Most Americans think money comes before mission at U.S. news organizations(knightfoundation.org)
knightfoundation.org
Most Americans think money comes before mission at U.S. news organizations
https://knightfoundation.org/press/releases/most-americans-think-money-comes-before-mission-at-u-s-news-organizations-according-to-a-new-gallup-knight-study/
245 comments
Traditional media paints in broad brush strokes. They simplify or streamline their stories for two reasons that are not nefarious, but lead to a lot of problems:
1. Time - Television news, which is how most of America consumes news needs to fit a story into a 30 seconds to 1 minute spot. Even if they devote more time to it, it is a series of short spots. It is almost an art form to try and package it and they are doing it on a break neck deadline. Even written content will often have a strict word count.
2. They are producing content for the lowest common denominator. Since you used USA Today, they, for example, write to an 8th grade reading comprehension level. This often involves simplifying the narrative.
And then you add on top any biases or partisan news, which sells. There is a profit motive to have a lot of angry upset readers. This is where it gets dangerous.
I don’t know what the solution is. More and more people are turning to even simpler news sources like a Facebook post. I think reading comprehension is a major issue. We have so much access to information but a large portion of the population seems unwilling or unable to effectively parse it.
1. Time - Television news, which is how most of America consumes news needs to fit a story into a 30 seconds to 1 minute spot. Even if they devote more time to it, it is a series of short spots. It is almost an art form to try and package it and they are doing it on a break neck deadline. Even written content will often have a strict word count.
2. They are producing content for the lowest common denominator. Since you used USA Today, they, for example, write to an 8th grade reading comprehension level. This often involves simplifying the narrative.
And then you add on top any biases or partisan news, which sells. There is a profit motive to have a lot of angry upset readers. This is where it gets dangerous.
I don’t know what the solution is. More and more people are turning to even simpler news sources like a Facebook post. I think reading comprehension is a major issue. We have so much access to information but a large portion of the population seems unwilling or unable to effectively parse it.
Something I've noticed is that it pays to have a lot of upset conservative viewers. For a liberal audiance, it pays to make them laugh. Compare, for instance, John Oliver vs Tucker Carlson. There's a whole genre of left leaning news comedy act, and a whole genre of right leaning angry old man yells news and opinions.
Sometimes, when things don't make sense it's cause no one in the room has any idea what to do.
They don't have the time, skills, resources or experience to produce a good outcome. And so whatever they do produces either no outcomes or creates more issues.
There are only two know strategies for such scenarios
1. Find a simpler problem - refocus everyone on something simple, within their abilities to solve so that atleast outcomes are produced how ever simple they maybe.
2. Exit the room and disconnect from the people trapped in there (cuz they want to pull as many ppl into the trap hoping it will solve the prob)
They don't have the time, skills, resources or experience to produce a good outcome. And so whatever they do produces either no outcomes or creates more issues.
There are only two know strategies for such scenarios
1. Find a simpler problem - refocus everyone on something simple, within their abilities to solve so that atleast outcomes are produced how ever simple they maybe.
2. Exit the room and disconnect from the people trapped in there (cuz they want to pull as many ppl into the trap hoping it will solve the prob)
The Kyle Rittenhouse trial was a great example of this. The media painted him as a white supremacist and all that, and one of Biden’s campaign ads implied he was those sort of things. I was buying into the mainstream news narrative at first, but then I watched most of the actual trial. In the evidence and testimony presented I didn’t see even a hint of racial bias, and my conclusion is he probably shouldn’t have even been charged since the video footage clearly shows what he did was lawful. I will never trust most news sources again.
I was also duped on this one. I still think he shouldn't have been there, but after watching the trial and finding out the facts, he didn't appear to do anything unlawful.
As a rule now, I do my best to watch the trial itself rather than trial coverage, or at least to read official court documents and transcripts.
Even when they're trying to be honest, most media completely screws up reporting on trials. They love to do things like quote huge demands for damages ("x files a $BIGNUM lawsuit against y") that are almost always either never granted or substantially reduced later, print big headlines for suits that are almost surely meritless (SCO), etc.
