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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

#441

Post by now__what »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #375
now__what wrote: post #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…

My local newspaper is owned by USAToday and their site is some kind of white-labeled USAToday wordpress template that's shared by a bunch of other formerly-independent local newspapers which are apparently now part of the USAToday portfolio. I don't have any interest in supporting USAToday, so I will never make it past my fifth article of the week.

Well that's upsetting. My local paper has been owned by Advance Publications since the 40s, but it doesn't seem to suffer the same quality issues. It's even won several major awards, both for individual journalism and for the publication as a whole :)

I almost wish they would pick up a template website though, because theirs is super buggy (I'd likely get the print version anyway).

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

#442

Post by screwturner68 »

vishnugupta wrote: post #399
kleiba wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a mountain of examples It would be great if you could provide some, as I am not from the field. Thanks.

How most of the mainstream media, in the US at least, nauseatingly wrote about the WMD theory which was the main stated reason for the US to go to 2003 Iraq war. That region is still reeling with consequences of that war and not to speak about trillions of $$ spent, hundreds of thousands of lives lost, and nuclear contamination and so on and on.

It's really hard to blame the media for the Iraq war, the Bush II administration wanted to go to war, particularly in Iraq and were happy to beat the drums as loud as necessary to get the public's backing. Who can ever forget Powell lying in front of Congress, but that what was necessary to seal the deal and the media was more than happy to report what they learned.

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

#443

Post by barbazoo »

bilekas wrote: post #380
pas wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two words: evidence where? > Many credible books on that topic to read. Yes, exactly as credible reporter guy explained how the US blow up the pipeline. Many credible substacks!

Seymour Hersh is the Journalist/Investigative Reporter and he does not mess around. Not just some 'substack'. I suspect some of the larger outlets would not publish it without source information etc and as I mentioned Seymour Hersh is well known for sticking to his word of "Not revealing sources".

Was someone able to verify that this was in fact written by him? I remember that being an open question when it got posted initially.

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

#444

Post by rewilding »

carapace wrote: post #309
twelve40 wrote: post #136

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…

They don't make educated choices, they don't make choices at all. Human societies can be broadly categorized into three groups: 1) The largest group (typically more than half) don't know what's going on. 2) The second group sees what's going on but doesn't do anything about it. 3) The third group (which is really tiny, like 1-in-10000) sees what's going on and does things, or they try to. The open secret among groups…

Can you support your claims as for these ratios? I can't support my claim well, but I picture people to be more equally-distributed among those 3 groups.

Also, I'd state it more starkly: 1) 1/3 don't know or care about the suffering of people in general. 2) 1/3 wish harm on others or care so little about others that they'll seek even small personal gains at others' great expense. 3) 1/3 at least feel compassion for others, but might not have the ability or resolve to make substantial change.

Why do you think that group 1 is the one that needs to be controlled? Why not the ones seeking harm? I encourage apathetic people to become more politically-conscious, but I don't blame people for wanting to live their own lives.

I do agree that a lot of institutions are just toys: certain religions which talk about peace but whose followers openly and proudly support policies which harm others, political parties which offer team identities but no real change, etc.

Please don't take anything here as a blanket statement against any particular group.

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

#446

Post by mistermann »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #163
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".

I have a different take on this. Unless I am asking the taxi driver about traffic problem in their work area, or rider behavior, or... We have become citizen journalists. We have to research our own news. I think that is not a bad thing. I write journalist because if an establishment journalist can get away with single-sourcing something, why can't I? YouTube is a cesspool of hot garbage, but there is also plenty of…

> Alas, we no longer teach fundamental thinking skills in schools.

Control this and you can control the world.

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

#447

Post by lovich »

woooooo wrote: post #406
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taibbi is making a great living by being a reactionary on podcasts and fringe outlets. Journalists are suckers. He hasn't done "journalism" in forever. Editorialism is where it's at.

Taibbi is publishing a ton on the links between government agencies and Twitter right now, by doing the work of poring through thousands of emails. He's been doing it for months. His detractors are mostly doing far less journalism than him.

Kinda seems like he’s more doing PR for musk than journalism. He’s posting stories aligning with musk’s interests on musk’s platform using data supplied by musk.

I watched a debate panel with several journalists who were part of the Twitter files and they claimed they had full access to everything because an engineer sat in the room with them and ran queries for them. They seemed to believe that the database couldn’t have possibly been pre filtered or that an engineer who was building queries on the fly already, could alter the data. At one point the journalist literally claimed that they couldn’t have possibly filtered out all emails with the phrase myocarditis that quickly.

I know we’re in tech and have a closer understanding of technology than experts in other fields but it was kind of appalling seeing how ignorant they were of how the data they were being shown could be manipulated and I feel like their lack of suspicion about it ruined their credibility.

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

#448

Post by anonymouskimmer »

marcosdumay wrote: post #433
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only that, in the past, it took a few years or decades to be come publicized knowledge that the media lied about every war, about every economic policy, created panics to serve its profit motive and aided the authorities, legitimizing their power; now, we know this in an instant. Thank decentralized distribution protocols. In the years before the internet we had newsletters and amateur radio. https://media.tenor.co…

> Today it's quite difficult sorting fact from fiction from speculation. That was never easy. The only thing that changed is that there isn't one specific fiction pushed with incontestable power anymore. The thing is that people are used to that incontestable fiction. With it gone, many people never learned to healthily distrust their information, and many are unsettled that people can not agree anymore. > But the ba…

> With it gone, many people never learned to healthily distrust their information, and many are unsettled that people can not agree anymore.

Definitely agree. But it's also difficult to fact check even if you do distrust. Even educated bloggers and readers can have difficulty accurately interpreting information, and what that information indicates, if technological advances make their knowledgebase outdated.

> Yep, and that's manufactured. The way those media run, the basic facts agree by construction and the real world is irrelevant for that.

In some cases, such as when the source of particular facts all originate from the same person, sure. Or when everyone's article is just a rewrite of the AP News or Reuters release. But in the general case we all can know who won the superbowl, and by what margin and what plays.

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

#449

Post by vishnugupta »

guelo wrote: post #428
vishnugupta wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How most of the mainstream media, in the US at least, nauseatingly wrote about the WMD theory which was the main stated reason for the US to go to 2003 Iraq war. That region is still reeling with consequences of that war and not to speak about trillions of $$ spent, hundreds of thousands of lives lost, and nuclear contamination and so on and on.

It was the media's fault but not Bush and Cheney's? I don't remember where I got the information that led me to join the largest antiwar protests in history in 2003 but a lot of us knew Bush was lying because of the media.

I didn't say it was media's fault alone, but their share of responsibility is a large one. How else would the Bush administration have gained the support of the public? By transmitting their falsehoods through popular private media corporations such as CNN. And the media were all too happy to lap up the narrative fed by the administration without bothering to investigate deeper.

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

#450

Post by [deleted] »

Spooky23 wrote: post #383
Retric wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most valuable asset of a new organization is trust, and thus they are often bought as propaganda platforms. But propaganda is tricky, you need people to keep paying attention which means the most overt spin is to be avoided. Done well you shift the narrative over decades not just swap positions on day one. Fox News is the most well known US example, but you don’t want to just preach to people who already believe…

The Fox horizontal integration is brilliant. They pull in people with sports and other complimentary content and cross-sell the profitable propaganda. The New York Post is a great example. It was the sports and bookie newspaper - they’d publish Vegas odds and have tabloid news. They slowly transformed into a giant editorial paper and funnel into the broader Fox ecosystem. They have an effective, free product. I need…

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