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Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

nytimes.com

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Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#161

Post by twicetwice »

xenophonf wrote: post #143
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional print is over, jobs are disapppearing faster than coal miners. It is not by chance that media is getting more partisan - it is a way to boost subscription numbers, but I don't think it is sustainable. What we are witnessing are the convulsions of their slow-motion suicide. I really hope substack will get bigger, there are incredible authors with a quality of writing that I have never witnessed even in the…

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss: https://thehypothesis.substack.com/p/heres-why-substacks-sca...

I've been convinced this complaint is BS. Substack wasn't trying to push particular points of view; it was simply making a deal that was economically beneficial to them. They also extended that deal to a number of left-leaning/leftist writers, some of whom silently declined—and some of whom took it!

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#162

Post by codyswann »

enumjorge wrote: post #138
brigandish wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a media outlet that is trusted and good and has a significant following would keep people away from disinformers. Unfortunately, we appear to have something towards the opposite - large media outlets that aren't good, aren't trusted, and are trying to manipulate the market (à la Youtube with it's now completely useless search and its nefarious recommendation algorithms) to stop people going to competitors who…

I'm not defending the NYT, but there's a reason why most news sources have become extremely opinionated. There's lots of competition for people's attention, especially when it comes to news and people don't want to pay for news. As a result, they've tried to gain back viewership by becoming more editorialized. Sure you lose people who want a more objective source of news, but you gain a more dedicated following by pi…

Agreed. We point the finger at the media all the time, but the media is just a reflection of society. Why is Kim Kardashian on the front page of CNN? Why is "Iconic New York City park, featured in sitcom ‘Friends,’ trashed by urban decay" on the front page of Fox News?

Because they drive clicks.

As soon as gossip and unedited "news" blogs started appearing with rumor and unsubstantiated claims, it was a race to the bottom.

Why? Because the majority of people prefer mindless trash to the idiosyncrasies of a local county commission meeting.

I don't have a good answer because media companies have to make money to stay in business. Making them backed by the state is an even worse idea.

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#164

Post by XnoiVeX »

happy_path wrote: post #93

Disinformation/narratives' control has always been present: There are some examples I can think of: - Manifest Destiny. - Spanish American 1989 war because (Maine sinking). - The gulf of Tokin incident. - The Nayirah testimony. - Irak's WMD. I think the issue here is that the some western governments are failing to control information, and their citizens are now being preyed by other governments' disinformation campa…

Add MK Ultra to that list. The Internet and social media have made it so much easier to run disinformation campaigns. The only defense is to teach people critical thinking. It's almost impossible to police the content.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#165

Post by everdrive »

khawkins wrote: post #26

Instead of constantly hand-wringing about "disinformation" from the shadows, they should be desperately addressing their own plummeting credibility: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gallup-american-trus... People would be less susceptible to disinformation if they could actually trust mainstream sources like the NYT.

Although a lot of the mistrust of mainstream news is well earned, there is also an explosion of doubt and misinformation these days. (How many stories these days are a media story with a strawman? "You'll never believe what [publication] is saying!") The NY Times actually does a lot of good journalism these days. At least at the level of the individual story and/or writer. But people have become so cynical or mistrustful, that a NY Times article is dismissed automatically even when it shouldn't. Feel free to swap out NY Times for any other publication which performs good journalism.

There's a difference between legitimate criticism of a publication, (which nearly any publication would deserve to varying degrees) and lazy, automatic dismissals of the news as "broadly untrustworthy."

(To be clear, and at a personal level, I don't particularly like the NY Times. Their headlines are often politicized and the editorial section is completely awful. However if you get off the front page and just read some of their in depth reporting, you'd be crazy to write them off as wholly biased or untrustworthy.)

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#166

Post by gorwell »

shrubble wrote: post #73

Pot, kettle, etc. 'The new disclosure revealed that the Post and the Journal each received more than $100,000 per month to run print versions of Chinese propaganda articles. The Times received $50,000 in 2018 to place the propaganda on its website, presumably a small fraction of the revenue it made selling print space to China Daily. The new disclosures also showed that China Daily paid hundreds of thousands of dolla…

It's useful, at this point, to carry a default assumption that reporting is propaganda or otherwise misrepresented. This arguably extends even into research;

Richard Smith, who edited BMJ for 13 years, on the state of health research: "It may be time to move from assuming that research has been honestly conducted and reported to assuming it to be untrustworthy until there is some evidence to the contrary."

https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1417695524883296257

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#167

Post by [deleted] »

ameminator wrote: post #55
chewmieser wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bias is in every source (although I'd give Reuters an AP a general pass there). Being biased is not a "bad thing" just because it doesn't fit your world view, it expands horizons if you allow other views into your narrow view. And poor? Laughable. NYTimes is a high quality source on-par with WSJ.

Bias is in every news source, but let's not pretend it's a "good thing" - I would rather everyone be less biased and more open in their reporting. I still do occasionally read the New York Times, but I find that reporting from Axios and local news sources is usually superior, because they have less of this bias and seem to stick to clear, direct facts.

[deleted]

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#168

Post by rscoots »

consumer451 wrote: post #48
khawkins wrote: post #26

Instead of constantly hand-wringing about "disinformation" from the shadows, they should be desperately addressing their own plummeting credibility: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gallup-american-trus... People would be less susceptible to disinformation if they could actually trust mainstream sources like the NYT.

The number one news source in the USA is also the one most likely to make viewers less informed, or even ill informed. I personally lost the last of my faith in the USA over the pandemic and the Trump era. We needed a vaccine agains News Corp about twenty years ago. What we got instead was normalization of “alternative facts,” and now everyone is worried about cancel culture or some other b.s. while I’m over here wat…

You'll note that the current VP and various MSNBC & CNN hosts & contributors casted major doubts on the vaccine when it seemed it would be released in time for Trump's reelection cycle.

It really is turtles all the way down with the media and political parties. It's time to remove the artificial divides in your mind and fight these issues from a more party-agnostic position. We need your help.

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#169

Post by the-dude »

dd36 wrote: post #56
the-dude wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? They did not uncover themselves that the WMDs did not exist.

They shared it with their audience. The standard isn’t always be right, it’s have integrity.

Everybody shared it with 'the audience'. The WMDs were obviously not there, were they? Hard to keep it up.

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#170

Post by fortuna86 »

moistrobot wrote: post #130

Classic projection from mainstream news. With the amount of disinformation put out by NYTimes, it's easier to point the finger elsewhere. If you want to block NYTimes and all contributors on your account, try this: https://www.blocknyt.com/

What is an example of something published by the NYT, that has been proven false, that hasn't been retracted and removed?
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