One side effect of our toxic national discourse is that I don’t know who to believe. Disinformation abounds and lies or lies of omission should be expected from anyone in a position of power and influence.
While I do think that things wrt 'discourse' have gotten worse, I don't think that traditional news agencies are untrustworthy. If they are, then they're as untrustworthy as they've ever been. As long as you avoid sources like opinion-shows-on-'news'-channels and stick to the dreaded "Mainstream Media" you should find trustworthy reporting.
Also the chyron wasn't truly wrong, it was summarizing a report about what transpired over 24 hours. The protests were "mostly peaceful" until they weren't. That was all discussed on screen while the chyron was displayed. The only way to be misled by the chyron was if you were watching the channel on mute or you just saw the screenshot flying around the internet being pushed by people who wanted you to think the media is lying.
The chyron said "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting" and it probably should have said "Mostly peaceful protests after police shooting turn fiery after nightfall" but that is both longer and clunkier. So they went with a more condensed version without thinking of the awful visual it would create when screenshotted. If this is journalism's worst crime, then we are in fantastic shape.
That is the issue, it is not one clumsy comment. It is a series of million little moments. They do add up.
If this was the goal, why would they report the truth audibly while lying to you visually?
That is the point you are missing as it evidence that the chyron was clumsy rather than nefarious. You don't report two conflicting narrative if your objective is to get viewers to believe only one of the narratives. If the goal was to mislead, they did an awful job at it by telling the truth in the actual reporting. The people who want to mislead are the ones who took the chyron out of context of the report it was summarizing.
It is possible I have it reversed in my mind. Lets look at the picture at hand and see if we can agree what it represents[1].
[1]https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/27/cnn-chyron-on-kenosha-f...
Tell me what you see in this image?
To respond to what I think you are saying. Maybe the senior lead thought reporter could do better job on his feet and gave him a shot. Live riot. You will need to take some chances and see how they play out. Poor guy was clearly not ready for prime time.
>Tell me what you see in this image?
This is exactly my point. Why are you only looking at a picture? You should also watch the video. Remember CNN is a TV channel. Their primary product is video. They are working to convey information through video and not an out of context screenshot.
Do you think the reporting is misleading after watching that video? The reporter specifically mentions that the scene behind him is "in stark contrast" to the "largely peaceful demonstrations" from earlier in the day. The video is clear and truthful. The chyron tries to summarize that but doesn't do it properly resulting in the bizarre and dystopian screenshot. That screenshot is not an accurate representation of the report it accompanies. That is the failure. There is no reason to assume that failure is malicious rather than accidental.
>To respond to what I think you are saying. Maybe the senior lead thought reporter could do better job on his feet and gave him a shot. Live riot. You will need to take some chances and see how they play out. Poor guy was clearly not ready for prime time.
Also a quick side note, you seem to be suggesting that the reporter wrote his own chyron. It was almost assuredly written by some producer who was probably in some office hundreds or thousands of miles away. The reporter on the scene did a fine job.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klVhCkhOTRQ
You are right. Live video is less clumsy. The caption still breaks it, but that is not reporter's fault.
So now the question becomes whether the caption is misleading.
Also now that you recognize the video's message is clearer than the single screenshot, I would ask you to consider why you have primarily seen the screenshot. Is that maybe because the people sharing it are doing it based on their own biases and motives rather than the merit of the report itself?
> The chyron said "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting" and it probably should have said "Mostly peaceful protests after police shooting turn fiery after nightfall" but that is both longer and clunkier. So they went with a more condensed version without thinking of the awful visual it would create when screenshotted.
I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit. When your job is literally not creating awful visuals, you can't use that defense. There was a clear message being projected, and that was that the violence was good, and you really shouldn't pay attention.
What was inaccurate about the reporting that accompanied that chyron? They specifically said it was peaceful during the day until nightfall and that is when violence started. That is perfectly inline with the scene behind the reporter. The only problem was the chyron.
