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Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

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

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ob…

I said it farther down but I'll say it again. What possible justification could there have been for 2 weeks of continuous news coverage on covefe?

The official white house spokesperson said it was a secret message:

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer stated, "I think the President and a small group of people know exactly what he meant."[4]

Because admitting to a typo in an unfinished, now deleted tweet was apparently impossible for the man in charge of nuclear weapons. That's worth a bit of coverage.

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

#142
post #31

Conspiracy theorists strong in this thread. Is this really a HN-aligned topic? The responses do not reflect well on the community.

I don't see a conspiracy at all. Sentiment analysis of the news shows a strong shift to fear and anger. Those emotions drive engagement. People here didn't like when the Facebook news feed was surfacing these things to the top to drive engagement, but seem to be more OK with human editors doing it.

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

#143

There are literal mountains of sociological studies on how (state and corporate) media have been in service of the powers that be, for decades, and how exactly this works. With a mountain of examples. So, for sociologists, this feels like "wow, it only took half a century to trickle through." Though of course this is the wrong reaction; it has always trickled through. Only that, in the past, it took a few years or de…

> There are literal mountains of sociological studies on how (state and corporate) media have been in service of the powers that be, for __millennia__, and how exactly this works.

Fixed it. There are historical evidence that this has gone on in some form or fashion in ancient empires (e.g., Roman, Egyptian, Chinese), be it written or the town crier.

There have always been people who knew this was going on, spoke up, but were considered crackpot, conspiracy theorist, or simply beheaded.

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

#144
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine for a moment if you made $100 Billion in profits in 2.5 years.

Why wouldn't I imagine first that there exists a mastermind capable of weaving order out of chaos using divine ability granted to them by the Excalibur Fairy after praying at the Stonehenge? The story you're portraying doesn't need any kind of imagination, Hanlon's razor works perfectly well there and doesn't require any kind of special ability granted by smoking weed while doing nothing besides looking for conspirac…

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

#146
post #120

There are literal mountains of sociological studies on how (state and corporate) media have been in service of the powers that be, for decades, and how exactly this works. With a mountain of examples. So, for sociologists, this feels like "wow, it only took half a century to trickle through." Though of course this is the wrong reaction; it has always trickled through. Only that, in the past, it took a few years or de…

> it took a few years or decades to be come publicized knowledge So that makes me wonder how this is getting out. Is it a news organization such as an opposing organization, or outspoken journalists? Is it democratized news reporting via forums and social media?

In news there's journalism and there's reporting. This story is reporting, it doesn't use many adjectives and doesn't have much of a point beyond the statistics represented. It allows people to form their own opinions based on their own experiences around the details of this story.

Journalists on the other hand are often side characters to their stories. Their stories come with a point, sometimes called a narrative, that's available to guide you in a certain direction of thinking. Journalism is largely what makes people distrust the news. Omitting, minimizing, or highlighting a fact are all ways journalists and editors play to the narratives.

Gallup regularly does these kinds of surveys and they publish them by default. They almost always get posted in the AP. If you look at the AP version of this article it's almost word for word the same. That's to say, it's posted on fortunes website, but it's not a top headline. They're not suddenly, after many years of this criticism, having a "reckoning with truth in journalism". This is the medias version of, "These are not the droids you're looking for"

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

#147

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.

Compare Seymour Hersh's codswallop on the Skripal affair with the excellent work done by Bellingcat. It's clear that in this case the mainstream media got it mostly right and Hersh made a dog's breakfast of it. This colours my attitude to his Nordstream "revelations".

> Compare Seymour Hersh's codswallop on the Skripal affair with the excellent work done by Bellingcat.

Done. Bellingcat exists as a parallel construction for US and British intelligence agencies and its only other purpose is to smear non-state controlled journalistic outlets. There was a leaked email from another source that indicates that even internally, US intelligence agencies don't think that Bellingcat is still a good way to spread information because normal people don't believe it any more.

On the other side, Hersh is a journalist with a long track record who wrote a story that is likely true, although we won't know until if and until comes out. Won't stop nationalists from pretending that they know something that they don't. They love a traitor.

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

#148
post #23

I never watch or read any news, I'm just sick of them reporting on things that have full unedited videos without posting the full unedited video. One example is the Floyd case. The full bodycam video was available for almost half of a year before it was pushed in the media during the trial. My extended family exclusively saw it through the professional news filter, which means that those who watch bluer news organiza…

'grey news' not a bad idea but can still be manipulated by editorial.

Org A is the one you want to promote. Only show clips that make org A look good. Org B is the one you want to demote. Only show clips that make org B look bad. If org A does something bad pad it with 'org B' doing the same thing or never show it. If org B does something good never show it.

What is shown to you, and order matters. The talking heads bits most orgs go for along with it just adds color to it. But it is the same editorial process. You only have X amount of time and Y amount to show X < Y. Something has to go. You can pick sides even with that method.

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

#149
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

I heard all local news stations in US get a copy of coordinated news agenda from Associated Press (AP) on a daily basis.
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