and even that will be disputed by many).
There's a tendency for some of us (I include myself in this) to want the world to offer clear, black-or-white, yes-or-no, true-or-false answers to things. But the world doesn't offer this most of the time, certainly not in the realm of human affairs. There are no hall monitors or gods sitting on thrones to decide if Trump did or did not break the law or do terrible things. Only other human beings, whose opinions, clearly, diverge.
"The sun rose at 06:23 this morning" ... even to be able to agree about such a basic fact we have to agree on a definition of what "rise" means. Upper edge or lower edge of the sun clearing the horizon? Sealevel horizon, or any horizon? For some purposes, it may need to be related to civil, nautical or astronomical twilight.
To report on when the sun rose this morning in a reasonably concise manner, there needs to be some consensus on what sunrise actually means. As long as we all agree that for more or less all purposes it is when the upper edge of the sun appears at a sea-level horizon, you can report this "news" without much surrounding explication.
But if someone comes along and argues that sunrise should really be considered the end of astronomical twilight (rational, if at odds with normal practice), or that sunrise is just a theory of people who want to enslave us all (not rational, but not too far from the level of some what shows up as "argument"), someone who wants to report on the sunrise has their work cut out for them.
And this is just the sunrise! Imagine applying this to reporting about fiscal policy ...
* not be aligned with either Democrats or Republicans;
* employ a Fairness Doctrine-inspired approach that discourages groupthink and requires at least occasional explorations of alternative points of view;
* embrace a utilitarian mission stressing credibility over ratings, including by;
* operating on a distribution model that as much as possible doesn’t depend upon the indulgence of Apple, Google, and Amazon.”
This reads like a description of NPR to me.
Can you name them, and how you verify them as factual?
Feel free to do your own research.
Which analysts of partisan bias do you consider independent, and why?
For example, why should allsides.com be trusted? There seemed to be a point when "fact checkers" started to pop up all over the place, but they also had a liberal bias: www.politifactbias.com
“Only 4 percent of funding in fiscal year 2017 came from federal, state and local governments ...”
https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-call...
It is relevant that this is a small portion of their budget, but generally when someone thinks "this shouldn't be funded by taxpayer dollars" they don't stop caring just because the millions of dollars spent only cover a small portion of the entity's total budget. Typically these arguments are ideological/philosophical, not matters of degree.
If it's so clear, find me a single example of NPR news being aligned with the Democrats in a way that is divergent from objective reality.
When I heard this dismissal and noticed that no one pushed back, it made me realize that the guests and host were all ideologically aligned. I still listen to NPR, but I now know that they are much more biased than I previously thought.
To downvoters: do you doubt that this happened or think it isn’t an apt example of NPR being aligned with Democratic Party positions?
The guest refers to the mismatch hypothesis, described by a Supreme Court Justice, as an "arcane argument" that is "really proven not to be the case". Then the other guest on the show laughed at the Justice (Scalia) and mischaracterized his statement. According to her, Scalia believes that "African-American people are stupid".
In reality, the mismatch hypothesis is about largely about preparation level. If you have equally intelligent students with large differences in academic preparation, the student that is less well prepared is likely to be harmed (in terms of GPA, class rank, likelihood to drop a well-paying major) when surrounded by other students that are more well-prepared.
If one of the guests or the host were even vaguely familiar with the concept, this mischaracterization would have been questioned.
I would also note that it is mischaracterizations like these (Scalia thinks "African-American people are stupid"!) that lead to further polarization. I would expect partisan framing like this on some news outlets, but it's pretty sad to hear it on NPR, on a show whose name implies openness to all perspectives.
1: https://www.npr.org/2015/12/11/459392702/week-in-politics-tr...
So again, an example of bias in actual news reporting?
If you think NPR News has a liberal bias, that may be because reality has a liberal bias.
Plenty of Republican politicians go on NPR for interviews.
NPR opinion and talk radio pieces are slightly left of center.
I think I've read this multiple times in this submission, and I think you're the one saying it over and over again. Do you not realize you're quoting Stephen Colbert from a news satire show?
Have you just been regurgitating this for years and no one had the decency to point it out to you?
Satire has a way of making uncomfortable truths easier to hear by cloaking them with humor.
I remember how furious my professor was at Terry Gross for her (in his opinion rude) interview w/ Jimmy Carter. He otherwise loves Terry Gross.
But he’s a “liberal”, so he likes NPR. NPR is pretty brutal if you disagree with them and are well informed about a topic.
I had to stop listening to NPR years before Trump came along (yes, there was polarization back then) because they’d make my blood boil with, what I thought, has thinly veiled partisanship.
Some of their reporting is just grossly wrong. If they report on anything about Christianity it’s usually riddled with embarrassingly wrong statements.
And then there’s three editorial discussions. I’m an immigrant, and I’m embarrassed with NPRs obsessions with telling me how other people outside the US live. A little bit of it is very important, but after listening to NPR for about ten years I’ve learned nothing about the famous “meat and potatoe” Americans. My dad, who traveled to the Midwest for work for a couple decades taught me more about “fly-over” Americans.
We need dispassionate reporting of apparent facts, emphasis on equal time for both side of every issue/report, and zero editorializing by commission or omission.
This is a pipedream sadly.
If such a news organization became mainstream, do you think this would lead to people being more or less informed?
Regardless, I think the "zero editorializing" idea is self-defeating. As others have said; there is near infinite information and finite webpage space and broadcast time.
Is that true though? What % of Americans support it?
This is pedantic and downplays what occurred.
Again, let's not downplay the seriousness of what happened.
>Again, let's not downplay the seriousness of what happened.
Let's not overplay it either.
We're very fortunate that no member of Congress was taken hostage or killed.
afavour: This is a perfect example of the information void between the two sides or selective memory. During the summer riots the white house was stormed with people trying to get past the gates. The secret service moved the pres to a bunker.
What's their motivation here?
It's a real concern; given the current atmosphere and the 50-50 Senate split, it would not surprise me at all to see someone murder a senator in order to tip the balance of control.
That was not the case on January 6--the only GA senator a week ago was Loeffler, as she retains her seat until the certification of the runoff results.
> Basically a bunch of beer belly rednecks
False. Was a huge mix of people, including very well off folks, off duty police officers and former military. Flying to DC on a week day is not exactly a working class pursuit.
> broke into a building after a protest/rally was over, yelled
Amongst other things they were yelling that they wanted to kill the Vice President. Five people died. You can claim their shouts to kill the VP were bluster if you'd like, but personally I'm in no doubt that things could have gone south very, very quickly if they'd found Pence, Pelosi or anyone else. Just watching the video footage of the violence is enough of a hint of that.
> with no plan whatsoever
To an extent I agree with you here. It was a mess of anger and resentment, not a convert military operation. But there were also pipebombs, and the current theory is that they were going to be used to distract Capitol police. People arrived with plastic zip ties to be used as hand cuffs. It doesn't require the whole mob to be organized, it just needs a small group within that mob. Just because the plan was not successful does not mean there was no plan.
You don't bring handcuffs to a peaceful protest, nor explosives.
You'd instead expect them to have gas masks and umbrellas