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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

#591

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…

Just wanted to say that I like your points and you write very well. What is your background?

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

#592

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.

No, there are several contractions here:

> intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public

persuasion is not misinforming is not misleading.

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

#593

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.

I believe this "further your own goals" thing is a particularly American thing.

There's a saying that Americans vote with their pocket-books. It does appear to me that whatever other policies they claim to espouse, when it comes to the crunch they vote for tax reductions.

I suppose that's partly because of pork-barrel politics, and the huge tides of money that wash around US election campaigns. If all the politicians are bought and paid-for, then they can't be trusted to handle taxpayers' money properly.

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

#594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not those that value truth. They are pandering to contrarians and people who need the world to make sense and have order hence all the nefarious plots behind everything.

Do you mean when he apologized for adamantly saying that Russia wasn't going to invade Ukraine and it was only 'dishonest types' that were pushing the narrative that Russia was going to invade? I mean, when Taibbi gets the start so so incredibly wrong in such a biased (an anti-discourse) way I kinda stop following anything old boy says so you are going to have to give me more details about what specific walk back of his you are referring to?

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

#595
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…

Yep. This is a cynical counsel of despair. "Don't try filtering truth from lies. Everyone does it. Just lie back and think of England." There is a difference between withholding information, selective emphasis, and outright lies. They are all bad, but they are equally bad. If you want to make things better you attempt to differentiate better from worse actors. TLDR; all media, and all people, are biased, but they are…

Also some news media actually reports on events that hurts the cause of their collective political leanings, some just don't. This isn't apples to apples.

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

#597

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…

Thanks for this. Nice to see it at the top of the conversation. Two words: Operation Mockingbird. The big news outlets get daily intelligence briefs. This isn't even controversial. But the real problem within that setting is self-censorship. You don't get the job unless you've proven than you know what not to say. Many credible books on that topic to read.

Yes, during the cold war. When there were no rules and 2 countries did whatever they could to counter the other.

What is your evidence such a system exists today?

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

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's publishing it because it is more of the same reactionary crap that he's getting rich off of. The difference between him and an actual journalist is that a journalist would wait until they were done with the investigation to write a story. He needs more eyeballs than that to justify his existence.

Reactionary is a term commonly used by communists to described enemies of a revolution, interesting choice of language. I understand that you feel he is getting rich but do you have knowledge of his personal finances to make this assertion? Or even some sort of a basis for this intuition you can point people towards? Please enlighten me with some napkin math. Meanwhile, the slacks and emails he posted are certainly r…

Ah, going with the attack on character of the commenter angle and the 'words they choose to use'. Wow, this discussion is definitely not HK worthy. And this is coming from me a low quality kinda shit poster.

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

#599
post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had friends who became Trump supporters, and I unfriended them. I believe in morals. Ironically, the behavior you describe is immoral in my view. I also am a religious person, and I also don't believe in bending morals or that talk will heal all disagreements. However, with political opinions, the primary reason otherwise well intentioned people support bad things is that they don't understand that they are bad.…

I understand your perspective, but I do not think that they do not understand that the things are bad. From what I can tell from conversations those people, they, for the most part, just don't give a shit about what's good and bad.

Have you heard of the fundamental attribution error?

https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/the-fundamental-attribution...

I think it's relevant here.

Added to "don't understand" and "dont care" is a third option: "don't agree", based on different upbringings and cultural values, some of which you or I would find abhorrent, because of our own upbringing and cultural values. But I think you should recognize that there is a good chance you'd have the same beliefs if you had the same life experience.

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

#600
post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of the advertising market is what drove the strong, pre-WWII, anti-communist push. Prior to the holodomor even authoritarian statist communism hadn't been responsible for anything on the order of what capitalism had done. Some support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare#Seattle_Genera... "Even before the strike began, the press begged the unions to reconsider. In part they were frightened…

He actually has a fairly interesting segment on the reporting of strikes: > The underlying trouble appears in the news through certain easily recognizable symptoms, a demand, a strike, disorder. From the point of view of the worker, or of the disinterested seeker of justice, the demand, the strike, and the disorder, are merely incidents in a process that for them is richly complicated. But since all the immediate rea…

I feel this.

It brings in contrast the public response to workplace shootings, or even the rarer instances when the entire staff of a workplace quit at once.

We quickly found out about a bunch of the nuance of the Half Moon Bay shootings, and appear to be doing things to make those workplaces and living places better (though of course this doesn't help the larger problem of agricultural labor practices). And I think most readers get a vicarious sense of justice out of mass quitings. But yeah strikes, and unionization in general, make bystanders nervous.

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