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Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people. But we’re not your friends either

nytimes.com

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Re: Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people. But we’re not your friends either

#71

Post by TeaDrunk »

dhruval wrote: post #62
TeaDrunk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalists are stuck to doing the whims of owners and advertisers. We don't have a funding model purely for journalism as a mainstream practice. We do have federal funding grants for certain journalistic practices, and that journalism tends to be excellent and also completely ignored , such as focused reporting on the intersection of indigenous nationhood and the USA court system. (If that reporting were more widely…

I have been following some News stories in depth recently and honestly you can find more neutral coverage and better analysis on some random YouTube video or reddit thread then you do on professional print / tv journalism (which given the sort of biased and selective reporting I see on both sides is either deliberately misleading or completely incompetent) At this point I think the problem to solve isn’t “journalism“…

None of the above has really addressed anything in my post so I'm very confused why you're responding to me.

Re: Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people. But we’re not your friends either

#73

Post by screye »

blhack wrote: post #17

When was the last time you read a news article about a topic where you are an expert, and walked away from it thinking that it would help laymen better understand the topic? Journalism is a bit of a personal frustration of mine. It's so important to the function of our society to have an informed population, but we don't, and it's because of the consistent lying that is done by journalists that we don't. Maybe not so…

I see two orthogonal problems within journalism. Ability and intent.

Ability is due to Journalism being seen as a profession in and of itself. It is very similar to generic MBAs, in that their skills are entirely useless in isolation. They only gain value, when paired with domain knowledge within a certain niche. When journalists without the pre-requisite knowledge of a niche report on it, they inevitably report incorrect information.

Intent is largely a result of the twitter/social-media driven world, where clicks and ads drive money. Some of the best creators/media-sources today are largely subscription driven, and their relative independence allows them to bring relatively neutral news, that is not help captive by advertisers, twitter-cancel-culture or corporate overlords.

Re: Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people. But we’re not your friends either

#74

Post by bradj »

I think the prima facie case for journalists is incredibly strong, even for some of the more questionable types of journalism mentioned in the comments like explanatory journalism, narrative reporting and opinion.

I think a lot of the problem today has to do with media literacy: a lack of knowledge among casual readers/viewers about the purpose of journalism, and the difference between the various kinds (and what those kinds allow in an ethical/professional sense).

However, I don’t think the conversation ends there. Given that environment, institutions need to do a better job supporting journalism in a way that reflects that knowledge. I don’t know if it’s possible for a paper that calls itself “the paper of record” to include an opinion section, or even lifestyle reporting, and maintain its “objective” journalistic reputation.

Opinion, interpretative, and explanatory journalism is probably best life to the magazines, or websites that explicitly share a particular editorial viewpoint. The Economist is a great example of this type of institution.

Re: Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people. But we’re not your friends either

#75

Post by Simulacra »

Simulacra wrote: post #3

Personal opinion: I think it was around 2004 when the media slowly stopped being the journalists that protect our democracy, and instead corporations and individuals with political agendas. Sure there were plenty of newspapers and outlets that leaned one way or the other, but it was never so blatantly partisan, to the point of suspect. Journalists are not the enemy of the people, but the media of today certainly does…

Thank you for many pointing out that I'm off by a century or two, please allow me to clarify: The growth of the internet and corporate controlled media may have made the problem significantly worse, and more encompassing of the nation. I had completely forgotten about Judith Millar, thank you for point that out. I guess I remember a time when there were newspapers, and journalists were above the fray of politics. Something dragged the entire profession of journalism into the dregs and I'm at a loss to pinpoint exactly what that is.

Re: Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people. But we’re not your friends either

#76

Post by liability »

mschuster91 wrote: post #52
blhack wrote: post #17

When was the last time you read a news article about a topic where you are an expert, and walked away from it thinking that it would help laymen better understand the topic? Journalism is a bit of a personal frustration of mine. It's so important to the function of our society to have an informed population, but we don't, and it's because of the consistent lying that is done by journalists that we don't. Maybe not so…

> And while we're at it: shut down twitter. It's the drug dealer give our sensemaking organs the drugs. If there is one drug dealer it is Facebook. I mean, of course Trump uses Twitter as a megaphone, but your grandparents won't use it. They all use Facebook to stay in contact with relatives and friends, and then get conspiracy theories, xenophobia and other propaganda in their feeds.

I think the point is that journalists use twitter, not Trump or grandparents. That Facebook is the drug dealer for grandparents is a distinct problem, pointing it out doesn't negate the harm of twitter.

Re: Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people. But we’re not your friends either

#77

Post by luckylion »

grawprog wrote: post #66
luckylion wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So like this? Well, yes. I mean, we've had that in a more sophisticated way for the longest time via press agencies. They deliver the news to the media companies, the editors rewrite it a bit to match their audience's taste and add a bit of opinion, but the basic facts are the same. Sinclair was probably just too cheap to spend the extra few bucks to hire somebody to write 20 scripts that have the same content but…

>I'd prefer if we all shared reality. Unfortunately, unless you can see out of my eyes and think my thoughts, you and I, as well as you and everyone else will not share reality. That's what being human is, we all live in our own reality. >You'll have a hard time communicating when you don't share reality. It's worked for thousands of years. You don't need to share reality to communicate with people, you need to be ab…

> It's worked for thousands of years.

