Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them • Hacker News Board

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

#561

Post by 1659447091 » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #384

giantg2 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

The way I classify them is lying is "outright lies". "intend to mislead" is manipulation. The nuance between manipulation and lies is that manipulation usually distorts a collection of facts through rearrangement, omission or massaging those things to create a view that is not factual, which I think may also relate it as implicit lies. Lying is stating explicitly counter-factual things. I prefer the distinction of using manipulation over implicit lies as I think it communicates the narrower focused maliciousness of it, where lies don't always have that same level of "premeditation", for lack of a better term.

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

#562

Post by BurningFrog » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #374

BurningFrog wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a youtube video shows a reality that the news denies or doesn't report, that should make you trust the news less.

Why would you believe that a youtube video necessarily shows reality?

That's a good question, that you should also ask about the news.

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

#563

Post by dlkf » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

bigger_inside wrote: post #47

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…

The media is full of shit, but compared to the academic sociologists you’re referencing it’s not that bad.

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

#564

Post by tgv » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 6:10 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #315

tgv wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The parent comment said:

> it took a few years ... to be come publicized knowledge that the media lied about every war ...

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

#565

Post by verteu » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 6:11 PM UTC

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…

> Cynically most of these organizations are too dysfunctional to pull something like that off even if they wanted to.

A moment's research shows this to be false -- eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_military_analyst_prog...

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

#566

Post by UhUhUhUh » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

remote_phone wrote: post #225

jawns wrote: 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…

Did you work during the Trump era? Because it’s clear to me that that’s when journalists believed that their moral obligation was to further the agenda of their respective political parties and not care about the absolute truth. That’s when things went from bad to worse and I abandoned the mainstream media entirely.

The NYT and Bush was earlier.

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

#567

Post by rjbwork » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

PM_me_your_math wrote: post #548

rjbwork wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 socie…

Yes, there are no liars in socialism. And there certainly isn't any state boots on your neck. Everyone gets a nice car, good friends, and honest state propaganda, comrade.

Capitalism and socialism are extremely broad descriptors of essentially who owns the means of production and to whom does surplus value flow. Neither necessitates a state nor do they prescribe anarchy.

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

#568

Post by denton-scratch » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #363

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectivity is easy to access if you're not totally censored. Propaganda works by concealing alternative opinions - once you know the trick, it's easy to hack, even a weak effort can work.

Sounds weird, but one of the easiest paths to objectivity is not to seek objective sources. One can look at multiple sources with obvious opposing spins to form your own understanding. Even the sources labeled as most objective tend to miss the nuance behind the main few arguments.

I gave up on the dream of "objective news" when I was about 18.

I had been taught that The Times was the most objective news organ here; it did carry an aura and style that seemed objective. I realized that what the objective "facts" are turns out to depend on your point-of-view, and it's harder to know what that point-of-view is if the organ is pretending to be "objective".

Ever since, I've preferred to get my news from sources that wear their bias on their sleeve.

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

#569

Post by mlindner » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #554

mlindner wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Refusing to admit when they've misled people in the past, disinterest in publishing post mortems of their failures. Example: the lack of contrition over the Russiagate conspiracy theory. On this point the media on both sides has so muddied the waters I now assume nothing about this as I can't tell which side is telling the truth anymore. I can't tell fact from fiction as the noise level has completely erased any…

“There was message distortion,” former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. told The Fact Checker in a telephone interview. “All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five.” He said he was unaware of how Biden described the letter during the debate. https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli…

Yes there's any number of sources one can dig up to support either argument that come from well trusted sources.

Russia's known to want to disrupt elections anywhere they can however. They'll even spread in the media the _appearance_ that elections were distorted to muddy the waters further even if no election interference took place.

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

https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

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

#570

Post by mark_l_watson » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 6:15 PM UTC

Only half?

That might actually be correct though. I have friends who are republicans who just think that MSNBC are elite-class shills; and democrats who just think that Fox News are elite-class shills. Only some people I know have reached understanding that any corporate news media has serious propaganda agendas.