Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by potatototoo99 » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

tallanvor wrote: post #52

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.

You mean in exile?

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

#72

Post by KyeRussell » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 2:04 PM UTC

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…

There’s misleading snd there’s misleading. I’ve never worked in a newsroom. However it seem natural to me that changed incentivises (i.e. clicks / engagement) would change how content is written.

I’m fairly distrusting in even my preferred primary news source, not because I suspect that there’s some grand conspiracy, but because the system under which modern journalists (seem to) operate encourages very subtly but very consistently stretching the truth. The KPIs are the puppet master.

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

#73

Post by kneebonian » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 2:04 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #50

elil17 wrote: post #13

Better headline: half of Americans don't know that (many) news organizations deliberately mislead them.

Truth be told, it's high time we (everyone not only Americans at this point) have a healthy amount of skepticism when it comes to media -all media including or especially the ones you "trust" or are on "your" side. This is a good thing. For too long the media was trusted as a believable source of acceptable impartiality and truth. The audience has matured and no longer believe in the fairy truth teller.

That's why I only get my news from 4chan and Tumblr I figure then I'll get coverage of every possible issue from every possible side.

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

#74

Post by RivieraKid » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 2:04 PM UTC

elil17 wrote: post #13

Better headline: half of Americans don't know that (many) news organizations deliberately mislead them.

Do you have an example from the last year how CNN deliberately misled? How often does that happen?

My view is that serious news organizations clearly don't deliberately mislead but they have some amount of bias and contain inaccuracies as a result of low-quality reporting.

And I think the perception of "MSM" which is common among the group of people which includes Elon / libertarians / MAGA fanatics / alt-right is obviously wrong and stupid.

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

#75

Post by dzikimarian » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 2:05 PM UTC

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.

This is not binary.

There's news podcast I listen to ("Raport about state of the world" - Polish only sadly), and host always tries to advocate for both sides when asking questions and often there are guests from the both sides, that present their point in calm, collected manner.

Then there's our state TV, which will tell you that EU is devil, opposition is devil, basically everyone is devil apart from ruling party, which is presented as (quote) "National Champions".

We must expect and educate next generation to expect truth-seeking in journalism, because otherwise we have no future.

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

#76

Post by locustous » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

donohoe wrote: post #45

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.

>> Every organization, every person has their own biases and agenda Yes, but not really the issue... thats why there is an editing process. If an org has a proper editing process then a lot of that gets accounted for. Most of the skewed stories come from organizations that don't employ trained editors, don't have a clear editorial workflow, don't have a corrections policy, and don't have fact-checkers. I would argue…

> Yes, but not really the issue... thats why there is an editing process. If an org has a proper editing process then a lot of that gets accounted for.

Because... Editors couldn't possibly have motives that similarly contain bias, corruption, out other such common frailties of the human condition?

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

#77

Post by silent_cal » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

American propaganda is so sophisticated that people think it's news. At least the Soviets knew it was fake.

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

#78

Post by nivenkos » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

haskellandchill wrote: post #64

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.

> only real investigative journalists these days - Edward Snowden and Julian Assange That's insulting. There are thousands of investigative journalists doing real work every day. Do some research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigative_journalism > Seymour Hersh His recent story was very sketchy, but he has always spoken against the establishment. The government has been smearing him since 1969.

My point was that in the past journalists in general supported him and were against the establishment.

Whereas if Watergate happened today they'd just say it's justified against Russian spies or something.

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

#79

Post by RivieraKid » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

didntreadarticl wrote: post #54

RivieraKid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you have an example of a particular interest in status quo? Status quo can be both good or bad.

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

#80

Post by wincy » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

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'

My lived experience is I sit safely in my suburban home with my children, comfortably collecting a salary to argue points of planning for software development. I work from home and very rarely leave the house. I am unwilling to go down to the local protests or whatever to “see what’s up” because I’m essentially willing to accept zero risk to my person while my children are growing up.

I need accurate news to know what’s going on in the wider world because my day to day is so insular, and I’d hazard I’m not an anomaly here. It’s annoying because I feel like half of my friends are crazy but I’m not sure which half it is. My wife is glitching out and believes all sorts of crazy stuff but heck, maybe it’s true. Maybe the world has always been like this, and I’m just old enough to realize that the news media is bullshit. But it just felt like the older journalists that have retired now were less desperately and smugly trying to convince me that they’re correct than the ones working now. I wish I felt like I could trust literally anyone beyond my immediate family.