Conspiracy theorists strong in this thread. Is this really a HN-aligned topic? The responses do not reflect well on the community.
Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
31–40 of 844 posts
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#32Better headline: half of Americans don't know that (many) news organizations deliberately mislead them.
Bette yet: half of Americans believe in conspiracies with superhuman coordination and execution capabilities. I’ve worked in a newsroom. The idea that puppet masters thousands of miles away are controlling things is absurd to the point of hilarity. Yes, Rupert Murdoch, etc. But it’s all emergent behavior. There is no master plan. These organizations are not well run enough to deliberately get stories out in time, let…
The scary part is that they don't conspire to mislead. They actually believe their own bullshit. It's enforced ideological conformity in hiring and groupthink. If they were organized Machiavellian propagandists, I could at least respect the skills.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#33Better headline: half of Americans don't know that (many) news organizations deliberately mislead them.
Bette yet: half of Americans believe in conspiracies with superhuman coordination and execution capabilities. I’ve worked in a newsroom. The idea that puppet masters thousands of miles away are controlling things is absurd to the point of hilarity. Yes, Rupert Murdoch, etc. But it’s all emergent behavior. There is no master plan. These organizations are not well run enough to deliberately get stories out in time, let…
It doesn’t require coordination any more than a flock of birds requires some “master bird” to tell it which way to turn. When all your friends are journalists, and all your Twitter friends are journalists, and you have to think about what your journalist friends will think about what you’ve written if you want to stay gainfully employed, or when you’re looking for a job in a few years, no dictatorial Illuminati is required.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#34Better headline: half of Americans don't know that (many) news organizations deliberately mislead them.
Bette yet: half of Americans believe in conspiracies with superhuman coordination and execution capabilities. I’ve worked in a newsroom. The idea that puppet masters thousands of miles away are controlling things is absurd to the point of hilarity. Yes, Rupert Murdoch, etc. But it’s all emergent behavior. There is no master plan. These organizations are not well run enough to deliberately get stories out in time, let…
Articles like this probably don't help https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#35Better headline: half of Americans don't know that (many) news organizations deliberately mislead them.
Bette yet: half of Americans believe in conspiracies with superhuman coordination and execution capabilities. I’ve worked in a newsroom. The idea that puppet masters thousands of miles away are controlling things is absurd to the point of hilarity. Yes, Rupert Murdoch, etc. But it’s all emergent behavior. There is no master plan. These organizations are not well run enough to deliberately get stories out in time, let…
Complete red herring. The question as asked does not require a conspiracy. It doesn't even require all news organizations to be pulling in the same direction.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#36Better headline: half of Americans don't know that (many) news organizations deliberately mislead them.
Bette yet: half of Americans believe in conspiracies with superhuman coordination and execution capabilities. I’ve worked in a newsroom. The idea that puppet masters thousands of miles away are controlling things is absurd to the point of hilarity. Yes, Rupert Murdoch, etc. But it’s all emergent behavior. There is no master plan. These organizations are not well run enough to deliberately get stories out in time, let…
Conspire, no, but the emergent behavior is like stochastic terrorism; if everyone in the chain of production places their finger slightly on the same side of the scale, you can very easily end up with a very misleading result. You can produce misleading news by who you don't cover as much as who you do.
A current example: https://www.glaad.org/new-york-times-sign-on-letter-from-lgt... ; coverage of trans people is heavily skewed, partly because it's risky being a named source in the paper, or people have had previous bad experiences with the press. So you get lots of articles that don't cover the side from the point of view of people most closely affected.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#37Better headline: half of Americans don't know that (many) news organizations deliberately mislead them.
Bette yet: half of Americans believe in conspiracies with superhuman coordination and execution capabilities. I’ve worked in a newsroom. The idea that puppet masters thousands of miles away are controlling things is absurd to the point of hilarity. Yes, Rupert Murdoch, etc. But it’s all emergent behavior. There is no master plan. These organizations are not well run enough to deliberately get stories out in time, let…
Google "manufacturing consent." Chomsky's entire point is that it is emergent behavior from a system with certain incentives.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#38Better headline: half of Americans don't know that (many) news organizations deliberately mislead them.
Bette yet: half of Americans believe in conspiracies with superhuman coordination and execution capabilities. I’ve worked in a newsroom. The idea that puppet masters thousands of miles away are controlling things is absurd to the point of hilarity. Yes, Rupert Murdoch, etc. But it’s all emergent behavior. There is no master plan. These organizations are not well run enough to deliberately get stories out in time, let…
Oh, I agree it's all (or at least mostly) emergent behavior. I also believe that a lot of reporters are misleading me, either because they have their own agenda (which often but not always lines up with the overall bias of the organization they work for) or because they're just overworked and it's easier to parrot someone's simplified narrative then do the real research.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#39Eh, most of it is IMHO due to optimising for entertainment value, i.e for ratings. More of a commercial agenda than a political one.
Is that "deliberately mislead"? It depends on what exactly you mean by that. Don't agree and shift the meaning.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#40Because, to first approximation, this is true. Every organization, every person has their own biases and agenda. I'm not sure why Americans believe that objectivity in news reporting is even possible. Other countries don't seem to have as much of an issue with this, since you typically have news sources that are either owned directly by the government or are published by political parties.
This is still very much an issue in many countries with government owned "nonprofit" media. Even in countries with low amount of corruption and high freedom of press.
It’s not an issue. You just assume that this is government voice. It’s good to have direct propaganda channel to learn what your government is up to.
But it shall not be confused with journalism.