I certainly agree with that sentiment. It is my belief that the modern American press is the enemy of the people, as they rarely do anything but cause strife.
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
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not in the US, but I usually see a lot of people saying don't trust the news but it's also not as if they are doing any rational thinking about it. And a lot of the times is just because news are not validating their own beliefs so I think it's even worse than just having bad news.
I would say its hard to do any rational thinking about come to the conclusion that the 24/h news orgs are meant to inform you. The easy angle is product placement [1]. Literally fork over a small sum of money and you get the news org to rave about your product without doing any verification. There's also how a headline is not written by the author so it won't always reflect the contents of the article. > And a lot of…
Lawfare blog my dude. They don't shy away from the raw legal source code.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think those conspiracies are what are driving this kind of distrust. In my experience, the most common belief on that end is simply that the reporting is meant to keep people too busy bickering over meaningless issues (in the sense that the bickering itself won't accomplish anything of substance) to prevent them from actually organizing and acting against real problems which would be inconvenient for those wh…
But “meant to” by whom? The tens of thousands of reporters, mostly young liberal arts majors? It’s the “meant to” that makes it a conspiracy theory. Tell me that news is unhealthy, or that each individual actor has self interest in promoting some agenda, and I think it’s an interesting topic. But as soon as there is a person or group out there secretly “meaning for” some result from the actions of tens of thousands o…
'meant to' by incentive structures and culture in how these companies work, which are set by the 'higher ups' who benefit most from them. For example, a popular anchor (say, Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow) will naturally also be popular and influential within their associated organization. They benefit from pushing a certain perspective, and so they will of course influence the organization to further move in that direction.
While there isn't some hidden moustache twirling mastermind carefully directing all of the media about what to report and how to report it. Practically, I don't think the distinction matters too much because they all share the same incentives and they are individually deliberate in applying those same incentives.
As a broad example, Tucker and Rachel both benefit from appealing to their respective base's political views. They also benefit greatly from the bickering between their bases, thus it suits them to further push that divide (if they actually get issues addressed they have to constantly figure out what people want next to stay relevant). Similar incentives apply to politicians, so they do the same. Both Tucker and Rachel also benefit from being close with the associated politicians, so they tow that line too. The result being that they act in concert without explicitly conspiring with each other to do so.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#214Well, 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 a…
I've always thought about having one news agency/aggregator that are strictly opinions verboten , i.e. just report the fact and nothing else, use as little adjective or subjective wording as possible. Something happened here at date involving these people. Done. No opinion, no analysis, no conjectures or sarcasm, no calling people with words that either accurately describe them or inaccurately, only official titles a…
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Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#215"It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day."
-Thomas Jefferson
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#216Well, 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 a…
I've always thought about having one news agency/aggregator that are strictly opinions verboten , i.e. just report the fact and nothing else, use as little adjective or subjective wording as possible. Something happened here at date involving these people. Done. No opinion, no analysis, no conjectures or sarcasm, no calling people with words that either accurately describe them or inaccurately, only official titles a…
Won't work, the issue isn't so much a news organization writes "you should think X about this problem" it's more how they frame information, what information they leave out, and what information they choose to amplify in order to make a certain point, to the point of misleading in many cases.
There's certain words that have subjective connotation which they also use, and it's near impossible to write anything coherent for an audience if you decide any words with subjective connotation are forbidden.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#217Yes 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.ny…
Even great, objective reporting can be sullied by a headline writer who is rewarded for doing things the news org can easily measure.
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#218Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#21999% of what we see in the news is editorial content. We are being informed of where partisans stand on issues. The actual event is tertiary. The narrative surrounding it is secondary. The primary item is the partisan goal.
"Joe Biden fell off his bicycle", we can believe that much. The other 99% of the content is partisan posturing. Maybe if I were there, I could have further insights, "His aides should have given him platform pedals instead of cages". Thankfully I wasn't there. Even if I had been there, my observation would have still been subjective.
However, there are some narratives and editorial positions which are trivially self-refuting. We can evaluate them from first principles. "A misinformation czar is required to protect democracy" or "We need censorship to preserve a free and open society" If we trust people to vote, then we must trust people to consume and evaluate information independent of state institutions.
Ultimately these discussions revolve around our premises. Our first principles inform us. The specific event can be almost irrelevant in many cases.
There are other crank ideas like those advanced by David Icke. I cannot prove that world leaders are not lizard people, but I'm naturally skeptical. Even if I watched Biden fall, I couldn't prove it. Crank theories don't threaten me, they amuse. Hopefully this is something which isn't controversial for partisans on this site. We could substitute other news items and theories.
I'm more troubled by the users shouting down these delightful absurdities. "My truth is bigger than yours"
From my side they have my deepest sympathy for wherever the disagreement injured them. However, moving forward perhaps it would be best if they didn't identify so closely with editorialized content or specific news outlets? "9 out of 10 HN users chose Brand-X Truth and here's why..."
Re: Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them
#220Yes 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.ny…
There is so much. Any time there's a war, the NY Times manufactures consent, Iraq war and weapons of mass destruction for example, more than half of Americans thought Saddam had nukes.
Russiagate is a recent example:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/02/03/reveal...
Misleading can also be what the NY Times doesn't cover. For example, the Columbia Journalism Review published a scathing report on how the media misled on Russiagate and NY Times and other MSM just tries to ignore it:
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-p...
Watch this 10 minute video by Glenn Greenwald that goes over in detail how the NY Times misleads and lies: