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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

#281
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> Seeing footage of Trump supporters and speaking with them is sufficient to expose them as bad people You just classified 46% of voting Americans as bad people, as if they have no other motive than to do evil. I didn’t like him either, but give me a break and try to let go of that media narrative. His supporters were just people. Both sides have outspoken nut jobs stealing the spotlight

Absolutely this. Media had my neighbor yelling in my face and threatening to fight me over our differences in opinion over masks. Objectively he's not a bad guy, and I told him that I think we have more in common than not, then went inside.

We really need to stop this cycle of hate. I want to feel safe in my neighborhood and get along with folk. We don't need to agree, but we need to recognize that we are Americans and on the same damn side in the end.

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

#284
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he wrong about this particular issue though? I know broken clocks and all, but just because you disagree with someone most of the time it doesn't mean that they are wrong about everything.

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The actual news on Fox News, i.e. not Tucker and the rest of the talk shows, is not fake news, even remotely. Absolutely has a conservative bias, but not to the extent it would qualify as fake news. It's even listed on Wikipedia a reliable source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...

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

#286

So much bitterness here in the comments like "duh", "took them long enough", etc. So, honest question: if, you know, a pillar of democracy is by default laughed at, how can then this democracy function? If half the country thinks they are getting brainwashed, and the other half doesn't think they are getting brainwashed (while possibly getting brainwashed right in that same moment). How can such people make educated…

Let me ask you what educated choices do they have to make?

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

#287

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.

Just because it's impossible to be 100% objective all the time doesn't mean it's impossible to be somewhat objective with the goal of being as objective as possible. The alternative is just go full ideological, and then you no longer care about the truth, only pushing a narrative to confirm the biases of your paying customers. Or sensationalist just to drive clicks and views.

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

#288
post #270
post #202

I formerly worked as a news editor at a metro daily newspaper, and before that I worked at various other news outlets and magazines. Here's the reality: The average journalist values the truth and desires to report on the news with accuracy and fairness. I worked with a bunch of really talented reporters and editors throughout my career, and almost without exception, they highly valued those things. Moreover, many ha…

When was this? I appreciate you sharing your on the ground knowledge and insights, but if it was more than 20 years ago I would also cautiously imagine that the new generation of journalists may not behave the same.

Right, things seem to have gotten a lot worse.

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

#289
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not a fan of trump, at all, but even I noticed this. If trump scratched his butt in public, figuratively speaking, the media jumped on him for it, and would then decline to cover any story about whether butt scratching (figuratively speaking) was ever appropriate. The media also cast his supporters in an incredibly dark light, which was worrying because that was roughly half of voters who voted for a major cand…

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You can find unflattering footage of anybody's supporters.

I was never a Trump supporter, but as someone who has friends and family who are/were supporters, I resent the situation where people think like you do.

In fact, I think that attitude is part of why these people end up voting for Trump. They know what the cool kids on the blue team say about them when they aren't in the room (hell, even when they are in the room). Not to give all Trump supporters a pass, but they're not all (or even most) the cartoon character you have in mind.

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

#290
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not a fan of trump, at all, but even I noticed this. If trump scratched his butt in public, figuratively speaking, the media jumped on him for it, and would then decline to cover any story about whether butt scratching (figuratively speaking) was ever appropriate. The media also cast his supporters in an incredibly dark light, which was worrying because that was roughly half of voters who voted for a major cand…

If you really think that this started with Trump, you must not have been paying attention before. The media (conservative media in particular) hounded Obama about some extraordinarily stupid things. Famously there was a significant controversy one time about the color of his suit [0]. I honestly can't remember whether Bush 43 got similar treatment. Maybe the prominence of clickbait/outrage journalism didn't come abou…

I don't remember that one, but I do remember fox talking about how obama was "disrespecting the office" because he took his suit jacket off in the oval office. It was at that point that I realized fox is not a serious news organization, because who could seriously think that was worth talking about? And then when trump got two scoops of ice cream, every major "news" outlet except fox ran stories about it, and I decided to stop taking any of them seriously, because they exist to make money by pissing people off, not to help us understand what's going on in the world.
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