maybe the kids will save us, afterall.
I remember being shocked when I found out that most Vietnamese young people were mostly unaware of the Vietnam war. But if nobody tells you, you don't know. The media was bad before 1996 (Ben Bagdikian would put out a book every year about how dangerously concentrated media was getting: only 51 owners owned 90% of the media lol), but at least we could go to the library and find out what actually happened. They'll just have continually-revised ebooks and AI.
What is so important about the Vietnam war for the day-to-day of the Vietnamese young?
It's the generation that have fallen prey to today's social media and garbage news outlets telling us that history is important -- why should the young be credulous to the gullible?
If the old adage "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" is to be acted upon, it is without a doubt not to study history and try to remember the past because clearly we're always repeating it.
So what is important and constant across time? Those that have empathy (or fake empathy) for the masses and can galvanize them have the power to drive society. Perception is reality more than facts are reality in all but the sciences. If the world were to reset and humans were stripped of all tools, they would re-invent math, science, biology, physics. I doubt that our laws, traditions and zeitgeist would be replicated.
> A little less than half (45%) of teens said journalists do more to harm democracy than to protect it.
These kids? Extreme and reflexive distrust of institutions is as harmful as the opposite. People have been trained to distrust institutions because that makes them manipulable by even worse actors.
No there isn't. There are individual sources that are better, but there isn't any group that's better. There are individual podcasters that are better than mainstream media as a group, but popular podcasters as a group are far more manipulative than mainstream media. And you could say the same for any social site, or any other group such as politicians or religious figures or ...
You immediately contradict yourself here. My impression is that anyone intelligent and informed under, say, about 40 or so only trusts particular individuals, whether they are podcasters, bloggers, substackers, or particular journalists active on e.g. Twitter or whatever other social media platform.
> but popular podcasters as a group are far more manipulative than mainstream media
This is false logic, because no one follows the entire group, they only follow individuals. It remains to be seen whether this is more pernicious than mainstream media, but I heavily suspect it will not be, as it is easier for mainstream media to be controlled than it is to control every single individual that can say something without the support of some controlled mega-conglomerate. (Though obviously de-platforming could easily render this the same, eventually).
I was very upset when I found out how the NYT was manipulated to shill for the Iraq war.
I was also very upset when one of the bloggers I followed went crazy slowly and it took too long for me to notice. I also had another I trusted who turned out to be a biased corporate shill.
I don't trust the NYT, but I trust the process of their checks and balances in their organization and the presence of inside whistle blowers more than I do any individual blogger.
I don't think this is right at all.
A corporation (or organization) I know must necessarily put profit (or funding) first, before truth, if it wishes to survive for any duration. Ultimately, I know there is no real possibility for them to ever care about truth first. I can't vet a corporation, because the people controlling it are individuals who remain mysterious and inaccessible, or it is controlled by complex financial ties which are generally inscrutable. However, with how intermeshed things are, I can generally have faith that the financial and political pressures on large organizations will be more homogeneous than those on a collection of individuals not under the thumb of such an organization. Corporations and groups often don't even have a clear "personality" which one can make judgements on. You can notice a blogger going slowly crazy more easily than you can notice a large group being slowly corrupted by hidden influences.
By contrast, weird autists that seem to actually care about the truth can in fact be found blogging or on other forms of social media. They too have their biases, but, collectively, their biases seem to me to be far more diverse than the biases of large groups, and, in many cases, you do have reason to believe these people actually care about the truth.
It is, in my opinion, far, far better to follow a small number of weird autists than to trust a few large news corporations. Also, the wierd autists will tend to talk about what the news corporations are saying often anyway, whereas the reverse is not true.
I think that since a key part of your trust of the NYT involves whistle blowers, that this contradicts your basic position as well.
EDIT: To be clear though, I do think there is still a lot of value in news organizations. This whole dichotomy of "which should I trust more" is silly, since both have their advantages. I do hope news media sticks around and remains something that is somewhat trusted sometimes, and that people do like what I presume you and I do, relying on a mix of news media and particular individuals. Insofar as now that news media is no longer the only game in town, some decline in trust is warranted as the trust re-distributes somewhat, but I definitely hope that trust of the news media doesn't go to zero.
