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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

#151

Post by bryanlarsen »

Yes, it is very true that "news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting."

But I contend that:

1. News organizations today are less biased than they have ever been.

2. They are better than every other alternative.

3. They are better than nothing.

1. People imagine we had a golden age of news reporting. Never happened. For example, the media sat on the juiciest of juicy stories (JFK's affairs) so that they wouldn't lose access to the White House. What other more subtle ways were they influenced?

2. Where else are you going to get your news from? Facebook, TikTok? People claim that independent sources on SubStack are better, but then they list examples that have obvious and massive biases...

3. Informed voting is a crucial aspect of democracy. If you don't explicitly seek out the news you're going to get it anyway, and those sources are things like ads or political parties that are very much trying to influence you.

I think we have to throw in "news organizations" with "democracy" and "market economy" in the category of "awful things with obvious massive drawbacks, but better than any other alternative".

Like democracy and capitalism, we should concentrate on making news organizations incrementally better rather than discarding them for a worse alternative.

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

#152

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

Well, you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to realize that pretty much all of American MSM is highly partisan, some worse than others.

I grew up in the UK and 70s-80s BBC seemed a lot more neutral, but of course every news organization has their own implicit world view, relative to which they report the news. There is no such thing as an unbiased news source, although there are those that try to brainwash you and those that at least try to keep it factual.

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

#153

Post by registeredcorn »

pjc50 wrote: post #122
soco wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data set of one, but the people I met claiming they don't trust the news, all take their news from youtube and random taxi drivers. This doesn't say anything about the news outlets, just about those people and their peculiar ways to "think for themselves".

Indeed. People are replacing mainstream news with something that's often far less accurate.

This can only be true if we assume that news is accurate. It simply isn't.

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

#154

Post by ilikehurdles »

brookst wrote: post #31

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

News organizations write articles and headlines to deliberately mislead people if it means those people will click on those headlines, open up an article, and engage with some ads. Is this so controversial that nearly half of people disagree?

This doesn’t come from a partisanship bias, as nearly all well known media outlets, large and small, engage in that behavior. Their content often still has some value, and we need both hard and soft reporting to make sense of this world. That doesn’t mean all this content is motivated or framed by some selfless desire to shine the brightest light on the darkest places at any cost.

I don’t think automatically equating skepticism with conspiracy theory adoption is fair. I can’t really think of any conspiracy theory I buy into.

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

#155

Post by pessimizer »

throwawaytimes wrote: post #53

Don't trust any news organization that publishes opinion pieces. Because they welcome people who align with their ideologies only.

Don't trust any news organization that doesn't publish opinion pieces, or pretends that the guest editorials they publish are anthropology rather than assistance. They're hiding their bias as neutrality.

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

#156

Post by randcraw »

kneebonian wrote: post #73
mc32 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And a heavy dose of crazy nonsense.

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

#157

Post by nerdix »

pessimizer wrote: post #124
tootie wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hersh was extolled for speaking against the establishment. He was smeared for promoting outlandish claims with extremely thin sourcing. And neither Snowden nor Assange are journalists at all. Snowden stole some docs and Assange runs a wiki. Assange also collaborated with Russian intelligence.

> Assange also collaborated with Russian intelligence. If you have no evidence of this, you're spreading misinformation.

He had a TV show on RT which meant that he was literally on the Kremlin's payroll.

Its sort of interesting to me that in this thread there are a lot of people trying very hard to make indirect connections between Western journalists and Western governments. Here we have a direct connection between a "journalist" and a government and its dismissed as "misinformation".

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

#158

Post by Analemma_ »

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…

It doesn't require central coordination, a distributed norm enforcement network causing self-censorship is fine. In this case, it's done by Twitter: all journalists are on Twitter, all journalists are petrified of saying something that will upset the other journalists on Twitter, and so they all self-censor to not do that. No master plan needed.

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

#159

Post by pessimizer »

hgsgm wrote: post #22

Differing definitions of "mislead" are going to make these comments useless. > Half of Americans in a recent survey indicated they believe national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting. The headline defines "mislead" as including "leading via truthful reporting" aka "present opinion".

That is a pretty garbage question phrasing. The idea that journalism shouldn't persuade is a bizarre affectation meant to make journalists appear as special professional class, like doctors. When your kid tells you what happened at school, they're a journalist.

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

#160

Post by karpierz »

kodah wrote: post #146
m463 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Well let's steelman journalism a bit; journalism provides context.

Reporting would say: "3 people died in car accident this morning."

Journalism would say: "3 people died in a car accident today, marking 4720 this year alone. Due to some new regulations increasing speed limits, passed early this year, car accidents are up 12%. And the federal government is looking to roll back more regulations, which are expected to increase fatality rates by 6%."

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