Be It Resolved: Don't Trust Mainstream Media

Sure, don't trust the mainstream media, but that applies to anyone. I see so often people who are rightly skeptical of the major news sources, but who uncritically accept claims from some random guy with a blog.

I think the issue here is poorly framed as "trust". Journalists are humans, and humans make mistakes. Mistakes don't destroy trust. What destroys trust is the inability to correct mistakes. Usually, there are editors and fact checkers, but they are human too.

Papers and news magazines exist by selling copies to people, and people want compelling stories. It's a reporters job to write something readable, while covering the facts.

A few commenters seem to have disdain for "mainstream" media. But, who are they? Is that a stand in for popular, or top 5? top 10? Fox news is one of the most popular in prime time, and their anchors tend to be politically biased in one direction. But if a more "neutral" network report favorably in the other direction, we hear cries of unfair coverage.

> News media shouldn’t have a “side.” This is rubbish, straight up. First, news should have a bias for the truth, and not reporting what it thinks the audience would like to hear (ala Fox news). Second, it should be Objective in the coverage. People all have internal biases, but good reporters can check that to go after the story.

Web 2.0 was supposed to give us better info; I think in a lot of ways it gave us easier access to propaganda, without always having the tools to know that.

I'm not saying you should blindly trust any "media", but how do you hold the media to account? Do you vote with your wallet for quality outlets, or do you scream into the comment section of blogs?

The Western Main Stream Media lie so much that you will get a better idea of the Truth by simply reversing everything they say.

I watched the full debate. The proposition was "Don't Trust the Mainstream Media". On the pro side were Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray; the con side was made up of Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg.

It wasn't great. There were lots of personal attacks on both sides. Biting remarks can add spice to a debate, but this got a little ugly for my tastes. Gladwell went especially foul by intimating Taibbi's fondness for Walter Cronkite and other trusted journalists of his era was due not to these iconic newsmen's integrity, but because they were white men, a suggestion Gladwell made three or four times.

The Pro side brought up several of the big stories of the past few years on which the mainstream media went rather hard, but turned out to be widely accepted as wrong, like Trump-Putin collusion and Hunter Biden's laptop, but the Con team essentially dismissed these as nothingburgers.

Before the start of the debate, the audience is polled on their opinion about the proposition. It was 48% Pro (don't trust the media) and 52% Con. Another poll was taken at the end, and it was determined the Pro side (don't trust the mainstream media) won, with 67% now agreeing with them.

The most impressive person on the stage was the moderator Rudyard Griffiths. He struck me as an educated, composed, and immanently fair man.

>News media shouldn’t have a “side.” The press has to be seen as separate from politics, not just because this is a crucial component of trustworthiness, but also because the media derives all its power from the perception of its independence. If a news organ is seen as too connected to one or another party, it loses its ability to serve as a check on power. How can you “hold Trump accountable” without credibility?

The Zeitgeist of yesterday that Taibbi is referring to has been put away in the drawer. The new Zeitgeist, embraced by the younger generation can be summarized thusly:

There is no objective truth, no escape from ideology, no escape (especially) from the perspective of personal identity and societal position, and as a result there's no such thing as an objective media organization.

If we say it doesn't exist and act like it cannot, then someone like Taibbi can simultaneously be pinned as an alt-right with a platform, and a confused liberal. It doesn't matter if he's written a book that denigrates Trump; if he criticizes an important mark against Trump, he's essentially 'enabling' him and thus complicit.

That's the mess we're in. Taibbi blames commercialization, but I've clearly observed this epistemology of radical subjectivism taking hold. I don't know how else to characterize it.

All of this is true but there is still unbiased journalism in the world. I can't speak for America but I trust, for example, the BBC.