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Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

fortune.com

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

#421

Post by loufe »

goodpoint wrote: post #226
tallanvor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edward Snowden was not, nor as far as I know did he ever claim to be, a journalist. He was at best a whistleblower, although given where he now lives and the citizenship he holds, it's clear that nothing he says or does can be trusted.

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

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

#422

Post by yamtaddle »

fidgewidge wrote: post #390
kthejoker2 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sources do you personally trust?

The sort that provide hyperlinked citations for their claims, which are correct when checked, which allow or encourage open commenting with third party moderation so I can quickly see disagreement, etc. Mostly that means Substacks, these days.

> The sort that provide hyperlinked citations for their claims, which are correct when checked

What makes the citation correct or trustworthy?

Is it turtles (citations) all the way down?

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

#423

Post by marcusverus »

ivraatiems wrote: post #248
Aperocky wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought about having one news agency/aggregator that are strictly opinions verboten , i.e. just report the fact and nothing else, use as little adjective or subjective wording as possible. Something happened here at date involving these people. Done. No opinion, no analysis, no conjectures or sarcasm, no calling people with words that either accurately describe them or inaccurately, only official titles a…

We have them - they're called Reuters, AP, and CSPAN. They're not perfect but they're there and they have been for a long time.

Note: I'm not trying to engage in political axe-grinding here. I found the below example after about ~30 seconds of looking.

These organizations are fact-forward, but far from unbiased. It's impossible to read an article like this one[0], for example, without a clear understanding of which side of the argument the author is rooting for.

That article is pretty deceptive, actually. Like, how could they bring themselves to include this line:

> "The idea that we have a social contagion encouraging people to be trans in a climate that is this hostile to trans people in so unbelievably offensive," said Chase Strangio, an ACLU lawyer who has litigated against the Arkansas and Alabama laws.

...without mentioning that the number of trans kids has, in fact, been rising rapidly?![1]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-republicans-target-trans... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/10/science/transgender-teena...

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

#424

Post by twelve40 »

dudul wrote: post #286
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…

Let me ask you what educated choices do they have to make?

voting, which is presumably the cornerstone of the society, is done by this same mass of people, and results in electing people with the most deadly powers in the world, among other things.

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

#426

Post by anonymouskimmer »

bnralt wrote: post #205
VieEnCode wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But many of the structural pressures that sociologists have long identified shape commercial and state sourced news stories just don't apply to independent journalists, who don't have to rely on continued access state contacts, commercial paychecks, don't have to serve ad revenue and corporate PR aims" I was with you up until this point. Audience capture and the need to sell ads for brain pills etc. are a huge issue…

Audience capture is probably the biggest driving point behind media bias, whether the media is commercial or independent. Walter Lippmann put it wall 100 years ago [1]: > A newspaper which angers those whom it pays best to reach through advertisements is a bad medium for an advertiser. And since no one ever claimed that advertising was philanthropy, advertisers buy space in those publications which are fairly certain…

I wonder how much of the advertising market is what drove the strong, pre-WWII, anti-communist push. Prior to the holodomor even authoritarian statist communism hadn't been responsible for anything on the order of what capitalism had done.

Some support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare#Seattle_Genera... "Even before the strike began, the press begged the unions to reconsider. In part they were frightened by some of labor's rhetoric, like the labor newspaper editorial that proclaimed: "We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by labor in this country ... We are starting on a road that leads – NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!"[6] Daily newspapers saw the general strike as a foreign import: "This is America – not Russia," one said when denouncing the general strike.[7] The non-striking part of Seattle's population imagined the worst and stocked up on food. Hardware stores sold their stock of guns.[8] "

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

#427

Post by kthejoker2 »

To me, "news" is different than "journalism" (and obviously way different than "opinion") but most media orgs go way out of their way to just completely blur these.

Every "news" article (an election, a shooting, an earthquake, a new science study) is wrapped in spin - why this is bad or good for America, why it's racist or a sign of moral decay, how you should feel, what these other people think about it, who agrees with it.

I gave up and just use primary sources - reading the actual ArXiv paper or gov website or watching the eyewitness video is a better use of my time.

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

#428

Post by guelo »

vishnugupta wrote: post #399
kleiba wrote: 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.

How most of the mainstream media, in the US at least, nauseatingly wrote about the WMD theory which was the main stated reason for the US to go to 2003 Iraq war. That region is still reeling with consequences of that war and not to speak about trillions of $$ spent, hundreds of thousands of lives lost, and nuclear contamination and so on and on.

It was the media's fault but not Bush and Cheney's? I don't remember where I got the information that led me to join the largest antiwar protests in history in 2003 but a lot of us knew Bush was lying because of the media.

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

#429

Post by mint2 »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #408
throwaway8689 wrote: post #398

Genuinely surprised its only half because Fox News viewers often think CNN is lying and CNN viewers often think the same about Fox News. Both groups can therefore answer 'Yes' if asked if they think news organisations deliberately mislead. I'm picking those two as being big news channels but I think it holds for other tv and for newspapers too.

It's so interesting how our country can be divided almost perfectly into "do you subscribe to the thought process/consensus of FOX news or CNN?" Like, how often is there a viewer who actively watches both/switches between the two? It's very polarizing. I can't think of any way to fix it culturally. One party thinks the other is deranged and lying. Will it get worse? Will it get better? Where does this lead us?

CNN is not the counterpart to fox. That comparison is apples and oranges. It’s almost like saying strawberry ice cream is the counterpart to chocolate and implying non chocolate eaters all eat strawberry.

Yes cnn is a newsertainement org like fox, but it’s not the anti-fox. For starters, No one actually cares about cnn except fox watchers.

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

#430

Post by kthejoker2 »

fidgewidge wrote: post #390
kthejoker2 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sources do you personally trust?

The sort that provide hyperlinked citations for their claims, which are correct when checked, which allow or encourage open commenting with third party moderation so I can quickly see disagreement, etc. Mostly that means Substacks, these days.

Any you particularly recommend? Trying to stretch my reading material.
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