Mind you, I say "almost never" because there is that 1% of the time when $BIGNUM damages are actually granted, like the billion dollar Alex Jones trial. The later trillion dollar thing I don't know about, though, I'll wait to see how things play out in court and whether the awards stick on appeal (for the billion dollars, they actually might).
Even when they're trying to be honest, most media completely screws up reporting on trials. They love to do things like quote huge demands for damages ("x files a $BIGNUM lawsuit against y") that are almost always either never granted or substantially reduced later, print big headlines for suits that are almost surely meritless (SCO), etc.
Mind you, I say "almost never" because there is that 1% of the time when $BIGNUM damages are actually granted, like the billion dollar Alex Jones trial. The later trillion dollar thing I don't know about, though, I'll wait to see how things play out in court and whether the awards stick on appeal (for the billion dollars, they actually might).
Furthermore he didn't shoot anyone black nor did he interact with anyone black.
There was no racism in the shooting inherently.
Pair that with the fact that they attacked him and you find out the kid didn't do anything wrong.
There was no racism in the shooting inherently.
Pair that with the fact that they attacked him and you find out the kid didn't do anything wrong.
>he didn't appear to do anything unlawful
Having the weapon at his age wasnt illegal?
Having the weapon at his age wasnt illegal?
No, it wasn't. The straw purchase was, and Rittenhouse's friend got in trouble for making it. That, in turn, lead to him testifying against Rittenhouse as part of a plea agreement. Rittenhouse didn't actually take possession of the gun until he was 18 and did not face any charges related to the purchase of the gun, which he had destroyed after trial to avoid it becoming a symbol.
There was also a separate charge against Rittenhouse for carrying it that was dismissed at the very end of the trial due to a confusingly-worded law. But Rittenhouse wasn't carrying anything that counted as a short-barreled rifle. The judge ruled that the law did not apply to what Rittenhouse did, since the prosecutor did not allege any facts that the jury could have agreed with that would have made him guilty. The prosecutor was apparently going by the caption of the law (which says something about guns held by someone under 18) but that has no legal effect and the judge admonished him for trying to pull a fast one again.
This was covered right before it went to the jury as I recall, if you want to look up videos of how it went down at trial.
There was also a separate charge against Rittenhouse for carrying it that was dismissed at the very end of the trial due to a confusingly-worded law. But Rittenhouse wasn't carrying anything that counted as a short-barreled rifle. The judge ruled that the law did not apply to what Rittenhouse did, since the prosecutor did not allege any facts that the jury could have agreed with that would have made him guilty. The prosecutor was apparently going by the caption of the law (which says something about guns held by someone under 18) but that has no legal effect and the judge admonished him for trying to pull a fast one again.
This was covered right before it went to the jury as I recall, if you want to look up videos of how it went down at trial.
The gun laws were written incredibly poorly, listing at one point "all dangerous weapons" then for minors, citing an anti short barreled shotgun and rifle law.
The defense successfully argued that the phrasing meant rifles and shotguns with a barrel length of sixteen inches or more were exempted.
The defense successfully argued that the phrasing meant rifles and shotguns with a barrel length of sixteen inches or more were exempted.
Great example. You really have to be careful in what you choose to believe.
If you don't watch the news, you are uninformed. If you do watch the news, you are misinformed.
(Paraphrasing Denzel Washington)
If you don't watch the news, you are uninformed. If you do watch the news, you are misinformed.
(Paraphrasing Denzel Washington)
I don’t think there is much doubt that traditional media companies put profits over reporting and facts. It is difficult to critique war when defense contractors buy up much of your ad space. Likewise, it is difficult to critique big pharma when pharmaceutical companies buy up many of your ads, etc.
The problem with the proposal to make the news publicly funded is that that just replaces one set of incentives with another. If governments dictate when media outlets receive funding and how much, then it is unlikely that said media companies will be overly critical of the government. This same kind of thing has started to creep into other parts of society like the public education system where standardized test scores are often considered more important than a well-rounded education.
