131–140 of 145 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can be true that news has always struggled to get certain/technical subjects entirely accurate while also being true that there's been a serious decline from an earlier point to now.
Gell-Mann amnesia isn't about being "not entirely accurate." The news has commonly gotten things completely backwards and completely wrong, from physics to babysitting. "Wet streets cause rain."
https://archive.is/wAtCw
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the media stops holding people in power accountable, they are no different than idiots with megaphones. The press has special rights because accountability and informing the public was supposed to be their job.
Might be worth asking: Why would “the media” do this? Over thousands of outlets?
Because it's cheaper and lets it survive.
The unspoken undercurrent is that Google and Facebook ate the ad spending that used to fund journalism, without replacing its function.
Google and Facebook don't fund journalism at scale -- that's why their profit margins stay at 23% & 40%.
Without revenue, reporters don't get paid, high quality reporting doesn't get done, and newsrooms grovel for any source of margin.
Which currently seems to be {minimal cost "journalism"} + {catering to power in exchange for access}.
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Did it ever have it?
Things such as this remind me of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, when you notice the media is wrong about something you know, but still trust it on everything else.
It's not just technical subjects, either. In the midst of the chaos of Charlie Kirk's assassination, they ran an article [0] yesterday titled (it has since been edited) "Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology" . It's just incredibly irresponsible reporting. One can only assume it is a symptom of a wider problem within WSJ and media itself. 0: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/charl…
>The WSJ carelessly spread anti-trans misinformation
https://www.theverge.com/politics/777630/wsj-trans-misinform...
(archived: https://archive.is/liFTX)
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> * Most of the big outfits are owned by oligarchs This has more or less always been the case.
The total count of e.g. newspaper owners, and especially radio and TV owners (because there used to be laws against that being too concentrated, for one thing), has plummeted, though. Lots and lots of consolidation, lots of small outlets surviving only as barely-staffed zombies under big owners. Pressure due to the Internet killing their business models (see the last season of The Wire for a view of what this looked…
It's not just technical subjects, either. In the midst of the chaos of Charlie Kirk's assassination, they ran an article [0] yesterday titled (it has since been edited) "Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology" . It's just incredibly irresponsible reporting. One can only assume it is a symptom of a wider problem within WSJ and media itself. 0: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/charl…
It's not just technical subjects, either. In the midst of the chaos of Charlie Kirk's assassination, they ran an article [0] yesterday titled (it has since been edited) "Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology" . It's just incredibly irresponsible reporting. One can only assume it is a symptom of a wider problem within WSJ and media itself. 0: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/charl…
The Verge story about this is pretty popular on reddit today: >The WSJ carelessly spread anti-trans misinformation https://www.theverge.com/politics/777630/wsj-trans-misinform... (archived: https://archive.is/liFTX )
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Verge story about this is pretty popular on reddit today: >The WSJ carelessly spread anti-trans misinformation https://www.theverge.com/politics/777630/wsj-trans-misinform... (archived: https://archive.is/liFTX )
A policeman did, the police did tell that to WSJ. The police later retracted that statement. The exact messages weren't made public until later.