Dropping Trust in US Media
news.gallup.com
news.gallup.com
The president attacks the media every single day. But then asked why he wanted to deploy troops to Portland: "because of what I saw on TV".
The amount of media outlets has exploded. However, there are fewer journalists than ever "on the beat" - independent researchers, beat reporters, local journalists, industry experts, etc. So most of our original quality reporting is coming from a small set of national sources, and then spun every which in the second-hand media channels.
Not figuring ways to monetize news back in the early days I think will prove to be one of the biggest failures of the internet as a collective technology.
When you have monopoly, duopoly, or oligopoly; when all the options in the market come with (or without) X feature (unless you spend a large amount of extra time, money, and/or effort); when, in short, people's choices are significantly constrained...
...the idea that you can determine "what people really want" based on what they pick is bullshit.
Basically, there has always been a strong bias and structural constraints toward US / elite views.
I think the core question is why trust has gotten particularly bad over the last decade (I have some ideas, including one side particularly trying to weaken trust in it).
The whole book was spent describing a "propaganda model" of news that begins and ends with corporate incentives, profits, and advertising. But he completely ignores the large number of non-profit, independently funded, or publicly owned news sources. And from experience they can exhibit some of the exact same systematized biases! Even without greedy owners.
There's also a lot of conjectures about how news works that simply aren't true or have not existed in decades. He's more interested in pushing his "theory of everything" and making it generic enough to fit any situation anywhere. And the whole idea of using his credibility as a linguist to confidently push a punch of political theories well outside of his actual experience never sat right with me.
There's also an irony that this book was written to combat the media in an era when it was highly trusted and respectable. Now that the media is completely distrusted in America, it's hard to also argue that it's a tool of the elites when it seems dismantling trust in the media is also a tool of elites (which some of his modern contemporaries now argue).
I think the average person is better off reading books about Dick Cheney or the machinations of the War on Terror. You'll actually get a sense how clever people in the seats of power go about actually hijacking the media to take advantage of voters (and the elite!) for particular policy goals.
Chomsky and other critical theorists and marxists pointed out that those in power get to dictate what's truth, what's news, what values we should follow. Once you realize that, the next step was supposed to be revolution followed by a world with no power structure.
The various revolutions of the 20th century never worked out that way, and nobody wants to risk their life for that stuff anymore. Meanwhile I think we've all assimilated Chomsky's view that the system is rigged and that everything is a lie or a distortion invented to perpetuate the power structure.
There's no more trust because there's nobody to trust in. You either keep your head down and just try to exist, or you lie to yourself and pick out which lies you want to buy into.
It it's a shame that this impugns traditional journalism which is one of the last institutions that still believes in objective fact.
It's amazing how many of the national headlines can be condensed down into 22 minutes when you remove all of the talking heads, reactions, and noise.
Is their coverage perfect? Does it go into detail? Absolutely not. But in the long run average it's remarkable how informed you can stay without filling your head without the extra nonsense.
I tend to question my assumptions when the media starts confirming them. If my opinions line up lock-step with an outlet's narrative, I figure I miss-stepped somewhere in my reasoning, ideas, or sources of information.
So if you hear Main Stream Media is a problem then you know Main Steam Social Media is much worse.
Yes. Same for conflicting opinions. Since this is HN I'll use a software analogy: I love it when people tell me how bad my idea is because they'll follow that up with theirs. And that's how we all learn.
To put that in real life US politics: we've made politics something you don't talk about because we fear disagreement and thus we slowly drift apart...
What does "fair or balanced" even mean?
I don't identify with any political party. What I want is truthful and accurate news. I don't want an equal number of Democrat and Republican reporters, for example, as if that somehow made good news.
"Fair and balanced" was the catchphrase of FOX News, which is anything but truthful and accurate. Ironically, FOX News eventually dropped even that slogan, remiscent of how Google eventually dropped "Don't be evil".
I just went to cnn.com and the biggest headline was "Shutdown-related firings likely to be ‘in the thousands,’ White House says". No doubt that's factually correct but it sounds like some kind of serious disaster. Except that's thousands of federal workers, of which there are about 2 million, so on the order of 0.1 %. Maybe it's not so big after-all? Also, why does it matter that federal workers lose their jobs? That happens to people all over the economy too and often at higher rates than that but those other cases aren't at the top of cnn.com.
> it sounds like some kind of serious disaster.
That feels like your own interpretation. The President himself seems to think it's not a disaster but rather a good outcome.
I think it's notable because a government shutdown does not require any firings. Federal workers are already going without pay during the shutdown, so the firings don't do anything to help.
Anyway, there's only so much that can go into a headline. If you read only the headlines and not the stories, you can't expect to get an accurate picture of anything.
> Also, why does it matter that federal workers lose their jobs?
Seriously?
> That happens to people all over the economy too
That doesn't make either one of those outcomes good.
In any case, CNN also reports on job loss numbers in the economy, even on the front page, just not today. Note that the CNN headlines are typically news from today. That's always the bias of the media: the "new" in "news". By the way, there's another, related story on the CNN front page, "Elizabeth Warren calls for Trump to release the jobs report despite shutdown".
