Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

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>when there are lots of other competing sources that don't observe the same deference.

sure because they're just making shit up. If you don't have access to a source you're by definition speculating. The fact that they can do it in an abrasive way or in attack mode is a performance of authenticity, not actual reporting. You believe them because they're "just like you".

It's the biggest curse of our time and emotional manipulation. Journalists sometimes have to navigate how they talk to people but a skilled reader can at least extract real information from it even if it requires reading between the lines. The Youtube 'reporters' add nothing, it's entertainment. They're popular to the extent that they reinterpret publicly available information in a way that confirms the biases of their audiences.

The journalist pays for access but the youtuber pays with audience capture, the difference is consumers of mainstream journalism are aware of it. Someone who reads an interview in the NYT with a mainstream politician know in advance that they'll have to be critical, 18 year old's watching youtube don't. Youtubers are infinitely more deferential to their audience than a journalist is ever going to be to an individual subject because the latter is professionally employed and the former is a cancelled subscription wave away from flipping burgers.

Mainstream journalism can't compete its way out of its malaise by insisting on an "impartiality" that demands journalists lie by omission. Such journalism is utterly incapable of meeting the moment and opposing the innovative incrementalist autocracy of Orban, Ergogan, Putin, and others.

Such feckless news organizations are destined to become tools of the state; perhaps that is in fact the smartest play for the profits of their ownership. Certainly Bezos seems to be taking WaPo down the path of collaborator, as are the Ellisons with CBS.

The illusion-of-impartiality model has its loyalists, but this article is about the young news audiences who have have been lost. At least some of them have been lost, not to YouTube and influencers, but to other news outlets (left and right) who have embraced their own biases and adversarial perspectives. You call that a "performance of authenticity", but in the marketplace it has beaten a performance of impartiality which is at least as inauthentic.

>but in the marketplace it has beaten a performance of impartiality

of course it does, the entire logic of market driven news is to cater to the attention and emotionality of a self-selected audience. Journalism cannot compete with that and still perform its function. When someone subscribes to a substack for 10$ they're not going there for facts or because the author is the equivalent of Plato, they're going there because they're sold a quasi-relationship. It's effectively Onlyfans for news.

A journalist at the WSJ say obviously has biases, but there is real impartiality both as an ideal and in practice. John Carreyrou who worked there brought Theranos down, despite Rupert Murdoch being heavily invested in the firm. (and I don't think Rupert Murdoch is the model of an ethical citizen).

'Alternative news', be it left, right, top, bottom or what have you would never do this. For one they don't engage in investigative journalism, but they also couldn't if the subject were the people their audience adores. And given that young people have been taught that the purpose of media is entertainment and gratification, you can't sell them critical analysis or factual information.

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