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

So 1984 is better than what we have now?

> Then the audience isn't getting the actual message, and many parts of the audience aren't even getting the same message as their neighbors. Some hear "go left", others hear "go right", some get "we should all stay here" and the rest gets some kind of talk about why soup is better than sandwiches. Needless to say that they won't get anything done that way.

People choosing their own filter bubbles is orthogonal to the issue of the media. Just because someone chooses to ignore alternate perspectives, doesn't mean they don't exist.

> Media are reality-mirrors. It's fine if your mirror is a bit dirty, dull or not hung perfectly flat (it's distorting reality, but it's close enough to be useful as a mirror), but if your mirror consists of six different fun house mirrors that are also moving about, it's a shitty mirror and it doesn't work as a mirror.

I don't think _most_ of the current media would be a "fun house mirror". I would argue most of it are mirrors from different perspectives, so you can get a bigger picture by looking in multiple.

I guess what I'm hoping to find is a playbook for how to get stories published. Proven effective methods.

I accept everything I've read from Chomsky and others. But I am still no smarter on what to do about it.

For an analogy, Camp Wellstone teaches how to strategize policy work using tools like Power Maps.

The dystopian version? No, I don't think so. I'm also not talking about anything else but shared reality. "We've always been at war with Eastasia" is a problem itself, but it's less problematic for the country than half of the country believing we're at war with Eastasia and the other half believing we're at war with Eurasia, and both halves actively waging their wars.

> Just because someone chooses to ignore alternate perspectives, doesn't mean they don't exist.

Of course, but they're not choosing, and they don't exist for them. That's perfectly fine as long as you don't need people from multiple realities to work together, which we kind of need.

I do have a couple of comments.

First, a system like you are describing is going to be highly efficient. However, this is not always a good thing. As you increase efficiency, in almost any system you will decrease robustness [0]. While this may be fine in a startup or some software project, for a society, this seems extremely dangerous.

Second, I disagree with the concept of everyone having their own reality. Everyone has their own perception of reality, and may or may not be able to perceive/conceive the reality of someone else's perception, but there is still only one authoritative, physical truth (Well, at least on a scale macro enough for this conversation).

Third, even if you control all of the media (via government for example), you still will not be able to control everyone's perception of reality. See for example China or North Korea, which I believe are the two systems closest to control of the media in the manner you are describing. In China. Despite their total control of the media, there are still citizens who think differently and have a different perception of reality. The only reason that these citizens follow along with the common goal, is because of the threat of force against them or their families if they don't.

For the fourth, I'm going to borrow your war example. If half the country believes in the war in Eurasia and carries it out, and half the country believes in the war in Eastasia and carries it out, are not both sides partially correct? In that case, would they not be better served by seeing the entire truth of the situation, instead of being limited to news sources that serve only one of the stories?

Of course, I do believe that the news should consist of facts, and possibly the interpretation thereof. However, this cannot be trusted to enforcement by government. In addition, since there is no way to stop news organizations from interpreting the facts, would we not be better served by having multiple organizations each provide individual interpretations? That way, we can see multiple possible "realities/perceptions" and chose which we think is the most accurate.

[0] https://taylorpearson.me/interestingtimes/robustness-efficie...