Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 844 posts

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

#771

Post by oehpr »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #709
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…

Those are pretty much all problems at the level of the editors, not the individual journalists. > the way the press constantly cites academic "experts" whose papers are known to not replicate or which have major methodology problems. Most journalists don't have the background to know whose papers replicate and whose do not if they are not specialized science reporters.

We shouldn't be blaming the pencils those journalists used either I suppose, the graphite didn't have an intent to deceive. But those pencils, like those journalists, operated in an environment that makes deception a goal, and the only product at the end of the line was a misleading one.

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

#772

Post by nitwit005 »

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…

> And unfortunately, most of the public doesn't see the difference between the reporters on the ground (who are, by and large, genuinely trying to do a good job) and the publishers and other people running the business

At this point the news companies are all desperately concealing the fact that they barely have reporters, and are mostly getting news from a wire feed or parent company.

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

#773

Post by GoblinSlayer »

denton-scratch wrote: post #568
giantg2 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the skew is persistent, it should be possible to identify.

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

#774

Post by 7speter »

runnerup wrote: post #698
2devnull wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you watch professional wrestling by any chance? They are in essence the same business model. Most people know both are largely fake, but some people actually believe. It’s the entertainment industry. Capital influences everything.

Most western audiences of professional wrestling know its scripted/practiced/"fake". Most western audiences of Fox News think it's all real. Interesting, I worked in Saudi Arabia for awhile...most of the Africans and Southeast Asian laborers were all 100% convinced that professional wrestling was real. Pro wrestling is HUGE in developing nations.

The difference is that a lot of the old wrestlers and promoters hate Vince macmahon for goingnto court and admitting Pro Wrestling was fake during the steroid trial, but the likes of Tucker Carlson has gone to court and has testified that hes an entertainer and people still believe him.

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

#775

Post by notfed »

twelve40 wrote: post #136

So much bitterness here in the comments like "duh", "took them long enough", etc. So, honest question: if, you know, a pillar of democracy is by default laughed at, how can then this democracy function? If half the country thinks they are getting brainwashed, and the other half doesn't think they are getting brainwashed (while possibly getting brainwashed right in that same moment). How can such people make educated…

I think it's definitely a "duh" that at least some news sources are deliberately misleading us. Propaganda and lobbying are rampant and always have been.

The poll is extremely ambiguous of whether it's talking about some or all or *most", etc. And even commenters here saying "duh" are also ambiguous about that.

> How can such people make educated choices?

Answering in a way that stays in context: by listening to trustworthy news sources. (I don't think this contradicts the poll.)

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

#776

Post by epakai »

EricE wrote: post #667
epakai wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there are people dismissing it despite the evidence... Trump's campaign staff activity stands on its own. They actively courted Russian influence even if they didn't go so far as to "collude".

[flagged]

This is just bad trolling. The Mueller report points out numerous issues within the campaign. I highly recommend reading its executive summary (~7 pages) if you think it doesn't.

Disappointing having to rehash this stuff years later, but then again there was a concerted effort by Trump to rewrite these past years as a witch hunt and a rigged election. The election claims fell flat, and Durham's investigation produced very little to back that narrative. After all that hubbub I have no faith in these attempts to rewrite russiagate as just a political campaign attack.

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

#777

Post by smcl »

Jcowell wrote: post #293
smcl wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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) be Not necessarily. The thing about arguments is that it’s like businesses. What determines your success isn’t if you have the best product. It’s that you have the best business . Marketing , connections , etc. The best product , and likewise the best argument, doesn’t nec…

Yeah it's a good point, if you have someone totally inexperienced up against someone who knows the tricks (some of which I mentioned) you could see some odd results. I feel like there are a few issues which are gonna be a really tough sell, and the whole "the royal family are lizards" is one of them. David Icke has spent much of the last couple of decades on that and is still regarded as a kook.

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

#778

Post by robertlagrant »

gwbas1c wrote: post #126
robertlagrant wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was after a citation for the claim that talking about media bias is correlated with media bias. You seem to be talking about the general existence of media bias, for some reason.

This isn't Wikipedia. It's a discussion. Almost everything that someone posts is an anecdote, and you can't expect everyone to come armed with reams of well-researched facts.

I don't expect that. Just a single reference so I can go and have a read.

I don't know what purpose you think what you're saying has, but it seems negative for discussion purposes and for fact-finding purposes.

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

#779

Post by aliswe »

rayiner wrote: post #699
EricE wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an example from this week: https://doomberg.substack.com/p/railroaded "Even though this, and all information quoted in this piece, is readily available to any reporter with access to Google, countless references to the dangers presented by phosgene are giving the public anxiety over the decision to execute the controlled burn. To pick one example from many dozens, a Newsweek story, titled Did Control Burn of T…

> For clarity, 40 ppm (parts per million) is equivalent to 0.004% of the composition. Lots of things are dangerous even at concentrations measured in PPM. For example, the level of Phosgene that’s “immediately dangerous to life” is 2 ppm: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/75445.html . Maybe the point is that this 20 ppm quickly turns into less based on further dilution. But there’s a lot of analysis required to support…

Anything quickly turns into less based on further dilution, no matter the concentration

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

#780

Post by raxxorraxor »

tgv wrote: post #295
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…

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…

> there's a difference not providing a full picture of a war or a new economic policy, and outright lying.

No, not for propaganda. If you want people to have a certain perception and position on a topic, selective reporting of topics and the presentation of them is far more relevant. This certainly does qualify as misleading.

Lies are even more ineffective since they often can be directly disproved, which biases people to believe the opposite. You want to present your spin in a certain blur.

Many prominent sociologist pretty much explain the mechanisms media and advertisers employ in detail. To say this is a fringe position is misleading too.

Post reply on HN