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From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

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Re: From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

#51

Post by 9dev »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #50
9dev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s exactly my point: You present yet another alternative view as facts, which would get debated by the former two groups. There is no authority to establish which of the three views is the canonical truth, regardless of how much you think your own is obviously and objectively true.

I deliberately tried as hard as possible to phrase the things I said in such a way that either of the groups you proposed would find no objection to my saying those things were true. Perhaps I failed in some way, but I don't think I did. My point is that we can indeed agree upon some facts as to what happened, but that those are not what people argue over. They argue over an interpretation of the facts that tells som…

I see your point, but don’t think it is correct: Opposing groups will absolutely debate whether and which events happened, and will attest to a different timeline. Moreover, I don’t believe you can cleanly tell facts from interpretation. Sometimes there is just no way to know (or verify) what happened, and you have to deduce. This is invariably shaped by your personal lens of opinions, then.

Re: From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

#52

Post by cowpig »

I feel like I'm in a psy op reading this comments section.

As if we aren't very clearly in a completely different place now compared to even 10 years ago, when it comes to the veracity of information people are exposed to on a moment-to-moment basis. As if we aren't all fed an AI-manipulated, algorithmically tailored personal selection of wholecloth lies by the media mechanisms that replaced some biased ones.

Re: From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

#53

Post by cowpig »

laughing_man wrote: post #37

The problem with modern print journalism is the business model just doesn't work anymore. In the old days everything the paper provided was bait to get you to read the classified ads. DBAs, obits, for sale, for rent, seeking someone... all that stuff was in the paper, and you had to pay a lot of money to get your ad there. The regular ads and the cover price paid for printing, mostly, but the classifides were what pa…

Why doesn't it work anymore? Are there policies we could put into place that could change that?

Re: From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

#54

Post by BLKNSLVR »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #3

Who coined the phrase, "legacy media?" Sounds like techy-speak to make it sound old so people move to social media bullshit.

No history to be found here, but the phrase 'legacy media' started making sense to me, in Australia, when it became obvious to me that said legacy media were being intentionally dishonest / obviously biased in their reporting of progressive topics like renewable energy and fiber optic internet roll out.

'Legacy' basically meaning a representation of the past, not the future.

I'm just realising that Google is pretty much 'legacy search' given that the choice is generally between paid promotions and scams (which could be two ways of saying the same thing). AI may actually have saved Google as their search results were enshittifying themselves into oblivion.

Re: From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

#55

Post by Animats »

laughing_man wrote: post #40
Animats wrote: post #20

Very few newspapers today have many reporters. This shows. Look at the front page of most newspapers, and ask, did this story start as an official announcement or press release? The answer is usually yes. There's not enough info coming in. The strongest effect of this is invisible - if nobody well-known is talking about it, it disappears from the mainstream news. Note how little is appearing about the war in Ukraine.…

Newspapers rely pretty heavily on wire services, which tend to have their own biases, but they do have reporters.

The Washington Post was one of the few remaining US newspapers with a large reporting staff scattered around the US and the world. That's why this is a loss. Thirty years ago, most major metropolitan newspapers had sizable local staffs and some national and international reporters. Now the New York Times is almost the only US newspaper with a large reporting staff.

Re: From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

#56

Post by AnimalMuppet »

maratc wrote: post #39
kibwen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if I'd call the above comment cable-news-brained, but it's entirely possible to push a misleading or outright false narrative while only presenting factually true statements. Remember, nearly everyone who's ever died has had a history of exposure to dihydrogen monoxide.

Not only that: it's impossible to report on everything that happened, so any outlet only reports on the important stuff. What is and what isn't considered important is a matter of bias, too.

All true. But you can choose what and how you report in order to give one side a boost, or you can choose what and how to report in order to give the best, most accurate picture you can of what's actually going on. The difference matters.

Yeah, nobody ever does it perfectly. But trying to do it right rather than trying to do it wrong surely means that you'll come closer to doing it right.

Re: From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

#57

Post by cowpig »

the_fall wrote: post #28

The history of journalism is written by journalists, often in a self-serving way. You'll be hard-pressed to pinpoint the purported golden age of impartial truth-seeking. Early newspapers in the US were often owned by a local railroad tycoon and published hit pieces about his opponents. From the 1960s, this morphed into a way to broadcast the ideological consensus of East Coast Ivy League graduates. Some of their idea…

I'm so tired of these false equivalences

You brought up the most notorious part of US history (the gilded age / age of yellow journalism) as if that was defining of journalism in general. You would be hard-pressed to pinpoint a time in which there was less bullshit in media than then. Besides today, of course.

And then you somehow equate this to the 1960s. As if the fact that journalists tended to study at university and therefore share points of view with people who went to university is the same thing as William Randolph Hearst wholly inventing a story about Spain attacking a US ship to convince the public to start a war.

And what we have today, with social media & search monopolies sucking all economic surplus completely out of journalism, plus foreign-run and profit-run influence farms, plus algorithmic custom-tailoring of propaganda, is undoubtedly the worst we have ever seen.

Re: From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

#58

Post by tolerance »

cowpig wrote: post #52

I feel like I'm in a psy op reading this comments section. As if we aren't very clearly in a completely different place now compared to even 10 years ago, when it comes to the veracity of information people are exposed to on a moment-to-moment basis. As if we aren't all fed an AI-manipulated, algorithmically tailored personal selection of wholecloth lies by the media mechanisms that replaced some biased ones.

So what? Soon all legacy media will die or be subsumed into different organizations save for NYT who will be the only outlet left with the gumption to have a VTuber as EIC in 7 years?

Re: From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

#59

Post by laughing_man »

edot wrote: post #45
laughing_man wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love a paper like that. Don't tell me what to think -- just tell me what happened yesterday.

Thousands of newsworthy things happened yesterday. Which ones do you put on the front page? You don’t have to put a spin on the news to bias it. You just report or fail to report the news that goes or doesn’t go with your agenda.

We have the internet now, so column inches isn't a constraint. Give it all to me.

Re: From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

#60

Post by laughing_man »

cowpig wrote: post #53
laughing_man wrote: post #37

The problem with modern print journalism is the business model just doesn't work anymore. In the old days everything the paper provided was bait to get you to read the classified ads. DBAs, obits, for sale, for rent, seeking someone... all that stuff was in the paper, and you had to pay a lot of money to get your ad there. The regular ads and the cover price paid for printing, mostly, but the classifides were what pa…

Why doesn't it work anymore? Are there policies we could put into place that could change that?

It doesn't work because other businesses are creaming off the classifieds. Businesses like Tinder, Ebay, and Craigslist.

Newspaper management has been trying to do something about it for decades. I don't know if there's anything to be done. Somehow they have to get people to pay for the high cost items, like newsgathering, that they've never really paid for in the past. As far as I can see only the NYT has had any success in this area, and it always feels like a holding action.

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