Media Ignorance Is Becoming A Serious Problem | Hacker News Reader

Media Ignorance Is Becoming A Serious Problem

thefederalist.com

24 pointsspindritf10 comments

I hate pieces like this.

"The Media" is not a monolith. The media is a complicated and dynamic world of individuals, companies from large to small, distribution mechanisms, educational systems, and cultural assumptions.

The media is comprised of a lot of different things including people who may be awful or mendacious or ignorant or naïve or inexperienced or any number of things.

Does the press/media have structural issues? Yes absolutely. Does this piece identify, elucidate or address any of them?

No. It doesn't.

(p.s. the entire subtext of this piece is that the "liberal" media is dumb. I'm sure that the "conservative" media would fare much better /eyeroll)

If they would read the history, learn the arguments they dismiss reflexively as idiotic, gather even a modicum of context before pontificating, who knows what might happen?

This is the main point of the article, and a fair one.

This is not a problem with "the media". This is a problem with humans. You can say the same thing about politicians, business people, teachers, anybody who expresses an opinion about policy in general.

It's not even necessarily a fair one to hang around the neck of "the media".

"The media" used to have considerably better expertise who have been shed through successive waves of buyouts and layoffs. Seriously, newsroom headcounts were cut by >1/3 in the past 10 years.

That's a structural problem with the economics of media in the age of the internet (one which the media dealt with particularly poorly).

if you s/liberal/corporatist/g you'll get a more valid viewpoint. The main problem with "the media" today is that it's all influenced/corrupted by wealthy interests that hype or suppress news to favor their viewpoints (of which there are many, but all about increasing wealth for the already-wealthy).

Any media detached from supporting a wealthy interest is usually ignored and shunned by media outlets. That's a trend that's disturbing and escalating.

The future is NeoFeudalism.

The main problem with "the media" today is that it's all influenced/corrupted by wealthy interests

Did you even read the OPs post? There is no "the media". There are a wide number of media organisations, some of which resemble others, and many more that do not.

The example set for the in the article, Hugh Hewitt's interview with Zach Carter, is possibly the worst example the author could have used for ignorance in the media.

While ignorance in the media may or may not be an issue, this article does not demonstrate that it is.

Yes, it's possible to have a credible opinion on things even if you haven't read a select list of books that a Dick Cheney apologist has set forth.

I think it's ignorance in general, not just in the media. People read far less deeply now than they used to and seem less aware of history. Things are trending more and more towards summarization, instant spoon-feedings of information that are little more than quips in most cases. Twitter, text messaging, internet comment boards, email and other forms of instant, un-edited, un-fact-checked, unconsidered communication all contribute to this. Newspaper readership is down. Long-form news magazines are dying. Television news is just dramatized crisis of the day.

"Becoming".

Excellent article. Among other points, notes why the "tea party" is so grossly misunderstood.

Is it because it's hard to understand someone that is slobbering that much?

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