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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

#571

Post by SamuelAdams »

akira2501 wrote: post #495
jawns wrote: post #202

I formerly worked as a news editor at a metro daily newspaper, and before that I worked at various other news outlets and magazines. Here's the reality: The average journalist values the truth and desires to report on the news with accuracy and fairness. I worked with a bunch of really talented reporters and editors throughout my career, and almost without exception, they highly valued those things. Moreover, many ha…

> But what America really needs is more media literacy You describe a mountain of problems _inside_ your own industry, and yet you walk away with the idea that it's the public that needs extraordinary change to account for this. I appreciate your point of view, but I think your conclusion is horribly biased.

Both can happen at the same time, it doesn’t have to be one or the other.

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

#572

Post by celtoid »

Albert Einstein alluded to the issue in 1949.

"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, >>private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education)[0] https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

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

#573

Post by [deleted] »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #372
recuter wrote: post #113

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 If Matt Taibi get Keshloggied it would not amaze me if his former colleagues bury the story or even spin it as a good thing. I don't predict he will actually get killed but ask yourself, would you be surprised if he was or does a part of you half exp…

Taibbi is making a great living by being a reactionary on podcasts and fringe outlets. Journalists are suckers. He hasn't done "journalism" in forever. Editorialism is where it's at.

[deleted]

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

#574

Post by recuter »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #372
recuter wrote: post #113

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 If Matt Taibi get Keshloggied it would not amaze me if his former colleagues bury the story or even spin it as a good thing. I don't predict he will actually get killed but ask yourself, would you be surprised if he was or does a part of you half exp…

Taibbi is making a great living by being a reactionary on podcasts and fringe outlets. Journalists are suckers. He hasn't done "journalism" in forever. Editorialism is where it's at.

How does one make a great living by being a guest on free podcasts? And which fringe outlets are we talking about? Joe Rogan? He has more viewers than CNN.

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

#575

Post by mark_l_watson »

onetimeusename wrote: post #507
bigger_inside wrote: post #47

There are literal mountains of sociological studies on how (state and corporate) media have been in service of the powers that be, for decades, and how exactly this works. With a mountain of examples. So, for sociologists, this feels like "wow, it only took half a century to trickle through." Though of course this is the wrong reaction; it has always trickled through. Only that, in the past, it took a few years or de…

I don't really believe that non profit news is any more objective if that is what you mean by independent. They are beholden to their donors who can afford it. This will often be large foundations set up by corporations and extremely rich people. There is even a tax incentive that a corporation or foundation/trust can use to get a tax break while ensuring that the non-profit publishes things that align with their own…

Maybe some non profit news organizations are objective?

I make an effort to get my news from a wide variety of sources, both inside my country (USA) and from around the world. As a result, the Democracy Now organization seems to most closely agree with these sources, mostly because they cover some topics that are effectively censored in the USA.

Often MSNBC and Fox News are not so guilty of lying as they are guilty for strongly filtering what information they surface.

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

#576

Post by quacked »

sumtechguy wrote: post #148
quacked wrote: post #23

I never watch or read any news, I'm just sick of them reporting on things that have full unedited videos without posting the full unedited video. One example is the Floyd case. The full bodycam video was available for almost half of a year before it was pushed in the media during the trial. My extended family exclusively saw it through the professional news filter, which means that those who watch bluer news organiza…

'grey news' not a bad idea but can still be manipulated by editorial. Org A is the one you want to promote. Only show clips that make org A look good. Org B is the one you want to demote. Only show clips that make org B look bad. If org A does something bad pad it with 'org B' doing the same thing or never show it. If org B does something good never show it. What is shown to you, and order matters. The talking heads…

That's a good point.

I've also thought of a structure where there's a news organization that's just openly biased, the prime directive is listed on the front page, and each news article is explicitly edited to explain how the article is presented to support the main mission of the organization. Maybe could link to refutations to keep the appearance of honesty.

This of course falls into a funny counterfactual scenario that I don't have a clever term for. "In the world where this solution is possible to deploy, the problem doesn't exist". If you could staff an entire news organization that was so dedicated to exposing its own bias, it would mean you had a critical mass of adults in society that were actually concerned about the truth, and you could just do news the regular way.

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

#577

Post by hackeraccount »

If your goal is to lead people than you end up misleading them.

I understand that it's probably impossible to simply report the news ; that the very act of picking what you're reporting is an editorial act. That said, I also think that most of the people who go to work in news do that because they have an agenda they want to flog; the only distinction is that some of them admit it to themselves and the rest don't even understand that they're trying to do just that.

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

#578

Post by giantg2 »

tgv wrote: post #564
giantg2 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems spot on to me. "they believe national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting." This is the core of the survey. I didn't see them or your parent mention lying. Although I have seen such blatant miscommunication of the facts that the resulting news is counter-factual.

The parent comment said: > it took a few years ... to be come publicized knowledge that the media lied about every war ...

Hmm I do seee that now.

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

#580

Post by recuter »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #456
woooooo wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taibbi is publishing a ton on the links between government agencies and Twitter right now, by doing the work of poring through thousands of emails. He's been doing it for months. His detractors are mostly doing far less journalism than him.

He's publishing it because it is more of the same reactionary crap that he's getting rich off of. The difference between him and an actual journalist is that a journalist would wait until they were done with the investigation to write a story. He needs more eyeballs than that to justify his existence.

Reactionary is a term commonly used by communists to described enemies of a revolution, interesting choice of language.

I understand that you feel he is getting rich but do you have knowledge of his personal finances to make this assertion? Or even some sort of a basis for this intuition you can point people towards? Please enlighten me with some napkin math.

Meanwhile, the slacks and emails he posted are certainly real.

> He needs more eyeballs than that to justify his existence.

As opposed to journalists who don't need eyeballs to justify their existence?

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