..which is, quite accurate really.
Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
191–200 of 844 posts
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#192Because, 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,…
Interpreting "objective" to mean "fairly representing both sides" is a large part of what got american media so fucked in the first place.
If one side says cook at home as much as possible for your family to be healthy, and the other side says go down to the ditch and drink the pond scum, what are you doing by representing both sides there? One of the important duties of journalism is making editorial decisions that drinking pond scum isn't a balanced opposition to cooking dinner.
Journalist practice for decades has been going incredibly far out of its way to find an alternative "side" for any perspective that's presented. They then do a lot of work for them making it seem as reasonable and mainstream as possible.
This is exactly how you get fringe reactionary political views elevated to the level of national concern.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#193Better 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…
> Bette yet: half of Americans believe in conspiracies with superhuman coordination and execution capabilities.
But they are not well co-ordinated or executed, that is the reason many people are catching on to the manufactured narratives.
This isn't done by some Matrix-type entity or does it need to be run by something as perfect as an AGI. All it takes is to have the top editors deciding which stories to run and with what narrative. Of course this break down as the rank and file journalist are the ones in charge of writing the stories and presenting them.
And the people at the top of this aren't by any matter a cohesive group or a big brother type entity rather just people with money and power doing what they think will help them keep money and power.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#194Edward L. Bernays published his book "Propaganda" in 1928. Even that only came after his earlier works in on a similar theme in the early 20s.
I clearly remember questioning my father at the breakfast table (where newspapers were read) about the veracity of some story I barely grasped at age 5. He explained to me that not everything you read in the papers was true, and some of it was made up from whole cloth. My 5 year-old-self was stunned, why would someone go to the effort of producing a newspaper only to make up what was in it? What I'm amazed at now is that only about half of an educated, first-world nation have figured this out.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#195This is really simple. Media are now in the service of advertisers. Or more specifically of people who are willing to spend money to target particular people. For example, the NYT targets the wealthy, which is why they frequently have stories about "how much will $900,000 buy in a home"? By targeting the wealthy, the NYT and other media present a view of the world that is very much at odds with the way many if not mo…
Not really, it's clear demand for Christian stuff in America is huge. Yet the media avoids this like crazy.
One of the biggest movies of all time is "The passion of the christ" there.Yet most media in America is highly liberal and arguably anti-christian.
It's not about the money clearly, its not about the money.
American Corporations have undergone idealogical capture. There is no other reason Disney risked and lost their self governance by going up against Desantis.
This maybe changing though. My firm is actively beginning to re-evaluate its social activism after 15% layoffs (more layoffs incoming too). The next big phase is regaining our market in the "heartland". I'm in strategic meetings with a lot of executives, that are becoming screaming matches over the direction of the firm.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#196Why is it that propaganda somehow has become a new idea? Is it because the phrase “fake news” dumbed it down? Either way its always been a factor, and was likely worse before the age of information. The big problem now is there are multiple competing false narratives, instead of just the one in the paper.
What propaganda? Don't trust your instutions and don't trust the media?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/14/564013066...
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#197Yes I know that traditionally media has been used for propaganda, but I'm surprised by the reactions in this thread and those who find what seems like fairly objective reporting as biased.
Can someone show me a story from the NYT world or US news sites that are deliberately misleading? If this propaganda is so rampant then where is it? (Note: I'm opinion articles excluded because they are uh opinions).
https://www.nytimes.com/section/world https://www.nytimes.com/section/us
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#198Because, 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.
Triangulation is the best strategy to approximate the truth and counter biases/agendas. Works best when you get news from sources that are not tightly connected. For example: NYT (American) + NPR (American) + DW (German) + Aljazeera (ME) + Reddit (people "on the ground"). Different financing/revenue models, different ownership, different continents, different cultural biases and norms, different perspectives. Nothing…
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Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#199Better 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 think the main argument here is not that they're conspiring to mislead. It's that they wouldn't be mainstream media if they weren't willing to publish propaganda.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it takes much rational thought to realize that the news are incompetent at worst and intentionally misleading at best. Even without validating beliefs, there are so many cases of news organizations publishing incorrect or misleading information in a rush to cover a story, only to then issue a silent correction weeks later when the damage has been done. This weakens trust in two ways, first is just peopl…
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".
I think there's a difference between not trusting the news, as in, thinking what they're saying is lies and there's actually a great conspiracy that we can work out, and not trusting the news, as in, thinking that the information that gets conveyed via news outlets is selected and presented to push public opinion in a certain self-interested direction.
I think for the most part, people who take their news from youtube and random taxi drivers fall into the former category, whereas people who vote against the party/candidate recommended (overtly or covertly) by their local paper fall into the latter category. It's quite possible that a lot of people in the latter category would say they don't trust the news as part of a national opinion survey, but they wouldn't ever outright say to a stranger "oh, don't read the stuff printed in the City Courier, it's all lies". Particularly as the news is more and more national, but the political parties continue to attract around 50% of the vote each, I'd generally expect about 50% of the population to have at least this much distrust for at least some of the news.