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Anatomy of a Moral Panic

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Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#161

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

baxtr wrote: post #131
vonnik wrote: post #127

Ironically, the premise of this critique of journalism is as false as the Amazon story it cites. Algorithms and the Internet didn't ruin journalism, and this is not the end of the world. Journalism was corrupted by sensationalism as soon as it moved from subscriptions to ads, which in the US was in the 19th century. Remember when we discovered a colony of aliens on the moon? Yeah, that was the New York Sun way before…

Fully agree. Reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1227/

To be fair, the snippets' chosen dates are from 1870s onward. Historians fuzzily date the start of the industrial revolution at around 1750. So that's about 100 years of industrialization and modernity. No wonder the art of conversation was considered dying by that point: it has been under assault from modernity for generations.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#162

Post by michrassena »

cisanti wrote: post #20

Well written piece. I stopped reading news after Trump got into office and I have no shame about it. It feels great and I don't I miss out on anything. When people talk or ask me about politics I just say I don't know because I don't read. They make s surprised face and then continue talking and arguing about absolutely pointless topics and about the upcoming apocalypse. I just hope someone tells me an hour beforehan…

I stopped years ago, and unfortunately have let myself be dragged back into it recently. I wouldn't advocate being so disconnected that you don't know the major things going on in the world. What I've found by not paying close attention to the news is that the important stuff still finds its way to you. Instead, perhaps we'd all benefit if we didn't keep our hands on the pulse of the news, so to speak. Stepping back from the day-to-day, he said/she said, tit-for-tat, inside-baseball everyday news cycle is what I'm getting at. The news, by and large, is bad news. It can be a constant reminder of our powerlessness as individuals. It can be a barrage of situations we can't change, but feel some anxiety over. What about the news is actionable? We can grab an umbrella.

I'd rather view the news as a troubled friend who is always mired in drama. While I respect its role in my life and the importance to society, news delivers too much drama to be invited around every evening, let alone all day long.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#164

Post by cisanti »

hackermailman wrote: post #55
cisanti wrote: post #20

Well written piece. I stopped reading news after Trump got into office and I have no shame about it. It feels great and I don't I miss out on anything. When people talk or ask me about politics I just say I don't know because I don't read. They make s surprised face and then continue talking and arguing about absolutely pointless topics and about the upcoming apocalypse. I just hope someone tells me an hour beforehan…

There's a few slow journalism outlets like Delayed Gratification https://www.slow-journalism.com I also don't watch any news. I listen to the 5 minute local radio news channel on my way to work, since this covers local news I should know. Once in a while if I have time I read journals like Oxford's Foreign Policy Analysis. I used to pick up local community papers but they jumped on the moral panic bandwagon too and t…

Thank you so very much, this is exactly what I was looking for, but couldn't find. it was worth to write my comment because you replied with this link :)

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#165

Post by soundwave106 »

hueving wrote: post #126
matt4077 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you stick to quality journalism (NYT/WSJ/The New Yorker/The Economist/Bloomberg), the world of journalism is really not worse than it was in whatever golden age of the press people seem to imagine. The idea that all media gravitate towards low-brow outrage clickbait because it sells better is quite obviously wrong. Just as there is fast food as well as organic granola, or porn as well as independent conceptual art…

>If you stick to quality journalism (NYT/WSJ/The New Yorker/The Economist/Bloomberg), the world of journalism is really not worse than it was in whatever golden age of the press people seem to imagine. Only if you agree with the political stances those sources are biased towards. Perhaps it has always been that way, but something like the NYT is hardly unbiased and it bleeds through on everything from article selecti…

I personally think it is impossible to eliminate bias. Even news services that try to inject as little opinion as possible (eg wire services like AP News) have to make some choice on what they carry and how they phrase it.

All five of those sources are biased, but in different ways. It is helpful to "look outside your natural bias" sometimes, so assuming the NYT maintains its quality standard it probably is worthwhile for an American conservative to peek in that direction every now and then. (This goes vice versa, eg it is helpful for American liberals looking at more sober quality news sources with a more American-business-conservative bias like the WSJ.)

