No More Stories

Post by atoav » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

Veen wrote: post #55

Even if the media adopted a "just the facts" approach, there's still the question of which facts. Most misleading news stories aren't outright lies, but a careful selection of truths and ommissions that creates a narrative the journalist (and their reader) finds desirable. I don't think it's possible to overcome that and still create a product most people will watch or read: I strongly doubt the average reader will w…

> Another problem, one tech people tend to ignore, is that journalism is as much about values as facts. And so long as we disagree on values, collections of consensus will quickly turn into competing consensuses, each motivated by values that aren't recognized by the others, which is exactly what we have now.

A classic example here would be the widespread believe that "all politicians are corrupt", good journalism would A.) point out that the corruption is not equally distributed and B.) There is no other option than condeming those who get corrupt and electing non-corrupt representatives.

That means instead of seeing journalism as a pure source of information, it needs to be recognized that journalism performs crucial functions within free democratic societies, that go beyond pure distribution of facts.

Post by GauntletWizard » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 3:51 AM UTC

debacle wrote: post #39

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #21

Problems that people have with journalism are always misplaced IMO. It's easy to scapegoat "the media" as an entity, but insofar as it exists, the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear. Quite to the contrary, most journalists I've met and talked to (largely in print media) have journalistic standards and generally want to do the right thing by their readers. But…

I advocate on grassroots political issues locally. There is a special interest group that has much more sway than the general public is aware over local policy decisions (to the extent that they head two local, theoretically competing political parties). In the last 12 months, I have brought this up at least a dozen times in media interviews, letters to the editor, etc. It has gotten nearly no media attention. Eventu…

I just don't understand why we're all so afraid to make noise about the small grift. I have a neighbor who consistently causes environmental issues and is constantly complaining whenever anyone in the neighborhood actually... Lives. Parties in our backyards get the cops called, and I'm not talking about loud college parties; I'm talking about 50-somethings with wine and cheese. She's the campaign manager for some obnoxious local political entity. Nobody will even talk about it, we're all so cowed. I just don't get why we're afraid to talk about it. Even far away; I guess it's too easy to link back and retaliation is too easy and impactful.

Re: No More Stories

Re: No More Stories