Personally, this is why I like the business model of places like Substack where you can find specific journalists you trust to actually hold people in power accountable and can support them directly. Finding truly unbiased information these days is not easy.
Speaking of Substack, I highly recommend this three part series about conflicts of interest and media companies:
- https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/big-media-big-conflicts...
- https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mi...
- https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mi...
The problem with the proposal to make the news publicly funded is that that just replaces one set of incentives with another. If governments dictate when media outlets receive funding and how much, then it is unlikely that said media companies will be overly critical of the government. This same kind of thing has started to creep into other parts of society like the public education system where standardized test scores are often considered more important than a well-rounded education.
Personally, this is why I like the business model of places like Substack where you can find specific journalists you trust to actually hold people in power accountable and can support them directly. Finding truly unbiased information these days is not easy.
Speaking of Substack, I highly recommend this three part series about conflicts of interest and media companies:
- https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/big-media-big-conflicts...
- https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mi...
- https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mi...
Defense contractors don’t buy ad space in regular media outlets. In Aviation Week and maybe Foreign Policy and some trade
journals, sure. When was the last time you saw an ad for an F-35 on nytimes.com? Why would they advertise defense systems there?
Anyway I actually agree that traditional media fails to put the truth first. But the reasons are way more complicated than your post indicates. Raytheon is not buying ads in the Condé Nast magazines, the WSJ, CNN etc.
There are a number of reasons these media orgs fail the truth. Certainly money is part of it. But I think the biggest single reason is how they source their stories. It is rooted in history and inertia and laziness and a certain awe of power. They are very comfortable talking to institutions and way less comfortable dealing with individual actors. Workers, dissidents, whistleblowers, the disgruntled, call them what you will. Finding a real human experience is so much harder than being spoon fed by people paid to make you swallow easy truths.
I mean, it’s 1000x easier now than it was 25 years ago. But learning how to listen to and vet that information is still hard, and digging on it is hard, and it’s all incredibly risky. No one ever got fired for printing an Apple statement. No one ever got dragged on Twitter because their corporate PR source got exposed and arrested.
Anyway I actually agree that traditional media fails to put the truth first. But the reasons are way more complicated than your post indicates. Raytheon is not buying ads in the Condé Nast magazines, the WSJ, CNN etc.
There are a number of reasons these media orgs fail the truth. Certainly money is part of it. But I think the biggest single reason is how they source their stories. It is rooted in history and inertia and laziness and a certain awe of power. They are very comfortable talking to institutions and way less comfortable dealing with individual actors. Workers, dissidents, whistleblowers, the disgruntled, call them what you will. Finding a real human experience is so much harder than being spoon fed by people paid to make you swallow easy truths.
I mean, it’s 1000x easier now than it was 25 years ago. But learning how to listen to and vet that information is still hard, and digging on it is hard, and it’s all incredibly risky. No one ever got fired for printing an Apple statement. No one ever got dragged on Twitter because their corporate PR source got exposed and arrested.
How about amending the statement to "It is difficult to critique a war when your access to extremely lucrative war coverage is determined by your relationship with the Department of Defense"?
>Defense contractors don’t buy ad space in regular media outlets. In Aviation Week and maybe Foreign Policy and some trade journals, sure. When was the last time you saw an ad for an F-35 on nytimes.com? Why would they advertise defense systems there?
When you're one of the only companies in the world that makes something like the F-35, you don't need to advertise the F-35, you need to advertise the need for the F-35. NYTimes is great for that..
When you're one of the only companies in the world that makes something like the F-35, you don't need to advertise the F-35, you need to advertise the need for the F-35. NYTimes is great for that..
I have seen lots of pro F-35 and defense contractor advertising on busses etc not just trade journals.
I can’t find references to the US advertising campaigns, but here’s some that ran in Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/f-35-ads-on-oc-transpo...