The important key here though is accuracy and sober analysis. So the fact that the NYT is "American liberal" is not a problem. The issue described in the linked article, that they did a poor job of fact-checking on a relatively sensationalist article, is a problem. The BBC also has its own bias too, but at least they showed a little big more skepticism compared to the other outlets. So props to the BBC here.

IMHO if the New York Times values its current "quality journalism" rep, they need to watch this more carefully. There are plenty of clickbait sensationalism-driven "news" outlets, and only a relative few with decent reporting reputation. "Quality journalism" is more expensive, but I feel it is also something some people actually would pay subscription money for. Few people are going to want to pay money these days for sensationalist clickbait they can get on the Internet for free.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#166

Post by convivialdingo »

freshhawk wrote: post #159
wolf550e wrote: post #81

Wasn't the "baseball test" an accepted norm in journalism? "A reporter should not be assigned to cover subject X unless he has as good an understanding of X as a baseball writer is expected to have of baseball."[1] Shouldn't media outlets be embarrassed into retracting stories written by people who know nothing about the subject? Shouldn't the reputation of the media outlet suffer? 1 - https://www.theatlantic.com/per…

Their reputations probably would suffer if anyone cared or if it wasn't ubiquitous. There are 5 PR hacks for every reporter in America. And that counts people who are functionally equivalent to PR hacks as reporters because of their job title. The market has spoken, and actual journalism has been deemed unnecessary. The short era of actual journalism, with journalistic ethics classes and investigative journalism and…

PR hacks are mostly Government and Corporations. They routinely dribble out acronym babble and veiled feel-good propaganda. I read a lot of foreign policy and corporate announcements, so it's pretty common to see PR spread out across the net unattributed.

Oftentimes PR firms are happy for you to print their copy - but they answer no questions and offer no insights.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#167

Post by vonnik »

notzorbo3 wrote: post #152
vonnik wrote: post #127

Ironically, the premise of this critique of journalism is as false as the Amazon story it cites. Algorithms and the Internet didn't ruin journalism, and this is not the end of the world. Journalism was corrupted by sensationalism as soon as it moved from subscriptions to ads, which in the US was in the 19th century. Remember when we discovered a colony of aliens on the moon? Yeah, that was the New York Sun way before…

Your entire comment is a straw man. The article doesn't claim the internet ruined journalism, and I don't even know where your "end of the world" comment is coming from. You're also comparing papers like the New York Sun and other tabloids, while this article is talking about respectable papers such as the New York Times. I'll quote the relevant part of the article: > The real story in this mess is not the threat tha…

Your entire comment misses the point. What I'm saying is that most journalism was always this way. Algorithms don't exacerbate this tendency any more than daily sales did for the Sun. As a former reporter for the NYT, I can say that journalists there are subjected to many of the same pressures, if in a more limited way than reporters at Buzzfeed. And that sales always mattered at the Times, too. Reporters have always, always chased readers.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#169

Post by ryanmarsh »

kermittd wrote: post #168
ryanmarsh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes

Great so have I! Intersubjective is what clued me in. The whole idea of Intersubjective reality cleared up a lot of misgivings I had about civilizations/societies.

Same here. It also makes people who are adamant about any position related to fake news (what it is, who is making it, whether it's good or bad, etc...) sound like a barking dog.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#170

Post by Iv »

rmc wrote: post #155
groby_b wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context on "far-left" - it's nothing like the far left in the US. France has an extremely well-developed set of leftists. It's the only country I ever visited where people had deep discussions about the difference between Trotskyism and Leninism when debating actual political events. The US far left would maybe, possibly, pass as moderate left in France. Obama would be considered... center right? OK, centrist. Th…

I remember reading about Uber opening in France. Obviously the french taxi drivers weren't happy with it, and Uber were putting out press releases about how they "want to work together and blah blah corporate waffle". But you can't just ignore the law like that like you can in USA, the French taxi drivers started attacking and burning Uber cars. https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/25/french-anti-uber-protest-t...

To be fair this was a clusterfuck. Taxi here are almost universally hated: they are rude, rare, dishonest, expensive and disorganized. Also, their scarcity in Paris was purposefully organized.

Most people also see that Uber violates important labor laws so most people did not take sided there.

The reason why taxi drivers could get away with so many violence is because the owners of the main taxi companies are VERY well connected to the political world.

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