Hacker News Reader

Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

The Sinking of the USS Maine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...

That's over 100 years ago. We can stop pretending that the media has ever been some selfless arbiter of truth and protector of the downtrodden. There is nothing to replace it in that role because it was never in that role. It has always been a tool for one group of powerful people to spar with other groups of powerful people and the truth rarely enters into it.

Maybe in another 100 years historians will figure out what the truth was, but for us today, the truth is whatever gets the most clicks. 20 years ago it was whatever got the most people at home to tune in. 50 years ago it was whatever sold the most newspapers.

The saving grace is that for the vast majority of people it just doesn't matter. Whoever the President is, you'll still have to go to work, pay the bills, buy groceries etc. Not much about your day to day life will change.

View on HN

I don't read grandparent as saying the media is selfless or perfect, just as saying that it did play an important role in uncovering scandals, and that nothing seems able to replace that role. I don't see that (indisputable) past examples of propaganda and fake news harm that argument.

Your last paragraph seems to imply a kind of quietism, as if it just isn't important whether a country's rulers face constraints and challenges. That isn't true: eventually, bad politics screws the economy, which is why Russia is a poor country.

I don't think you're being very fair. There's no single entity that is "the media." Individual journalists and yes, publications have been at various times principled arbiters of truth. Obviously, there has been quite a bit of sensationalism and yellow journalism as well.

There is currently very well written and researched fact-based reporting. What we lack is consensus. So, the truth is out there currently. But many people don't believe, or haven't heard it. (and, not relevant to the point you're making, but I believe that many people cannot understand the truth in the first place, unless the truth happens to be a simple moral narrative. ie, "one person was bad, and another person was good.")

> The Sinking of the USS Maine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...

> That's over 100 years ago. We can stop pretending that the media has ever been some selfless arbiter of truth and protector of the downtrodden. There is nothing to replace it in that role because it was never in that role. It has always been a tool for one group of powerful people to spar with other groups of powerful people and the truth rarely enters into it.

Oh come on. That's like condemning democracy on account of all those people guillotined during the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, or the whole field of software engineering on account of the Therac-25. Maybe a few changes have happened in the intervening generations?

The idea that "the media has ever been some selfless arbiter of truth and protector of the downtrodden" is an ideal to be strived for, but like any ideal, there will always people examples of people who fail to achieve it.

Also, there's another ideal that the media there cast a skeptical eye on things, to peel back the paint and expose what's really there underneath it, which is probably more pertinent here. That kind of journalism usually pisses of the fans of whatever the journalist is examining. Fans usually want fluffy puff pieces.

>The saving grace is that for the vast majority of people it just doesn't matter. Whoever the President is, you'll still have to go to work, pay the bills, buy groceries etc. Not much about your day to day life will change.

The fact that the average person has been led to believe the opposite, shows how much power the media really has. If you asked most average people the importance of the office of the President and who holds it, I think it would be ranked pretty damn high. Not that I disagree with you. I think a lot of problems in society could be fixed with an honest retooling of society (but that finding people to do that impartially is as much of a challenge, if not moreso, than actually retooling society).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com