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Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

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721–730 of 844 posts

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

#721
The bombardment had a funny effect, though: instead of outraged, most of the audience is just desensitized to unchecked bias, fake news, twisted citations and the like. It becomes case of "believing this lie until someone i like with more viewers says a different lie".

Feels very demoralizing.

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

#722
post #312
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…

"Global cabal" might be a stretch, but it is a fact that there are large-scale government projects underway to deceive, mislead, and control the narrative via journalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://web.archive.org/web/20131025035711/http://www.carlbe...

Did CIA Director William Casey really say, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false"?

https://www.quora.com/Did-CIA-Director-William-Casey-really-...

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

#723
post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think that most people would read this as "by in large, most are lying". This is still too extreme. "Lying" requires intentionality and implies maliciousness. It suggests that people who work in media are mostly evil people with the primary goal of misleading you. It both ignores and shows ignorance of how the media industry actually works. It also removes any hope of actually fixing the media industry because the…

Disagree. "Lying" is objectively deceit, or intending to deceive. It can be, and often is, malicious, but to ascribe all lying as malicious is a step too far.

[deleted]

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

#724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triangulation is the best strategy to approximate the truth and counter biases/agendas. Works best when you get news from sources that are not tightly connected. For example: NYT (American) + NPR (American) + DW (German) + Aljazeera (ME) + Reddit (people "on the ground"). Different financing/revenue models, different ownership, different continents, different cultural biases and norms, different perspectives. Nothing…

Beware "people on the ground". They are a terrible source of fact checked verifiable info. Personal opinion is not news. It's merely one person's unfiltered view of the world. And because it's uncurated by a trustworthy filter, it's impossible to know whether it's worth your attention, much less serious consideration.

The same strategy holds: one never looks at a single data point as "truth".

Once again, even in a Reddit thread, the goal is to triangulate. This may include, for example, seeking out info in other sub-Reddits (moderator bias), seeking more niche sub-Reddits, etc.

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

#725
post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think that most people would read this as "by in large, most are lying". This is still too extreme. "Lying" requires intentionality and implies maliciousness. It suggests that people who work in media are mostly evil people with the primary goal of misleading you. It both ignores and shows ignorance of how the media industry actually works. It also removes any hope of actually fixing the media industry because the…

Disagree. "Lying" is objectively deceit, or intending to deceive. It can be, and often is, malicious, but to ascribe all lying as malicious is a step too far.

It is pretty funny to see this reply from you. You are guilty here of the exact thing you were criticizing in your last comment. It is "Perhaps the most wooden way to interpret what [I'm] saying".

I never described "all lying as malicious". I said it "implies maliciousness" and you said it "often is, malicious". I don't see a disagreement here.

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

#726
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.

This is hilarious because all reputable media won't even report on most of the progress because they can't independently verify the information given out by the parties at war. Thus we get this big lack of actual news about the war which can't be filled by people on Twitter and Reddit translating from Telegram and random videos.

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

#727

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…

There are plenty of for profit podcasters & writers out there that make money and honest living with small paypal subscriptions (before patreon was even a thing), plus small one-time donors and the like.

Some of them have been at it since podcasting since day 1.

They have been saying things that are deemed unacceptable or inappropriate by the powers that be. Yet they are still around with crowdfunded sources.

So I don't buy that you cannot do good reporting and also make a honest living. Its just very very hard, and there is no upside.

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

#728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you believe this stuff?

Tell me why I shouldn't. What evidence do you have that refutes their findings?

Are you kidding me? One of most powerful organizations in the world specialized on handling secrets and you want evidence?

They violate the US constitution and you expect them to hand out evidence?

There has been previous episodes of people (proved and documented) of people attempting to speak up and being silenced, imprisoned etc. Any person threatening to go to the press can be arrested for treason.

And if you look at similar organizations starting from 100 years ago you'll see the same patterns again and again: people who try to speak up are silenced in a way or another.

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

#729
post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this kind of garbage comments on HN is disappointing.

There are likely a lot of social-media agents in the comments. This, like any hot button political issue brings out lots of shills. Check this comment thread, the amount of downvoted comments speaks volumes about the quality of the community voting and the apparent importance of this site for political agents. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34803779

The Internet is full of bots and paid commenters but if you look at statistics on americans being interview regarding Snowden you'll find that a whole lot are buying into the propaganda. It's just an easy thing to do and it's socially acceptable, especially in very nationalistic country.

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

#730
post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. "Lying" is objectively deceit, or intending to deceive. It can be, and often is, malicious, but to ascribe all lying as malicious is a step too far.

It is pretty funny to see this reply from you. You are guilty here of the exact thing you were criticizing in your last comment. It is "Perhaps the most wooden way to interpret what [I'm] saying". I never described "all lying as malicious". I said it "implies maliciousness" and you said it "often is, malicious". I don't see a disagreement here.

> It is pretty funny to see this reply from you.

:). My apologies, I've misread what you wrote.

I think the tension we're walking here is to keep one hand grounded in the fact that words can have a discrete, objective meaning *while also* allowing for individual freedom of expression. Modernity vs unhinged relativism.

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