The former is a very private affair totally hidden. The latter is something happening between a large group of people, many of whom are very inclined to quit the anonymity of the large organization, write a book about it to become individually famous.
A significant number of those autists you espouse can be bribed by surprisingly small amounts. Politicians are far more vetted than bloggers, and yet a significant number of them have been caught changing their votes for $2000 or similar amounts.
You might be able to sway a NYT reporter for a similar amount, but they have processes to catch that.
My bet is that news media organizations are easier to control than it is to control a bunch of unpredictable, independently operating individuals (though it is far easier to control a single individual, no doubt).
I am worried about things like deciding on a narrative at the corporate level. E.g. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/1643786/new-york-..., or, say, CDC and news outlets flip-flopping on things like mask mandates / COVID lab leak and the like. Whenever large-scale incentives are involved, I do not trust news media, and especially think that what individual bloggers and other people are saying will give you a better perspective on things. Whereas when there aren't clear incentives in any direction, or when one requires a reporter "on the ground", there can be good reason to trust news media over individuals.
News media are also broadly incompetent when it comes to reporting on areas where expertise is required (e.g. tech, science), and there, specific individuals again are far, far more trustworthy. Heck, most news media is too lazy to even cite much of anything they say. As I said, this isn't an either/or thing, but for sure trust in news media should decline as people recognize the areas where other sources are more trustworthy.
The kids just don’t have any interest in big news organizations which is understandable even if it’s going to make things worse.
Which means that the institutions should do a lot better, which they don't. The demos is always right, that's why we live in a democracy (or at least we strive to) and not in a technocracy (where, presumably, the institutions are right by default).
I laugh when I occasionally listen to NPR and within a few minutes hear an absurdly framed commentary that clearly hasn’t steel manned alternative viewpoints.
Journalism runs on the same "expensive degree -> unpaid intern -> low pay jobs -> stick it out long enough you'll do alright selling your influence" model as Hollywood and DC. Hence it has the same people problems.
Bullshit. The demos is so goddamn stupid it can't be helped, it must be led. Explaining things to them does nothing. People will sacrifice freedom for convenience and short term profit every single time. They vote with emotions. They make decisions that impact entire nations without even trying to gain even a superficial understanding of things. The demos is completely responsible for the horrible status quo. Their ignorance and passivity is exactly what leads to their oppression. Trying to help them leads to nothing but pointless martyrdom. Nothing changes because change depends on them and they are unwilling.
> not in a technocracy
We're literally in the technofeudalist era. We have trillion dollar corporations running digital fiefdoms with users as the serfs tilling the artificially scarce fields. They have so much money it's unreal, and they have woken up to the wonders of lobbying.
I can only imagine how the younger kids see things. They're bombarded by public knowledge of nasty things institutions did in the bigoted/ignorant past, underhanded things they're definitely doing now, an anger/fear inducing news cycle and endless social media conspiracy theories (some of which end up being true) engineered for clicks. Extreme cynicism is a logical conclusion.
If people demanded truth, we might see a different story, but it is clear that enough people want other things more, often enough.
How do you square this with the fact that in the US the same profit-minded insurance company is limited to a fixed profit margin based on the amount of claims paid? By law, they need to set their rates such that they pay out at least 80% (or 85% for some markets) of the premiums they collect. Practically the only way for them to make more money in the long term is to pay out more in the short term.
Personally, I'm not sure how to answer this question. Over time, insurance companies benefit more when medical costs for their customers are higher, not when they are lower. Maybe it's that they actually think that keeping you alive and paying premiums longer is better for their bottom line than having you die quickly? But I don't think it's as simple as thinking that they benefit more if you don't get sick.
Link about allowable Medical Loss Ratios: https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/private-health-insurance/med...
If anything people are not radicalized enough.