>I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit. When your job is literally not creating awful visuals, you can't use that defense. There was a clear message being projected, and that was that the violence was good, and you really shouldn't pay attention.
No one has ever made a mistake at their job especially when they are doing it live on television in a stressful high pressure environment? This is classic Hanlon's razor. And as I said in the other comment, there was not a "clear message projected" because the audio and text messages conflicted with each other.
A person can argue that World War II was mostly peaceful. At any point of geography, it's quite rare that artillery shells are falling or tanks rolling through. Usually it's a quiet garden spot.
The fact is, the BLM protests were mostly peaceful. They were almost entirely peaceful. But that's not how we expect the news to cover any event that includes rioting or looting. We expect the news to lock on to the most sensational parts, however insignificant, and talk endlessly about how terrible this is and how BLM organizers should feel some responsibility for this. That's what the news would've done in any other circumstance. That's what it would have done for BLM in decades past. That's what it would have done if BLM had endorsed Trump. But because of the weird and universal sympathy news producers have for BLM, the protests were covered differently.
Between cherrypicked statistics, obvious and tremendous political bias (Both sides, but we all know which one benefits more), a complete abandonment of balanced coverage, and tinting the faces of politicians to make them appear less healthy (happened to Trump and Bernie), I'm just about done ever trusting any mainstream media source again.
When Ben Shapiro's news website does a better job of admitting their own biases than any of the three-letter networks, we have a problem.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests
Given the sheer scale of people protesting they were, by all reasonable definitions, mostly peaceful. When news reports prefer to show things like broken windows and trash cans on fire, but it’s impossible to show 15 to 26 million people spread across 50 states, emphasizing that the protests were mostly peaceful and the violent images are the outlier is responsible journalism.
It’s totally fair to lose faith after seeing that.
Nah, not IMO. The video you linked to has the reporter claiming that the current state is "in stark contrast" to the day's earlier protests.
BTW, the term that I stated originally ("Mainstream media") may include CNN but it also includes AP, Reuters, and many more press agencies that are much more dignified. CNN used to be 'headline news' but has transformed into the same nonstop opinion shows in order to compete with Fox. So it's not the best source IMO.
But don't lose faith. Don't base things on the worst example. Instead judge Mainstream Media by the NYT, Washington Post, Reuters, NPR.
You mock yourself if you are sincerely defending this crap.
Context matters.
Reporting only the former, or only the latter dissociates the two. This was clearly establishing and acknowledging context for the extreme outlier of the situation being pictured.
But you’ve already made up your mind, I suppose, and no amount of logic or reason will bring you back.
Furthermore - and there's no nice way to say this - why are people so dumb as to believe news outlets as if they're arbiters of the truth? As if they were the very Ancients themselves from the Stargate universe, descended down to enlighten us all with zero self-interest?
The New York Times COMPANY. A COMPANY. Owned by a trust-fund jackass who inherited it from his great-great-great-however-many-times-grandfather.
CNN, owned by Turner Broadcasting Company, owned by WarnerMedia, owned by AT&T... the same AT&T that's lied about bringing fiber to America after getting how many billions in tax dollars for the past 36-something years from Congress?
How deluded do you have to be to think any of these outlets are being even remotely objective about "The News"?
They pander to your goofy asses, and you consistently believe them. CNN is no better than Fox News is no better than MSNBC is no better than <insert here>.
EDIT: You're not goofy, guys... you're just honestly fucking gullible and dumb if you believe any of them. You're being sold a story - a worldview compatible with whatever bullshit you want to believe. It makes me sick that people can't or won't be honest about this.
But you didn't have to go all the way back in history though. In my opinion, CNN's trope of succession is largely forgotten today in this specific journalism-is-dead context but unless "hackers" have been living under a rock for the past few years, pointing this out is far more important than continuing to cherrypick out the headlines. Remember when HN was all about punk/hackers culture from two decades ago? Times have certainly changed.
