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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

#531
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 falseho…

"The distinction between lying and attempting to mislead isn't a clear one."

There is if you look up definitions. Lying involves falsehoods. You can mislead someone using selective truths without using falsehoods. That's why the article etc was about misleading, persuading, etc and not mentioning lying (aside from the commentor I originally responded to).

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

#532

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…

I don't really believe that non profit news is any more objective if that is what you mean by independent. They are beholden to their donors who can afford it. This will often be large foundations set up by corporations and extremely rich people. There is even a tax incentive that a corporation or foundation/trust can use to get a tax break while ensuring that the non-profit publishes things that align with their own…

Independent does not mean objective. Independent journalists are generally not dependent on corporations, states, or publishing organizations to fund their reporting. Independence is a gradient rather than black or white. If he does publish something through a MSM outlet, he is generally paid for the piece published. Substack is one of many examples where funding is direct from readers or patrons. Good independent journalists are transparent about their biases since everybody has them.

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

#533
post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had friends who became Trump supporters, and I unfriended them. I believe in morals. I believe in God. There's no way I can be friends with people who, at best, only pay lip service to those concepts while using them to further patent evil. To be clear, I'm not really on the "blue team" either. But that's a team that hasn't been taken over by the worst of its fans, nor is it motivated by things such as xenophobia,…

Are you saying unfriend as in real life? I've only heard that term referring to social media, which I don't see as the same thing as real friendship. Do you pay taxes to your government? There's a good chance you're funding some evil shit (among good things as well obviously). Are you part of a church? Some of the people involved with that church probably do or have historically done some pretty evil shit. I think li…

Yes, unfriended in real life.

Your examples are so many degrees removed that I do not think they are apposite. For example, people who supported Trump did so with full knowledge of his attitude towards immigrants, asylum seekers, etc., his rhetoric about building the wall (which many of his supporters cited specifically as their reason for supporting him), his "birtherism" re Obama, etc. Thus, they can much more strongly be said to affirmatively support those things than, for example, an American taxpayer whose money goes to help the Israeli government bulldoze Palestinian homes, or do any of a number of other foreign policy things that qualify as "evil shit".

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

#534

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…

> So, for sociologists, this feels like "wow, it only took half a century to trickle through."

Trickle through to HALF the population. Frankly it's shocking that 50% don't think information they receive is a component of some narrative.

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

#535
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But many of the structural pressures that sociologists have long identified shape commercial and state sourced news stories just don't apply to independent journalists, who don't have to rely on continued access state contacts, commercial paychecks, don't have to serve ad revenue and corporate PR aims" I was with you up until this point. Audience capture and the need to sell ads for brain pills etc. are a huge issue…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/opinion/covid-misinformat... (which of course will be immediately accused of bias, but he's not wrong about the facts of the extent to which those people are funded by supplements) It's a big problem for the regular press too. Peter Oborne resigned from the Telegraph after they suppressed negative reporting on big advertiser HSBC: https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/…

There's quite a few independent UK journalists who are refugees from editors that started spiking their stories. Jonathan Cook and John Pilger both had to leave The Guardian.

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

#536
Is anyone else concerned that this sentiment may ultimately lead to unshakable seeds of doubt in the general populace? That would be a real thread to our democratic institutions. We see this with all the attacks on voters, voting, and election results.

News, while not a direct wing of the government (usually), is an important core to the social and political well being of a nation, yet in the US it seems there is no counter balance to this trend.

I can't even say I blame people either, its not just "right wing nut jobs" or "out of touch leftists" that feel news organizations are untrustworthy or mislead the public. Its starting to become more common among moderate to slightly left leaning political normals. IE, the average population (in aggregate).

That should really bother people more I feel like. This is a pretty serious problem in the modern age and there's no good answer on how to move forward to get real trust back. Having a government sponsored non partisan news source will immediately get rejected by pretty significant portion of the US citizenry, and private corporations and non profit foundations have their own issues, namely around how they get funded.

Seems there is honestly scant little we can do here, I honestly don't see how you roll this back

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

#537
Written in fortune.com where they sell their brand to anyone to publish their scam articles

Gee, I wonder why ppl don't trust the news. I would say ppl don't trust anything anymore, because most businesses are about scamming and gaslighting their customers these days.

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

#538
Ok, I see Chomsky/Hermann and Astral Codex mentioned here, but no Martin Gurri yet.

Gurri spent years surveying the global information landscape. Around the turn of the century, he noticed a trend: As the internet gave rise to an explosion of information, there was a concurrent spike in political instability. The reason, he surmised, was that governments lost their monopoly on information and with it their ability to control the public conversation.

One of the many consequences of this is what Gurri calls a “crisis of authority.” As people were exposed to more information, their trust in major institutions — like the government or newspapers — began to collapse.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22301496/martin-gurri-the...

Blog: https://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/

Book: The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium: https://press.stripe.com/the-revolt-of-the-public

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

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve yet to see a prominent independent media figure that changed their position on any topic, regardless of real life events or evidence Jimmy Dore supported the official narrative on COVID when it started. Matt Taibbi just did a long, explicit mea culpa on Rogan about being wrong about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That's just off the top of my head, and those are two of the biggest.

And both of those position changes feed INTO their 'Independent' thinker audiences not contradict with them.

Yeah they're pandering to people who value the truth. /s

Your comment makes no sense with Matt Taibbi's statements. I'm not sure you understand what he said and corrected.

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

#540
post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But many of the structural pressures that sociologists have long identified shape commercial and state sourced news stories just don't apply to independent journalists If Matt Taibi get Keshloggied it would not amaze me if his former colleagues bury the story or even spin it as a good thing. I don't predict he will actually get killed but ask yourself, would you be surprised if he was or does a part of you half exp…

What is Keshloggied? Haven't seen that term anywhere before.

Jamal Khashoggi: All you need to know about Saudi journalist's death https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45812399
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