I can’t find references to the US advertising campaigns, but here’s some that ran in Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/f-35-ads-on-oc-transpo...
Sure on the sides of buses in Ottawa during “Ottawa's Cansec, the largest defence trade show in Canada.”
And I’ve seen blogs writing about f35s and I have no doubt defense contractors are tied to that somehow, whether through ads or putting the journalist in a simulator or whatever.
But when CNN puts a pro f35 ex general slash Lockheed board member on air, or the nytimes writes a story suggesting Taiwan needs more advanced jets, the reporter or producer isn’t being pushed to help sell ads. They are making a choice that’s easier and more logical for them professionally given incentive structures that go way beyond ads.
And I’ve seen blogs writing about f35s and I have no doubt defense contractors are tied to that somehow, whether through ads or putting the journalist in a simulator or whatever.
But when CNN puts a pro f35 ex general slash Lockheed board member on air, or the nytimes writes a story suggesting Taiwan needs more advanced jets, the reporter or producer isn’t being pushed to help sell ads. They are making a choice that’s easier and more logical for them professionally given incentive structures that go way beyond ads.
And in sports broadcasts and on all the radio stations (including NPR) and on a ton of tech news blogs and in all the major US newspapers…
You’re not advertising Northrop Grumman or Lockheed or the F35 like the new iPhone, you’re advertising them like coke. If you live in the DC area their ads are everywhere.
You’re not advertising Northrop Grumman or Lockheed or the F35 like the new iPhone, you’re advertising them like coke. If you live in the DC area their ads are everywhere.
It also costs a lot of money. So many people love to complain about the news but refuse to pay a dollar a day for it
Yes, that's a big part of it. That is in turn due to the differing approaches to the press in public and private sectors, which creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop.
Lack of trust in media is split strongly along partisan lines, at least in the USA. This is IMHO a result of the heavily reliance of the media on public sector / government / university / NGO employees as a source of quotes. Journalists like to present themselves as neutral voices but want their stories to sound informed, so almost every story must come with a quote from someone. Public sector orgs rarely punish people for speaking to journalists and often actively encourage it, as long as they promote the organization's goals and ideologies. Even when theoretically forbidden e.g. intelligence, military, what you see is a massive culture of leaks and off-the-record briefings that's tolerated and encouraged from the top. Universities meanwhile are pretty much quote factories for the press, with the result that in the media "expertise" is now synonymous with academia - journalists love the fact that academics are perceived as independent from their host institutions, can turn up on the phone or in a studio at the drop of a hat and there's an unlimited number of them to pick from.
By contrast in the private sector it's standard for communication with journalists of any form to be forbidden and penalized with the sack, regardless of the message being given. Employees are not perceived as independent of their institution, even when talking off the record or as an individual. It may not even be easy to find the right person to talk to.
This leads to a self-reinforcing problem in which journalists get repeatedly exposed to the ways of thinking found in the largest public sector organizations that have a well funded press operation, without getting any balance from other areas of society, making them sympathetic to those ways, which in turn discourages other kinds of people from talking to them because they correctly perceive the journalists as biased. The journalists shift ever further towards the views of the people who talk to them until they basically become arms of the state. As time passes this feedback loop has become so extreme that the media aren't content to merely repeat whatever public sector workers tell them, but actively persecute anyone who tells them anything in disagreement. The bias becomes ever more visible and trust collapses.
There doesn't seem to be any easy way to break this feedback loop. You can't tackle it from the supply or demand side. Trying to restrict who can talk to the press is probably hard or impossible, especially in the USA with the First Amendment. Trying to increase the supply of people outside the public sector willing to talk to journalists, also hard. The most obvious way forward is to support and encourage a different style of journalism that doesn't try to present a fake view-from-above, in which bias is injected via quotes from hand-picked pseudo-experts, but rather a more analytical and data oriented form of news in which the only allowed quotes are things people said to other people, in public. This is the style of journalism found on Substack.
