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Comment by knowtheory | Hacker News Reader

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)

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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.

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