Anyway, that's just the most prominent story I saw when I first looked at cnn.com. I was being careful not to cherry pick. If you want cherry picked biased factually correct stories, those exist but I won't put in the work to search for them for you. Their existence shows how factually correct stories still mislead people. This is what you don't agree with because you want truthful and factual over fair and balanced.
No.
> It's presented in a way that feel like a bad thing.
Now you've switched from "serious disaster" to merely "bad thing". You're moving the goal posts.
> "No clear path out" suggests it's something they should get out of.
"No clear path out of the shutdown" is the phrase. And yes, the shutdown is something they should get out of.
> Anyway, that's just the most prominent story I saw when I first looked at cnn.com.
The government shutdown is deservedly the top story. The headline is the latest news in that ongoing story. I'm sure there are many legitimate criticisms of CNN, but this quibbling about the headline ain't it.
> Their existence shows how factually correct stories still mislead people.
Misled about what? You haven't even given an example of people getting misled.
That headline doesn't sound like it's trying to convey that this is a serious disaster to me. Why do you think it is?
So I agree with you, not a disaster, but a change in preferences?
What's shocking is that democrats are above 50%. I'm blown away by that number.
I think this might be a key root cause of polarization for you americans. Democrats absolutely should not be trusting the media that much.
I'm not watching to hear what happened anymore. Something happened, that much I can accept. What exactly happened is up for debate. I watch exclusively to see what they're trying to sell me. I'm more interested in the agenda and narrative the presenters are attempting to frame. After this is established I can consider the incentives of the factions or actors involved.
the root cause, i think, is a devaluation of truth; for "truth" in the name of partisan lines
this is so so common: "we know this is not true, but we advance it to improve our position or virtue signal etc"
this was, i think, foundational to the collapse of society at the beginning of the 1900s -- we "believe this" because we get other peoples property or otherwise advance our cause
being truthful costs us, and people are no-longer so willing to pay
the root cause of that, i would say is they have walked away from Jesus who pays his life for our benefit; only people who live like that can be trusted to tell the truth
https://news.gallup.com/poll/655106/americans-ratings-profes...
Well, here's the current, at this moment, nytimes front page stories:
- Negative story about Trump - Negative story about Trump's immigration policy - FUD story about how bad division has become (ironic) - Negative story about Trump - Negative story about Trump / energy department - Negative story about Trump's healthcare plans .. stopped scrolling at this point when I reach a slew of Israel headlines
Yup, checks out, it's definitely conservative. With all those anti-trump, anti-conservative stories on the front page every single day of the year, without fail. I'm sure if I offered you $10,000 to reply with a single pro-conservative headline that they've published in the last 10 years you could surely cash in on that bet, you know, with how pro-conservative they are now. Should be a sure bet.
President Eisenhower sent 1,000 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division into a US city to escort some kids to school.
That was a domestic troop deployment. Was that antithetical to conservatism?
Was Eisenhower no true conservative?
Considering this was a fairly isolated incident, perhaps Eisenhower was a conservative who encountered extenuating circumstances? Or he was an imperfect conservative?
Also "to escort some kids to school" is a bold way to phrase it.
I'd imagine Murrow rolled in his grave
Fox News launched exclusively on cable. The fairness doctrine applied to broadcast TV and radio, not cable.
There are local Fox stations now on broadcast TV but Fox could have born just fine under the fairness doctrine.
The solution to this isn't fact checking, banning disinformation, or forcing unbiased media, because that creates an impossible standard that nobody will be able to reach all the time (which will cause the standard to degrade as exceptions are passed over). Instead, it's to cultivate media literacy: who's reporting this, why are they reporting this, why are they choosing these facts to highlight, why do they deemphasize facts reported by other sources, what's their long term bias and affiliation, and what are they trying to get you to believe. You need to apply those questions to every source and trust none of them implicitly, at least because nobody's perfect.
For what its worth, I have found that traditional media does a really bad job of being trustworthy and I sometimes watch for journalism things like tldr news global from youtube and atleast the one thing that I like about them is how they really went far and beyond and are public with their financials so that I know that their message can be trusted with and there is no financial ulterior motives of sorts for the most part.
I just wanted to share them really as I think that I respect their transparency to be really honest because in my honest opinion transparency generally speaking brings trustworthiness.
Stories should be reported through the lens of The Message. Most reporters are young progressive Democrats, and this is whatever helps promote their agenda at the time.
I mean, not so long ago the newsroom editor of the San Francisco Chronicle explicitly came out against objectivity...
Also you might need to time box "olden times" considering what newspapers looked like before the 60s.
I don't trust it.
Criticism of billionaires and inequality is everywhere in the media.
After that, everything I saw just reinforced this, especially during the Pandemic until I stopped believing the media altogether. The worst part was the media repeating lies that I could see were lies with my own eyes, and they were trying to gaslight me into submission. When it started to confuse my own children is where I drew the line and I am teaching them to disbelieve the media as well.
I don't trust any media at all, whether or not it's confirming or dispelling my own beliefs. Anything I see I will always double check because I assume I'm being manipulated in one way or the other.