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The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#161

Post by dredmorbius »

seanot wrote: post #115

The author cites research that ties a downfall in civic engagement to the demise of local news coverage. While I find this correlation to be obvious (to my line of thinking), she assigns no responsibility for this demise to her peers -- the ones writing news and opinion. In the large Midwestern cities in which I have lived, local newspapers generally choose to align themselves on the side of local governments and cha…

I.F. Stone had a great deal to say on journalistic independence in a 1974 public television interview on "Day at Night".

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g

Small-town papers are beholden to small-town interests. Stone notes that the large-city and national dailies (NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, possibly the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal at the itme) were freed of dependence on any one advertiser (or political interest). That may have been a peculiar circumstance of the 1960s and 1970s.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#162

Post by ForrestN »

ABCLAW wrote: post #157
ForrestN wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those very narrow allegations about one incident within the DNC are not the same as the entire corporate media colluding in Clinton's favor. I'm not happy about what the DNC did but it's not clear that swayed the outcome from an inevitable Bernie victory or that the DNC was part of a conspiracy with the media.

If you've performed investigatory work before, you'd know that having a specific incident memorialized in text is often only the visible iceberg of non-compliance. Most agents that are skirting the rules have some notion that they shouldn't be overtly recording their misdeeds. In other words, where there's smoke, there's often fire. The 'one incident' wasn't just smoke, though. It was a full blown conflict-of-interes…

Sure—and I'm not excusing Brazile or the DNC. But that wasn't the parent's point. Longtime establishment Democrat operatives acting on behalf of a longtime establishment Democrat against a non-Democrat who was constantly talking about his own disconnection from the Democratic establishment is something that I think is bad for the party and unethical. I don't really like the Democratic establishment very much. Having parties full of politicians operate things like debates from a supposedly neutral vantage is silly and shouldn't happen.

What does that have to do with a corporate media conspiracy to elect Hillary Clinton over the obvious victor Bernie Sanders?

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#163

Post by dredmorbius »

cylinder wrote: post #108
hxta98596 wrote: post #38

This is an odd editorial. The author stretches to explain how Zuck's Manifesto released this week could destroy journalism. But then she provides evidence that journalism is for all intents and purposes already dead. She cites a (possibly inflated) prime time news audience size of ~3 million people, and 1.5 million digital subscribers for the NYT...So less than 1% of America are using these previously major sources o…

I'm surprised the left has become so sympathetic to the corporate media all of a sudden. These people colluded to stop a once in a lifetime opportunity in Bernie Sanders to help their friend and collaborator Hillary Clinton, and so we ended up with Donald Trump. This was only a year ago.

There's the capability to both recognise the significance of an institution and its faults. There's no paradox in this. In fact both are essential.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#164

Post by ABCLAW »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #151
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #101

We as an industry have kicked around "how to save journalism" for years now. Here's what I've got: If you want journalism, sponsor endowments for journalists to report in certain areas, like foreign policy or local government. At the same time, and critically, sponsor endowments for editors to put a tight reign on these journalists. Completely decouple good journalism for hunting-for-eyeballs. Then let the content cu…

> Completely decouple good journalism for hunting-for-eyeballs. Then let the content curators and aggregators make some kind of business out of it, if they can. You're just moving the eyeball-hunting to the aggregators. Clickbait works . The human brain is just plain vulnerable to certain stimuli, and a business which exploits this has an advantage over one which does not. In the short term, at least. If people will…

Clickbait works, but tabloids weren't shaping elections.

Newspapers would use attention-grabbing headlines and cover photographs, but ultimately subscription would require people to make a decision about whether or not they gained recurring value from receiving the publication.

Technological fatalism in this area undervalues history. This exact battle between sensationalism and quality is not a historical novelty. Tabloids were not out-competing the NYT. A more nuanced view shows that current trends aren't predestined, or even distribution medium specific.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#165

Post by sjy »

whitemale wrote: post #66
vinhboy wrote: post #2

> It’s also not Zuckerberg’s responsibility to solve a broken business model in journalism. (One could argue he has a moral imperative to do so, given his position of power, but that’s not the same thing.) That line is pretty much all you need to know about the article, despite what the title is claiming. In my opinion. If anything is destroying journalism, it's the fact that half this country does not care for fact…

> In my opinion. If anything is destroying journalism, it's the fact that half this country does not care for fact vs fiction. Too bad we don't know which half and which news is fiction. > If some guy with a catchy domain name can produce content that goes viral, it doesn't matter how many Pulitzer the NYTimes has. The NYTimes can have all the awards in the world if they publish articles that you can demonstrate beyo…

> The NYTimes can have all the awards in the world if they publish articles that you can demonstrate beyond doubt to be bullshit or dishonesty.

What articles did you have in mind? The NYT's reporting on WMDs in Iraq is often raised as an example of 'fake news,' but I think the failure of the fact-checking process and subsequent investigation and apology [1] is to the NYT's credit. Investigative journalists have to make judgment calls about their sources and sometimes they get it wrong, but I've never seen an NYT article 'that you can demonstrate beyond doubt to be dishonesty.' Factual errors and misleading language do slip in regularly, resulting in frank corrections or the publication of dissenting views. That's more than you can say for most 'alternative' news sources.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the...

