What is the relationship between more trust in a mainstream source and susceptibility to disinformation you are implying here?
For example, IIRC Rush Limbaugh's audience gave him a lot of credibility and was less informed because of that.
I am in the UK and I cannot trust any of the outlets at all. They lie by omission in many cases or simply do not cover it.
e.g. We've had massive anti-lockdown / vaccine passport protests in most of the cities in the UK this weekend. There are protests in France from what I understand around vaccine passports / health pass as well.
Not a mention of it at all on the BBC. Instead I find out about it via "Right Said Fred"'s twitter account. Who are "Right Said Fred"? A 90s one hit wonder band.
Unfortunately, we appear to have something towards the opposite - large media outlets that aren't good, aren't trusted, and are trying to manipulate the market (à la Youtube with it's now completely useless search and its nefarious recommendation algorithms) to stop people going to competitors who might actually be doing a better job.
Until more people actively seek out more objective news sources and are willing to fund it with something other than ads, I don't see the situation improving.
Because they drive clicks.
As soon as gossip and unedited "news" blogs started appearing with rumor and unsubstantiated claims, it was a race to the bottom.
Why? Because the majority of people prefer mindless trash to the idiosyncrasies of a local county commission meeting.
I don't have a good answer because media companies have to make money to stay in business. Making them backed by the state is an even worse idea.
>I don't have a good answer because media companies have to make money to stay in business. Making them backed by the state is an even worse idea.
An excellent point. Local media outlets (in the US at least, not sure about elsewhere) are few and far between these days.
We need local news that focuses on "county commission meetings" and other happenings of local concern.
Unfortunately, unless you're in a big media market (NY, LA, SF, Chicago, Boston, etc.), odds are that your "local" news is written by folks hundreds of miles away, with no real understanding of local issues.
Here in NYC, we have dozens of local papers, blogs, independent news sites and local TV news outlets. As such, coverage of local issues is quite good.
But the days of small towns/counties having their own local newspapers and TV news are long gone in the US.
Anyone not living in a big media market will likely get only the broad-brush, zero nuance reporting that comes from national/regional news outlets.
That's a big problem for small towns, as there's no one with "skin in the game" watching the goings on of local and state government actors.
I don't have a solution (sadly) for this issue, because local news outlets in small media markets had a hard time staying in business long before the Internet, and the loss of classified ads in those small markets killed local journalism.
And so we have big national players like Fox, CNN, WSJ, NYT, USA Today, etc. that provide coverage of national issues and very limited (and inferior to real local reporting) coverage of regional/local issues.
This leads to really poor governance at the state and local levels and a lack of nuance about regional/national issues as they relate to local populations/economies.
More's the pity.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winners_Take_All:_The_Elite_Ch...
If you don't care about most of the decisions, and the people who make them, that directly impact your life, then no.
But if you care about the legal, civil and societal issues in your local area, like land use, taxes, local services, etc., you might have some interest.
Having answered your question, I'm starting to wonder if it was rhetorical or not. Not sure which I'd prefer it to be.
Your esteemed Main stream does not have an army of jurnos running around the world, they are throwing hissy-fits on their tweeter feeds and article about article and opinion about opinion - the circular reference of their own in group is mind boggling.
Suppression of real News and exaggeration of the mundane to make a political point is the biggest problem.
It is up to the individual to go to rich sources of information not shallow ones like news papers.
1) The mainstream news media is under enormous economic pressure, because the internet kneecapped their economic model: people got used to getting things for free (including bread and butter stuff like classified ads), and "engaging" crap (e.g. ideological hot takes) can be produced far more cheaply than valuable journalism (and is far more "viral"). That means the media often literally doesn't have the resources to even cover the number of stories they used to, let alone everything they arguably should.
2) It's important to be specific about what stories you think are being omitted. Are they actual stories of import, or ideological smears that happen to tickle your biases? We can't know unless they're specified.
of course I'd love to hear how you determine rush Limbaugh listeners to be uninformed, especially since 90% of his show was reading/playing and then responding to mainstream news articles.
For example Russian Today is often a great source for all non-russian news. But its a propaganda tube for russian news.
My point is if you want to hear about BS happening in your own country you'd probably read about it from foreign papers/sources first.
Those have no incentives not to bash your homeland, as oppose to local sources that have to balance not pissing off government (for access to interviews, news, sources) and ad revenue by reporting on the sensitive topics.