I have seen more humanity in people than I would normally expose myself to but more about those caught in the crossfire. Two examples I can think of was the story of a Seattle security guard snatching away a rifle from a group of rioters whom freshly pillaged a police car and, an urban explorer vlogging his departure from Seattle as a result from the protests.
Security guard -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXoGzJZw4Z4
Vagrant Holiday -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUO8secmc0g
Somewhat related -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZPgz5T7PXI
The problem is they mentioned protests, not protestors. The more relevant way to look at it is how many protest events led to rioting as it progressed?
Today people protest to just being visibility. But they have no ask or strategy on how to resolve the underlying issue.
The lack of a clear ask on policy change is likely why many recent protests haven’t accomplished meaningful policy change.
It was the news moment I realized:
The Emperor Has No Clothes!
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/513902-cnn-ridiculed-for-...
The only other caveat with the mainstream news is that they often behave like stenographers for “anonymous sources familiar with the matter” who often is an insider with some sort of agenda.
800,000! How many people only saw the original article and not the "correction". This happens ALL the time.
An even better perspective from someone who is NOT a conservative: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/10/11/continuing-biza...
If you aren't looking at the traditional news with a skeptical eye, you are getting an extremely filtered and heavily slanted view of the world.
This whole mythos of journalism being unbiased is a recent fabrication. Look how many newspapers across the country had "Republic" or "Democrat" in their mast head. Bias was expected - and proudly advertised. Far more refreshing than the games currently being played by the "traditional news" organizations today.
True but trending that direction for a long while. I feel like one person in particular really gave them a leap forward and had been a blatant liar his entire life. Anyone care to guess who?
My point being is that both sides are full of liars. They're politicians, they're famous for it
Any view of Republican voters as a personality cult misses that conservatives have spent decades in hold-your-nose-and-vote mode.
That said, lying and weaponizing misinformation are two completely different things. Bill Clinton lied about cheating on his wife. Trump lied every single thing. This is the guy that drew over the Hurricane map because he knew better where the hurricane was heading. When you apply that alternate reality to things like questioning the election results and whatnot it’s quite a different level of dishonesty.
[1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/toward-information-operations-ki...
That, largely, is the intent. "Some people" know that the more they poison this well the more people like you will then throw up their hands. And, while I'm sure you aren't one of them, most of them will then take that as a license to believe the source they want to believe and not the one telling them the truth.
And the frustrating thing, of course, is that the disinformation is largely asymmetric. One "side" of sources is more consistently wrong or misleading, and one mostly gets it right with the occasional mistake. Also, one "side's" thought leaders tend to parrot disinformation[1] more than the other, where you tend to see the worst whoppers primarily among the ground troops only.
[1] Ted Cruz pushed this particular meme, for example.
This president is sharing as much disinformation as the last president as much as China and as much as European and Canadian prime ministers. If you are only seeing the other side doing this you may be too close to one side.
Which shows you everyone is lying to you no matter what side you are on. Better than the other guy means you are still being fooled. Rep and Dem are two sides of the same coin. It reminds me of a Simpsons halloween episode where the Rep and Dem candidates are replaced with two Aliens and when the truth is uncovered voters were stuck with a choice between an alien Rep or an alien Dem who would enslave all humans or voting for a human third party candidate. The ending scene shows humanity enslaved with Homer saying he voted for the other alien.
So, one possibility is that there's a fast conspiracy that involves NOAA, the FAA, Miami airport admin, air traffic controllers, Southwest, the pilot's union, etc.
The other possibility a few conservative commentators are talking out of their ass.
Sorry... this one just isn't that hard.
Aside from the union: because Southwest employs 8,500 pilots and they're not exactly all on linkedin or something.
The union and airline say there's no strike or sick out (job action) because strikes and job actions are illegal under the Federal Railway Labor act. They are unsurprisingly denying doing anything illegal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mediation_Board
Your Pilot Career and Scope Clauses - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XYpZg0SPCE