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#166

Post by dredmorbius »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #131
ForrestN wrote: post #120

I recently saw a very astute analogy between Facebook and cigarette companies. I suspect that in some years there will be testimony about what Facebook knew, and when, with respect to the addictiveness of its product and its links to mental health problems. I'm quite sure they know how harmful their product is and that's probably behind a lot of this absurd "we're going to save the world" rhetoric. This whole fight e…

Remember Steve Jobs' quote about A players hiring A players? There is a similar pattern at play here where the D-level folks (in terms of ethics) hire E and F-level folks and on it goes. You only need one ethically compromised individual at the top - e.g. Zuck, and soon the org is infested with replicas of similarly compromised folks. >>respect to the addictiveness of its product You forgot to mention that this addic…

I like your observation on ethics. Is that original to you?

I've been seeing Gresham's Law dynamics in a tremendous number of places. Ethical races to the bottom are one instance of this.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#167

Post by spopejoy »

krschultz wrote: post #145
cylinder wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised the left has become so sympathetic to the corporate media all of a sudden. These people colluded to stop a once in a lifetime opportunity in Bernie Sanders to help their friend and collaborator Hillary Clinton, and so we ended up with Donald Trump. This was only a year ago.

This going way over the line for politics on HN but I can't let it go. Everyone repeating the story you are pushing is robbing the Hillary supporters of their agency. I've voted for Democrats for years and years. I didn't view Bernie as a once in a lifetime opportunity. I saw him as way too far left for me. I was clearly wrong on the relative electability of Hillary & Bernie, but I'm voted in the primary for the cand…

I'm inclined to agree with you, albeit from the "Bernie's not left enough" side -- I was amongst those who were critical of his decision to go Democrat in the first place, announcing right from the start that he'd endorse Hillary if he lost, which he did, and WTF does that mean for his policies/politics???

However, I'm surprised that you aren't offended by the DNC's corruption and dishonesty. Say what you want about Bernie -- you can't deny he attracted much new blood to the party; he was the last hope of reclaiming the lost passion of the 2008 Obama campaign. The DNC's open hostility to his candidacy was shameful. If you're trying to imply that somehow it had no effect on the primary outcome, you should share whatever you're smoking with the group.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#168

Post by dredmorbius »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #79
ykler wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that "fake news" refers to stories fabricated, often by small-time entrepreneurs, to make money off of Internet ads and typically spread through social media. Propaganda, on the other hand, is biased or fabricated stories promulgated to forward a political agenda, especially by a government or other entity in a position of power. However, the term "fake news" has rapidly been politicized, and a lo…

I don't think this is it. The very concept of fake news is, fundamentally, propaganda. The mainstream media's privileged position of controlling the narrative is under threat, both from within the media (e.g. Breitbart) and without (random guys on the internet creating narratives). The idea of "fake news" is propaganda, created in order to push Facebook/Twitter/etc into shutting down the media and random guys that ar…

The original use applied largely to VNR and AVR (video and audio news releases) created by government or corporate entities, largely as what we'd consider to be propaganda or public relations efforts.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fake_news

With the rise of weaponised viral clickbait and advertising-driven Internet competition over attention, we've seen an increase in algorithmic content created solely for the purpose of driving up advertising revenues.

Even that isn't an entirely new phenomenon. The rise of "penny presses" -- daily common-circulation newspapers based on advertising, and selling for a penny, as opposed to the "professional" six-cent press, gave rise to the New York Sun's Great Moon Hoax of 1835, with the goal of driving up circulation numbers:

http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#169

Post by [deleted] »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #79
ykler wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that "fake news" refers to stories fabricated, often by small-time entrepreneurs, to make money off of Internet ads and typically spread through social media. Propaganda, on the other hand, is biased or fabricated stories promulgated to forward a political agenda, especially by a government or other entity in a position of power. However, the term "fake news" has rapidly been politicized, and a lo…

I don't think this is it. The very concept of fake news is, fundamentally, propaganda. The mainstream media's privileged position of controlling the narrative is under threat, both from within the media (e.g. Breitbart) and without (random guys on the internet creating narratives). The idea of "fake news" is propaganda, created in order to push Facebook/Twitter/etc into shutting down the media and random guys that ar…

[deleted]

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#170

Post by maxerickson »

krschultz wrote: post #145
cylinder wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised the left has become so sympathetic to the corporate media all of a sudden. These people colluded to stop a once in a lifetime opportunity in Bernie Sanders to help their friend and collaborator Hillary Clinton, and so we ended up with Donald Trump. This was only a year ago.

This going way over the line for politics on HN but I can't let it go. Everyone repeating the story you are pushing is robbing the Hillary supporters of their agency. I've voted for Democrats for years and years. I didn't view Bernie as a once in a lifetime opportunity. I saw him as way too far left for me. I was clearly wrong on the relative electability of Hillary & Bernie, but I'm voted in the primary for the cand…

We have little to no evidence about the electability of Bernie.
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