I think it has, but not the way you put it. Rather: we've shared reality for thousands of years, and that's why it worked. We've had the occasional lunatic who didn't share our reality, but they ran into a mammoth or tried to pet a sable tooth tiger. For the rest of us, it was easier. When you said "three mammoths behind the forest", I had a pretty good idea about what you were talking about.

> I just want to seriously ask, on a planet with 7 billion people scattered around the world how can you possibly expect everyone to share the same reality?

We don't need literally everyone anywhere on earth to share the same reality. We need a shared reality mostly with those we come in contact with, for practical reasons I'd say in a nation, but probably also in political blocs (though the details can very well get more fuzzy the further away somebody is). Can't have Europe think the Soviets are great while the US thinks they're terrible, that won't work in an alliance.

And we don't need to have everyone share it either, a super majority is enough. It's not an issue if you have 1% of people believing that reptilians are running the government and looking for politicians blinking sideways on TV. It starts to become a problem when you get larger groups that don't share reality. A small group of 1% will get carried away by the flow. That's much different with a group of 10, 20 or 30 percent.

> How is the reality of people from two completely different places in the world ever going to be the same?

It's not, but then again, even here on the internet, you're mostly speaking to people from your part of the world (geographically, but even more so culturally). It really doesn't matter whether you share reality with somebody you have no points of contact with. And, I think, it's much easier to even accept that somebody perceives reality differently when they're very clearly not like you. There might be a bit of a condescending tone of "oh, of course, they fell for the propaganda their government put out... well, that couldn't happen to me", but it's much more acceptable for a Chinese person to have a drastically different world view than for your neighbor.

Re: Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people. But we’re not your friends either

#78

Post by Balgair »

blhack wrote: post #17

When was the last time you read a news article about a topic where you are an expert, and walked away from it thinking that it would help laymen better understand the topic? Journalism is a bit of a personal frustration of mine. It's so important to the function of our society to have an informed population, but we don't, and it's because of the consistent lying that is done by journalists that we don't. Maybe not so…

I'm not sure that 'news' has ever been anything other than what we see today.

The only exception is the breadth of journalism and news.

Look at the roots of yellow journalism [0]. The issues about headlines over substance are the exact same issues that we have toady with Twitter and the like. Only now, there isn't a fold to worry about.

Look at the Jefferson v Adams 1800 election [1]. It was nasty. The mudslinging, theft, and accusations feel right at home with today's political press. Such 'news' isn't much different than today, maybe with the exceptions of Benjamin Franklin running the presses.

Look at Cicero after the Social War [2]. He took on explicitly political cases and his life was on the line for doing so. Roman politics is cut-throat, for sure, but this just shows how humans do or do not change. The rumors, oration, and 'news' of those pre-printing press times sure sounds a lot like any talking-head cable news show. Though I imagine that the Latin is somewhat lost in translation.

The point is: News and journalism has always been like this. The technology is sure a lot different. You can get endless front-pages from every hamlet on the globe. But the underlying mechanism, that of yellow-journalism, rage, emotion, etc. That is an underlying part of us and is likely to remain so.

One book I love about the deep-down mechanics is John Quincy Adam's Rhetoric and Oratory [3]. It's a great dive into the nuts and bolts of getting an audience to listen to you.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidentia...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero#Public_career

[3] https://archive.org/details/lecturesonrheto02adamgoog/page/n...

Re: Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people. But we’re not your friends either

#79

Post by mschuster91 »

liability wrote: post #76
mschuster91 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And while we're at it: shut down twitter. It's the drug dealer give our sensemaking organs the drugs. If there is one drug dealer it is Facebook. I mean, of course Trump uses Twitter as a megaphone, but your grandparents won't use it. They all use Facebook to stay in contact with relatives and friends, and then get conspiracy theories, xenophobia and other propaganda in their feeds.

I think the point is that journalists use twitter, not Trump or grandparents. That Facebook is the drug dealer for grandparents is a distinct problem, pointing it out doesn't negate the harm of twitter.

> I think the point is that journalists use twitter

Which is not a problem in itself. If Twitter has done anything it is lower the distance between journalists and the general population, especially minorities, and it allowed "grassroots journalism" to exist in the first place.

Yes, ordinary blogging existed before Twitter, but only Twitter has the advantage of "going viral".

Re: Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people. But we’re not your friends either

#80

Post by RickJWagner »

Journalism is dead. Completely dead.

Just look at the Covington High School fiasco. Or look at YouTube for 'The Walls are closing in'. Or look how long the Russiagate narrative dominated the headlines, only to dissolve in a day.

Yes, true journalism is dead.

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