Live data from Hacker News

Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

fortune.com

311–320 of 844 posts

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

#311
Using this thread to yet again pound the drum of local news. I don't work in media; I've just found my local newspaper subscription to be extremely valuable.

Your local news organizations will be biased in some ways, yes, but it's easier to keep track of the writers who lean one way or another (smaller journalist teams). Since they're regional they can't skew too far on either end of the political spectrum or they'll anger the residents and lose subscribers. Their accountability is higher, because people in the community generally know what's going on around them and will call the bluff in op-eds or the paper's social media group. And, of course, the reporting is actually relevant to you! They don't need to rage-bait you for clicks because most of the reporting has tangible bearing on your life.

Subscribing to my local paper has kept me both informed and grounded, so I'm very nervous about the prospect of the medium being abandoned for declining profitability. I've yet to find a more valuable source of news.

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

#312
post #263

I am not in journalism per say however as I've spent a decade in advertising I work with media companies a lot. Conspiracy theorists that push the idea there is some global cabal of people trying to control the narrative for their own enrichment / others detriment is simply false, and that narrative is damaging in a number of ways. Cynically most of these organizations are too dysfunctional to pull something like tha…

"Global cabal" might be a stretch, but it is a fact that there are large-scale government projects underway to deceive, mislead, and control the narrative via journalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

https://web.archive.org/web/20131025035711/http://www.carlbe...

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

#313
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realized that a lot of MSM was grox turds when they spent two full weeks of nonstop coverage on covefe and whether it was some sort of secret Nazi dog whistle. If anyone can defend why we needed to spend 2 weeks on covefe though I'm all ears.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to ignore good reporting because there’s also some bad reporting.

A lot of people who come to the conclusion that news is 'fake' have a gateway moment. Mine is from 25 years ago and something rather silly. In this particular case a typo. What we see out of the email dumps on twitter should scare many this is the case. They were having twitter 'take care of it'. To pretend they are not doing this to our media and other web sources would be a bit of a stretch to say the least. Our media is manipulated. Seeing good sources amongst the sea of bad ones is a tough ask.

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

#314
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed.

With all due respect, you either don't live in the US or are living under a rock if you feel like you need citation. Denying the US's propaganda machine is like denying climate change at this point. The news corps don't tell flat lies, they cherry-pick facts and events, often reporting them out of proportion to paint a narrative; which is almost as bad as telling flat lies.

I suggest not using the term 'propaganda' in this context becuase in all but very specific cases, that would be the wrong term.

MSNBC doens't generally run 'propaganda' for Pfizer, so much as they will avoid stories that make them look bad as they are big advertisers.

During a pandemic or war, the news system will close ranks and the stories come out differently but there are civil reasons for that.

And FYI I'm not denying propaganda exists, but it's of a very different nature that most of the bias in the press.

If all we had to deal with was state supported propaganda it would be frankly refreshing.

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

#315
post #295

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…

This is such a black and white spin. First: I don't know which sociological studies you refer to, but most of it is politically colored arm chair philosophy. These insights didn't come from sociology, but from political movements. Second: there's a difference not providing a full picture of a war or a new economic policy, and outright lying. I expect news organizations to provide me with the basic info: incomplete, b…

It seems spot on to me.

"they believe national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting."

This is the core of the survey. I didn't see them or your parent mention lying. Although I have seen such blatant miscommunication of the facts that the resulting news is counter-factual.

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

#317
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…

People need better media literacy, but that's still a type of "victim blaming" and there's a reason why in law we tend to go after producers more than consumers of a thing, due to effects of scale.

What the (not all, and not all the time..) media does when they bait people into moral hazard could easily be categorized as a crime (harming the informational commons) in some cases. How do we know? Imagine if the news had to publish things the same way that you testify in a courtroom. Do you think they would be more or less truthful and due diligent than they currently are?

Non-commercial speech to the public needs to be taken as seriously as it is when it's commercial (companies etc) speech to the public, and the unqualified unwarrantyable claims scrutinized just as much.

Individual journalists can be great people but the net result of systemic malincentives is a problem that's being gamed. There's a reason why rich and powerful people buy up newspapers (and politicians for that matter) and it doesn't have to do solely with telling the truth. I am not "blaming" anyone for taking advantage of it, or complaining, but we can fix it.

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

#318
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noam Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU Full documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li2m3rvsO0I

[flagged]

This was clearly him giving an opinion, not trying to pass off a lie as fact.

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

#319

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 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…

Even stories reported with utmost objectivity fall prey to the fact that somebody has to choose which stories get reported in the first place.

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

#320

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…

Thanks for this. Nice to see it at the top of the conversation. Two words: Operation Mockingbird. The big news outlets get daily intelligence briefs. This isn't even controversial. But the real problem within that setting is self-censorship. You don't get the job unless you've proven than you know what not to say. Many credible books on that topic to read.
Post reply on HN