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Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate

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Re: Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate

#11

Post by Fargren »

onemorepassword wrote: post #5

The main problem is not that it's easy to dupe an individual journalist. This can never be completely avoided, and making it less easy is a solvable problem. The big red warning sign is the lack of corrections. This shows how little the media actually cares. It's like a web service being hacked and having their plain-text passwords exposed, and openly and blatantly refusing to improve their security practices. And un…

What's more, should any power try to correct this, it's in the hand of the media to demonize this power in the public eye. We are currently living such a situation in Argentina, where the greatest agglutinant of the opposition to the current government is Clarin, the greatest media group of the country.

Re: Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate

#12

Post by thoughtcriminal »

georgemcbay wrote: post #6

PR gaming aside, I'm always a bit horrified when I read a general media story about something that I know a lot about (like, say, computer programming) because the articles are often a very superficial treatment of the subject while trying to not seem so superficial, and in a lot of cases they are either so simplified that the information they present is misleading or in some cases they are just spouting completely i…

Nicely articulated. I feel exactly the same way. Now I question everything I read, and will reference a variety of sources on important issues.

Re: Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate

#13

Post by ilamont »

This trend has a significant impact on Wikipedia, which relies on press coverage to determine what articles are suitable for inclusion, and what "facts" can be used for Wikipedia articles.

Press coverage tends toward the sensational, visual, beautiful, controversial, current, language-specific, and easily explained. If a topic doesn't meet those criteria, it probably won't be covered by the press -- unless the topic in question has some well-connected PR firm or publicist pushing for it.

Re: Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate

#15

Post by hga »

georgemcbay wrote: post #6

PR gaming aside, I'm always a bit horrified when I read a general media story about something that I know a lot about (like, say, computer programming) because the articles are often a very superficial treatment of the subject while trying to not seem so superficial, and in a lot of cases they are either so simplified that the information they present is misleading or in some cases they are just spouting completely i…

From http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gel..., a quote by Michael Crichton:

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

Nowadays I only follow the conventional media to know what they think is important, since that drives a lot of important things.

Re: Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate

#16

Post by sea6ear »

onemorepassword wrote: post #5

The main problem is not that it's easy to dupe an individual journalist. This can never be completely avoided, and making it less easy is a solvable problem. The big red warning sign is the lack of corrections. This shows how little the media actually cares. It's like a web service being hacked and having their plain-text passwords exposed, and openly and blatantly refusing to improve their security practices. And un…

Related (?) http://xkcd.com/250/

Re: Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate

#17

Post by ryanholiday »

calibraxis wrote: post #4

Modern media? This is at least as old as 1928. Take Edward Bernays (the "father of modern PR" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Bernays ), whose book "Propaganda" said things like: "There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes. Nor, what is…

Actually, in the book I go much earlier. Upton Sinclair wrote a book of media criticism in 1912 that was the genesis for my theories. Yellow journalism predates Bernays by more than a few decades.

Re: Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate

#18

Post by ryanholiday »

UVB-76 wrote: post #2

It's all about incentives. Most major news organisations are private, for-profit entities. Profit is the primary incentive. What turns a profit? High-brow commentary written by proper journalists, that only a small subset of your readership will fully understand and appreciate, or photos of the latest Hollywood B-list celebrity doing something embarrassing, churned out en masse by pseudo-journalists whose only qualif…

The incentive problem goes lower and more granular than that. How are most bloggers paid (or at least judged on performance)? Pageviews.

What metric has about the lowest correlation to quality, accuracy or significance? Pageviews.

Re: Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate

#19

Post by ryanholiday »

ilamont wrote: post #13

This trend has a significant impact on Wikipedia, which relies on press coverage to determine what articles are suitable for inclusion, and what "facts" can be used for Wikipedia articles. Press coverage tends toward the sensational, visual, beautiful, controversial, current, language-specific, and easily explained. If a topic doesn't meet those criteria, it probably won't be covered by the press -- unless the topic…

It goes the other way around too. Most reporters and bloggers get their basic facts from Wikipedia. So it's a feedback loop. Wikipedia frames reporting which can then be used to "support" or cite that very same framing.

Almost every public figure has seen some inaccuracy from their Wikipedia page come up in a news story or an interview at one time or another.

Re: Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate

#20

Post by calibraxis »

ryanholiday wrote: post #17
calibraxis wrote: post #4

Modern media? This is at least as old as 1928. Take Edward Bernays (the "father of modern PR" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Bernays ), whose book "Propaganda" said things like: "There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes. Nor, what is…

Actually, in the book I go much earlier. Upton Sinclair wrote a book of media criticism in 1912 that was the genesis for my theories. Yellow journalism predates Bernays by more than a few decades.

Thanks, I'll get a copy of your book. BTW, you might be interested in the work of media historian Bob McChesney (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._McChesney), if you haven't checked it out already.

One thing he argued is that before professional journalism, the media was much like today's blogs; everyone knew their content reflected the owner's biases. Then with the consolidation of newspapers (due to economic reasons), to the point where a city might have only a couple dailies, overt bias "stank like old fish", so professional journalism arose. (And journalism schools along with it.) With it came a neutral-sounding objective tone, which hid a number of biases (like what's covered — and what's not, reliance on "official sources" who are elites, and so on). But of course, the content reflects the owners and advertisers' general interests, as we'd expect from media corporations which like staying in business.

Given that, I'd wonder if good, carefully-researched professional journalism is more insidous than yellow journalism. I'll look more closely at your (and Sinclair's) work.

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