181–190 of 266 posts
Hah. Reminds me of that funny quote: "I always thought as fact that my brain is the most important organ in my body. Then I realised who was telling me this."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This makes me wonder, 3 branches of government exist to balance each other out. Journalism stands on its own, what’s the counter balance to journalism?
Journalism, "the 4th estate", in the past was used to go after the powerful but it has recently become the power. It's a concerning change and I don't see it getting better. Maybe it's "corporate journalism" that is problematic.
The difference is now we have better information infrastructure and they can't make things that are disagreeable quietly disappear [0] so easily. The disappearing news story isn't a new act; what is new is now the story can linger despite that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If someone holds the same prior beliefs as you, it is rational to trust them more. It may be rational, but that makes them terrible providers of news for the people they agree with. They have the same blind spots and are looking to support the narratives you both already believe.
I would even say it's not rational, but cult like. Rationality is based on logical skepticism. More often than not, it's swimming against the tide questioning generally accepted axioms.
Favoring information that confirms one's prior beliefs is the opposite of rational.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It surprised you that MSNBC, NYT, and NPR have primarily left-leaning audiences? Their coverage leans left like Fox News leans right, particularly MSNBC. If you asked the surveyed Republicans how much they trust Fox News specifically , I’m sure the stats would be a mirror image. Similarly, democrats trust a news industry which, outlet-for-outlet, is more aligned with what they want to hear. After all, it’s never “our…
> After all, it’s never “our” news we mistrust, it’s the other guys! You imply this is some kind of hypocrisy or other character flaw, but this will always be true when there's uncertainty. If someone holds the same prior beliefs as you, it is rational to trust them more. Otherwise you would be assuming your own beliefs are wrong which makes no sense by definition. Of course media outlets tend to go beyond just filli…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It surprised you that MSNBC, NYT, and NPR have primarily left-leaning audiences? Their coverage leans left like Fox News leans right, particularly MSNBC. If you asked the surveyed Republicans how much they trust Fox News specifically , I’m sure the stats would be a mirror image. Similarly, democrats trust a news industry which, outlet-for-outlet, is more aligned with what they want to hear. After all, it’s never “our…
Smart people are actually more susceptible to biases. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-... Funny that I link to a New Yorker article. Fitting that it is from 2012.
“ Most educated people believe that premier news outlets are inherently trustworthy.” Let’s stop right there. I think the last 8 years have shown the media to have lost significant amounts of public trust. I would say that most educated people inherently believe that the media should not automatically receive benefit of the doubt any longer.
yeah it's a questionable claim for sure. This was a widely cited poll that asserted for the first time ever, the majority of Americans mistrust the mainstream media: https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-... You'll note that trust varies widely by political party, with 18% of Republicans trusting the media vs 57% of Democrats. So the post in the op seems to equate "educated" with "democrat" perh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Donald Trump happened in the last 8 years. He did two major things. First, he relentlessly attacked the media ("fake news") and regularly called them out on false or misleading stories. (Then the media regularly complained about him eroding their credibility, without admitting that his criticisms were often valid.) Second, he was incredibly good at manipulation. His signature move was to tell a big fat lie about an i…
I really wish Trump hadn't made attacking fake news become associated with Trumpism. Makes it much harder for people to fight back against fake news without losing all credibility due to the association.
The right calls it fake news and the left calls it misinformation. Everyone has a rhetorical mechanism for attacking stories they think are factually incorrect.
I wish the NYT would clarify or retract this piece/headline https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-... > Widely Used Software Company May Be Entry Point for Huge U.S. Hacking > Russian hackers may have piggybacked on a tool developed by JetBrains, which is based in the Czech Republic, to gain access to federal government and private sector systems in the United States. My company has banned Jetbr…
I remember that one. They did change the headline in fact. The original version erroneously said Russian Software Company May Be Entry Point for Huge U.S. Hack They changed "Russian" to "Widely Used"... Oddly the version the wayback machine caches has "Russian" in the headline as well as "based in the Czech Republic" in the first sentence. https://web.archive.org/web/20210106195835/https://www.nytim... It is clearly…
What happens when substacks make mistakes?
> Purely for comparative purposes, a two-bullet rundown of my own corrections policy:
> If a reader points out anything untrue or unfair, I (i) pay out a bounty, (ii) make in-line and end-note edits to the original, (iii) update my public corrections log
> If the mistake is serious, I also publish reflections on where things broke down and what I’m doing to limit future risk (example) > [...]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It surprised you that MSNBC, NYT, and NPR have primarily left-leaning audiences? Their coverage leans left like Fox News leans right, particularly MSNBC. If you asked the surveyed Republicans how much they trust Fox News specifically , I’m sure the stats would be a mirror image. Similarly, democrats trust a news industry which, outlet-for-outlet, is more aligned with what they want to hear. After all, it’s never “our…
> After all, it’s never “our” news we mistrust, it’s the other guys! You imply this is some kind of hypocrisy or other character flaw, but this will always be true when there's uncertainty. If someone holds the same prior beliefs as you, it is rational to trust them more. Otherwise you would be assuming your own beliefs are wrong which makes no sense by definition. Of course media outlets tend to go beyond just filli…