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Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

fortune.com

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Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

#51

Post by ErikCorry »

hunglee2 wrote: post #7

Optimistic news - elevated degree of skepticism of any 'produced information' is fully justified, seeing as news organisations are driven certainly by commercial agenda, and frequently also by political agenda which they are - as a rule - far from being transparent with. We need citizen and independent journalism, and better yet, trust in our own direct lived experience, to balance out of 'information diet'

Counterpoint: People are dumb on average and their citizen journalism will be even worse.

I don't think it's a good idea for journalists to proclaim that they are abandoning objectivity. https://reason.com/2020/06/24/journalists-abandoning-objecti...

Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

#52

Post by tallanvor »

nivenkos wrote: post #16

They do. The only real investigative journalists these days - Edward Snowden and Julian Assange - face life in prison and exile. Even Seymour Hersh has been smeared to discredit him now he dared speak against the establishment. It is not journalists' role to be a mouthpiece for the government, but to challenge it.

Edward Snowden was not, nor as far as I know did he ever claim to be, a journalist. He was at best a whistleblower, although given where he now lives and the citizenship he holds, it's clear that nothing he says or does can be trusted.

Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

#54

Post by didntreadarticl »

RivieraKid wrote: post #24
gtmitchell wrote: post #4

Because, 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.

The first approximation is: a typical journalist working at a serious news organization has some amount of bias but at the same time tries to be objective. So it is approximately false, they don't deliberately mislead. My threshold for "serious news organization" is that CNN gets there, Fox News doesn't.

American news organisations are all paid for by advertisers who have a vested interest in the status quo

Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

#55

Post by thereddaikon »

kneebonian wrote: post #29
brookst wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo

This is mostly due to local news stations being lazy and regurgitating copy without doing any work on their own. The way news works involves stories and information being piped from party to party. Much of it comes from the AP or major national news bodies. Having seen how the sausage is made for these small local outfits, they are often run on a low budget with limited staff, old equipment and little bandwidth for their own editorial work outside of specific local news. Anything larger is likely going to be a copy paste job. The same is true for the weatherman. He's mostly just reading what the weather service puts out.

Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

#56

Post by malwrar »

brookst wrote: post #20
elil17 wrote: post #13

Better 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…

I feel like newsrooms mislead, but more of in a Manufacturing Consent/Hate Inc sense. It feels obvious after reading articles about stuff I know about, and has lead me over time to generally not trust the media as an institution. Organized conspiracies make no sense, but perverse institutional incentives at scale has a lot of explaining power.

Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

#57

Post by kneebonian »

mc32 wrote: post #26
nokcha wrote: post #2

Highly relevant: https://AstralCodexTen.substack.com/p/the-media-very-rarely-...

It's right in that they don't often feed you with provably false stuff --at least not at the time of publication (such as Hunter's Laptop being Russian misinfo but now owned up to by Hunter himself) but yes, they lie by omission, innuendo/leading and half truths. Similar to how quite a few social programs are based on small unreplicated studies that sound good on paper --the intent matters more than the results or re…

Don't forget the talking about how one thing now could lead to something else down the road.

Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

#59

Post by StreamBright »

“News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising.” - William Randolph Hearst

I think it is undeniable that new organizations are deliberately misleading the public in many cases, not necessarily part of the conspiracy but simply acting as the agent of the government. There are many cases when is became obvious.

It is also easy to find sources that are free from government collusion usually classified either far left or far right whatever those mean.

Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

#60

Post by docdeek »

nivenkos wrote: post #16

They do. The only real investigative journalists these days - Edward Snowden and Julian Assange - face life in prison and exile. Even Seymour Hersh has been smeared to discredit him now he dared speak against the establishment. It is not journalists' role to be a mouthpiece for the government, but to challenge it.

I’m not sure I would classify Edward Snowden as a journalist.
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