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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

#492
Its true, though. Pick half a dozen news articles from 2+ years ago, then find the current state of information we have on what happened. Its pretty obvious that journalists lie, embellish, misrepresent what their sources tell them, or simply never did basic fact-checking. I realized this a long time ago and its only gotten worse. No one wants to pay for news, and they certainly don't want to pay for news that consistently causes them cognitive dissonance on top of being boring. But thats exactly what the world is: uncomfortable and technical.

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

#494
post #99
post #2

Highly relevant: https://AstralCodexTen.substack.com/p/the-media-very-rarely-...

Bad take. For one, any time you try to evaluate "the media" as a single entity, you've already failed. Secondly, the first example of "not really lying" is most definitely a deliberate lie.

How is reporting on actual data from a government website a deliberate lie?

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

#495
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…

> But what America really needs is more media literacy

You describe a mountain of problems _inside_ your own industry, and yet you walk away with the idea that it's the public that needs extraordinary change to account for this.

I appreciate your point of view, but I think your conclusion is horribly biased.

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

#496

This 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…

This isn't a refutation. If the markets for christian stuff and are sufficiently disjoint then it can and probably is perfectly rational to choose the bigger pie rather than trying to compete for the Christian market. You see "ideological capture," other see the market at work. Somehow I also doubt passing laws in Florida to force Disney to make Mickey Mouse less woke will have the intended effects but it probably feels exciting to you all the same.

To be clear I also think its a bit ridiculous to have Disney operate as a local goverment of a town. But I'd say that if Disney was a feed supply company and not a media/theme park outfit just the same while your (and Ron D's) concern seems to be that "Woke Disney" specifically had that jurisdiction.

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

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Mask off, at least 46% of Americans are bad people. Most people in every country are chiefly interested in furthering their own goals.

Wanting to further your own goals !== "bad people". You can want to further your own goals while helping others.

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

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's interesting that this is a highly upvoted comment considering it leans on sociology as an academic study as a source of truth for its claim. The social sciences have long been harangued by HN for not being "real science", but I've seen exceptionally little pushback to the claim above. Why is this? [To be clear I actually agree that sociology is the appropriate academic descriptor regarding the study of w…

> I am simply pointing out that sociology goes rarely uncriticized on HN as capable of deriving legitimate conclusions, and asking why this is the exception. HN isn't dumb . Some discussions tend to get off the rails, sometimes badly, and on some topics it happens more often than on others. But this is not a random public Facebook group or a Twitter pileup either. The top-level comment is upvoted because it (at least…

Here's the thing though, the top level comment isn't citing any sources, isn't giving studies that can be criticized on its merits to determine if it's a correct conclusion, particularly if you yourself have explicitly said "Most conclusions may be wrong". There's no reason for you to upvote this if you believe the above poster is most likely relying on a false authority.

I'm merely pointing out this broad inconsistency.

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

#499
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> You just classified 46% of voting Americans as bad people So? You judge the moral and intellectual merits of things by how popular they are? That's your call. I don't. > Both sides have outspoken nut jobs stealing the spotlight Not really. Only one set of nutjobs actually stormed Congress in an attempt to overturn the results of an election. You've bought into a narrative that minimizes what is an insane fact.

QAnon nuts don't represent all conservatives, just as the people inciting riots and looting during BLM don't represent all liberals. Black and white thinking is stupid in this day and age yet it seems to persist

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

#500

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…

In America it's not just partisan it's state sponsored. The American media has a history of being covert propagandists. George Edward Creel was the OG master at slipping in narratives to publications. Creel never used straight-out propaganda like the BBC would have and preferred that "news media" (on all sides of the spectrum) inject state-sponsored innuendo. That's always been how we manufacture consent in the US. At one point Creel had 80K on his payroll and to the best of my knowledge it's never properly been explained how his WWI organization was re-orged.
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