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Comment by Andaith | Hacker News Reader

"Conflicting Signals".

I don't even mean to be political, but one of the two parties here is notorious for lying, so much so that there's a wikipedia page dedicated to the falsehoods they have come out with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements...

First line:

> During and between his terms as President of the United States, Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims

To have a productive discussion on HN, I'd like to ask a question I've always wondered about the USA: How come, given how the media represents things, there haven't been any new media companies, no new news shows, no new newspapers/websites, dedicated to honest, factual reporting, that have gone mainstream/nationwide?

Is there something preventing this?

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Factual news reporting is boring. Nobody wants it. They certainly don't want to pay for it.

There's really no trouble getting factual information in the US. The main source of actual information is the wire services, such as Reuters and AP. It's dull, tedious, factual reporting.

News shows, web sites, etc. all get their news from there. They add various levels of commentary, entertainment, and ideology to make it more engaging.

Some are worse than others; you can get fairly decent reporting from most mainstream news sources. The more biased a news source is, the more time it devotes to attacking those sources as being biased.

It doesn't require a news source. It requires looking at news for news rather than entertainment.

This is made somewhat more complicated in the last few years. Since real news is boring, reliable news sources are less profitable, and many are failing. That leaves them open to being bought out by highly partisan owners, who leverage their reputation while betraying it.

The wire services remain reliable, so far, and have the advantage of being primary reporting. It's not hard to find reality if you want it. It's just that not a lot of people want it.

>To have a productive discussion on HN, I'd like to ask a question I've always wondered about the USA: How come, given how the media represents things, there haven't been any new media companies, no new news shows, no new newspapers/websites, dedicated to honest, factual reporting, that have gone mainstream/nationwide?

The problem is that anyone reporting honestly on Trump would be excessively negative, there's not that many people who want to suffer through reading that (or through verbatim quotes of the things he says!).

I'll go one step further: I avoid all comedy and late night shows. Even The Daily Show, as much as that pains me.

My mental health wouldn't stand a chance if I actually stared into the abyss.

"flood the zone" in action.

create exhaustion and disbelief in the consumer and they eventually give up on consuming, and will eventually choose to cherry pick factoids that confirm their preexisting beliefs

> so much so that there's a wikipedia page dedicated to the falsehoods

Not detracting from the merits of your statement, but Wikipedia is not neutral, it is biased politically/ideologically, so it should not be used as a fair "measure" of things.

Wikipedia is one of the more neutral point-of-view sources on the internet these days given its wide range of editors and consensus process.

Calling it biased/ideological is a recent trend pushed by certain billionaires who didn't like their DOGE corruption being exposed.

There's nothing recent about the most popular media being manipulated and/or biased. Discussions on this forum date back two decades, however the specific narrative depends on the context.

Literally every information source has biases. We are human after all. Well, most of us. If you reject Wikipedia on this you basically have to reject everything anyone says, ever

It's rejecting Wikipedia strictly as a means to measure who lies more; even discounting ideological bias, I'm sure other people who are less scrutinized and publicized tell just as many, if not more, lies. They wouldn't have a Wikipedia page because relatively few people will care to read about Joe Nobody telling his wife that he was at a friend's house after he gets back from the strip club.

With respect to ideological bias, I strongly doubt that other Presidents never made "false or misleading statements" but I can't seem to find, for example, the page of "False or misleading statements made by Joe Biden". It seems a stretch to say he made none, to the point one might wonder about the discrepancy.

That is whataboutism just there.

Why is there no wikipedia page about basketball points scored by Lionel Messi?

I bet he made some in his life?

The media should be asking about Epstein every time they have a chance, but it doesn't happen, because the news makes it's money through audience capture via FOMO, and you do that by always moving to the latest thing that happened, doesn't matter how irrelevant.

Not just Trump, both him and Israel invaded Iran during pretend negotiations with them. If Iran had any sense at all, any smell of "peace" deals drom these two parties should mean a total military preparation to repel and counterattack and putting officers, civilians in bunkers.

Money. Where will the funding come from? Companies controlled by the Epstein class?

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