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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

#511

Post by denton-scratch »

ptero wrote: post #452
WillPostForFood wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are not "intend to mislead" and lying synonyms? Misleading without intent may not be, but if you mislead with intent you are lying.

I am not a native English speaker, so my cultural priors might be way off, but I think those two things are quite different. Lying is making statements that the speaker knows are false. An attempt to mislead is stressing some parts of the actual information and omitting or obfuscating other parts to promote a specific viewpoint. But not actually making false statements. This is literally what most of the layers do mu…

> those two things are quite different.

Your grasp of English seems fine, to me.

I think your "quite different" distinction is incorrect. The distinction between lying and attempting to mislead isn't a clear one. There's a gradation from plain lying your face off, through mixing in a few truths with your lies, through lying by omission, through presenting true facts in such a way as to make the reader believe falsehoods.

The tactic most-used by newspapers is lying by omission. Newspapers routinely "spike" stories that aren't aligned with the paper's political agenda. You can search the paper's output, and you won't find a direct lie; but a parallel search for truth will also fail. Truth is to be found in the gaps.

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

#512

Post by fundad »

jsonne wrote: 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…

The last thing conspiracy theorists are willing to blame is capitalism.

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

#513

Post by rjbwork »

wincy wrote: post #80
hunglee2 wrote: post #7

Optimistic news - elevated degree of skepticism of any 'produced information' is fully justified, seeing as news organisations are driven certainly by commercial agenda, and frequently also by political agenda which they are - as a rule - far from being transparent with. We need citizen and independent journalism, and better yet, trust in our own direct lived experience, to balance out of 'information diet'

My lived experience is I sit safely in my suburban home with my children, comfortably collecting a salary to argue points of planning for software development. I work from home and very rarely leave the house. I am unwilling to go down to the local protests or whatever to “see what’s up” because I’m essentially willing to accept zero risk to my person while my children are growing up. I need accurate news to know wha…

This is pretty much the end result of capitalism - the atomization of the individual and alienation of workers from one another. All interactions and interpersonal relations are now mediated through our relations to the means of production and the capital markets.

There at least used to be a remaining vestigial substructure to society in things like churches and civic organizations. As we've slowly grown into a society of unbelievers, the churches have splintered into myriad heterodox sects, and we've supplanted much civic engagement with work and internet use, this substructure is failing.

Chapo Trap House touches on this frequently, but their recent episode called Arrival (ep 706) had a pretty poignant example. It was commentary on a series of NY Post and Times articles about the supposed drastic increase in crime, and how people, especially those who live in the burbs, are starkly disconnected from the reality of the world. And specifically because of some of these factors I outlined above.

I have slowly formed a trusted circle of programmers on Discord of various political stripes that are able to keep each other somewhat in check and connected to reality WRT the happenings in the world over the past 7 years or so. It has definitely helped keep me grounded in the past few years of covid and suburbia driven isolation and a drastic increase in media consumption.

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

#514

Post by tootie »

pessimizer wrote: post #124
tootie wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hersh was extolled for speaking against the establishment. He was smeared for promoting outlandish claims with extremely thin sourcing. And neither Snowden nor Assange are journalists at all. Snowden stole some docs and Assange runs a wiki. Assange also collaborated with Russian intelligence.

> Assange also collaborated with Russian intelligence. If you have no evidence of this, you're spreading misinformation.

It was literally in the Mueller report:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-report-julian-assange-...

He published the DNC hacks which he acquired from GRU which he deliberately obscured by pointing to Seth Rich.

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

#516

Post by fundad »

myhorsehasworms wrote: post #246
keyanp wrote: post #197

Yes 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…

Given enough time - NYT will generally correct a deliberately misleading story - so tracking down these sorts of changes requires use of internet archive. Here is one! On a story about Joe Rogan and his covid treatment - the NYT said "he was treated with a series of medications including ivermectin, a deworming veterinary drug" https://web.archive.org/web/20210901220929/https://www.nytim... Later this was changed to…

This is why some media outlets (I don't need to describe them) don't do corrections.

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

#517

Post by DFHippie »

golemotron wrote: post #303
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.

Russia has been just about the lose the war for close to a year now.

I don't know where you heard that. The media keeps reporting that Russia is losing the war, or may be losing it,* but that it is likely to drag on for a long time. No one that I have heard from since the first weeks of the war has ever said or implied that it was about to end.

* As Russia changes its aims, the definition of "winning" changes. This is a separate way Russia can win: declare victory with whatever territory you have seized and call for peace negotiations.

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

#518

Post by Metricon »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #376
fidgewidge wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The average journalist values the truth and desires to report on the news with accuracy and fairness The average journalist thinks they value the truth, accuracy and fairness. Observed behavior is very different to this flattering self portrait which is why they aren't trusted. Actual behaviors of real journalists that create distrust which can't be blamed on advertisers or editors: - Accepting large grants from bi…

What sources do you personally trust?

While in no way a panacea, you might want to check out Ground News (https://ground.news/). They at least make an attempt to point out how different news sources respond to the same stories. Perhaps most interesting are the "Blindspot" sections which show news stories that are not covered by opposing political sides.

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

#519

Post by fuckyah »

smcl wrote: post #245
jeroenhd wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't speak Polish so I may be making unwarranted assumptions here, but "showing both sides" isn't always so great either. It's better than the opinionated state news you describe, but "both sides" doing their little talk is the exact reason climate change deniers have so much fuel. Sometimes, something just isn't true and the other side doesn't get equal attention to defend their points. You can calmy explain how…

Thing is the lizard-people theory is ridiculous at its face and it could be argued that giving someone like that airtime would harm the lizard-people conspiracy. It's the more mainstream (but still niche) beliefs that are vulnerable in this one-on-one environment, like a debate on man's effect on climate change. There's a pretty general consensus that we are contributing to the change of our planet's climate, but hos…

[dead]

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

#520

Post by dooglius »

nathan_compton wrote: post #296
IIAOPSW wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Due to some new regulations increasing speed limits, passed early this year, car accidents are up 12%. See, that's the rub. You've just said more than the data told you. There's nothing in the stats half of your premise which proves with any certainty that the increased speed limits are the cause of the change in accidents this year. Now you're pushing a political agenda, namely lowering speed limits, while presenti…

I think you're wrong here. The idea that a news article should be a "basic record of events" is ridiculous. In this toy example, the most we could quibble with is the words "Due to" and those may be appropriate if there is a reasonable amount of evidence referred to somewhere in the article which suggests an association. In fact, I believe in the case of traffic accidents such a link is sufficiently well documented t…

"3 people died in a car accident today, marking 4720 this year alone. Car accidents are up 12% since last year when city council rejected the proposed budget increase for more snowplows and ice control to meet the city's growing transportation needs."

"3 people died in a car accident today, marking 4720 this year alone. Car accidents overall have jumped 12% since AG John Smith added driving-without-a-license to the city's informal do-not-prosecute list."

In our toy example, all of these could be simultaneously true, and the data given does not support one cause over the other. Note that the "due not" need not be present, the intended implication is still clear. (For bonus points, read these examples again, imagining that overall driving increased by about 12% due to people working from home less.)

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