Lack of trust in media is split strongly along partisan lines, at least in the USA. This is IMHO a result of the heavily reliance of the media on public sector / government / university / NGO employees as a source of quotes. Journalists like to present themselves as neutral voices but want their stories to sound informed, so almost every story must come with a quote from someone. Public sector orgs rarely punish people for speaking to journalists and often actively encourage it, as long as they promote the organization's goals and ideologies. Even when theoretically forbidden e.g. intelligence, military, what you see is a massive culture of leaks and off-the-record briefings that's tolerated and encouraged from the top. Universities meanwhile are pretty much quote factories for the press, with the result that in the media "expertise" is now synonymous with academia - journalists love the fact that academics are perceived as independent from their host institutions, can turn up on the phone or in a studio at the drop of a hat and there's an unlimited number of them to pick from.
By contrast in the private sector it's standard for communication with journalists of any form to be forbidden and penalized with the sack, regardless of the message being given. Employees are not perceived as independent of their institution, even when talking off the record or as an individual. It may not even be easy to find the right person to talk to.
This leads to a self-reinforcing problem in which journalists get repeatedly exposed to the ways of thinking found in the largest public sector organizations that have a well funded press operation, without getting any balance from other areas of society, making them sympathetic to those ways, which in turn discourages other kinds of people from talking to them because they correctly perceive the journalists as biased. The journalists shift ever further towards the views of the people who talk to them until they basically become arms of the state. As time passes this feedback loop has become so extreme that the media aren't content to merely repeat whatever public sector workers tell them, but actively persecute anyone who tells them anything in disagreement. The bias becomes ever more visible and trust collapses.
There doesn't seem to be any easy way to break this feedback loop. You can't tackle it from the supply or demand side. Trying to restrict who can talk to the press is probably hard or impossible, especially in the USA with the First Amendment. Trying to increase the supply of people outside the public sector willing to talk to journalists, also hard. The most obvious way forward is to support and encourage a different style of journalism that doesn't try to present a fake view-from-above, in which bias is injected via quotes from hand-picked pseudo-experts, but rather a more analytical and data oriented form of news in which the only allowed quotes are things people said to other people, in public. This is the style of journalism found on Substack.
>The most obvious way forward is to support and encourage a different style of journalism that doesn't try to present a fake view-from-above, in which bias is injected via quotes from hand-picked pseudo-experts, but rather a more analytical and data oriented form of news in which the only allowed quotes are things people said to other people, in public. This is the style of journalism found on Substack.
Your whole comment blew my mind but this part at the end is especially fascinating. Wow.
I would love to see more of that approach you outline. At the same time, don't you think any journalists who goes that route will get slammed for not having the requisite expertise? Or maybe the data will "speak for itself."
Your whole comment blew my mind but this part at the end is especially fascinating. Wow.
I would love to see more of that approach you outline. At the same time, don't you think any journalists who goes that route will get slammed for not having the requisite expertise? Or maybe the data will "speak for itself."
They will certainly get slammed as such by other journalists, but whether readers care or not is an open question. There are some very successful writers on Substack who are successfully monetizing blogging-oriented journalism, that rejects the classical style in favor of "here's what I think and my biases, here's facts and data to back it up". It works well for analysis and data journalism, perhaps less so for original reporting of the "earthquake in Indonesia" type.
> If governments dictate when media outlets receive funding and how much, then it is unlikely that said media companies will be overly critical of the government
Often public broadcasters are set up where their funding doesn't come from taxes but from a license fee that they collect themselves.
What I've seen in these countries is that public broadcasters still have a bias (due to journalists generally coming from the same background/education/maybe even geography) but it's not strictly aligned with whoever is currently in the government.
Often public broadcasters are set up where their funding doesn't come from taxes but from a license fee that they collect themselves.
What I've seen in these countries is that public broadcasters still have a bias (due to journalists generally coming from the same background/education/maybe even geography) but it's not strictly aligned with whoever is currently in the government.
I worry if I subscribe only to news reporters I think are accurate, Im literally funding my own biases.
Well, no matter what you read, you have to think about what the incentives are. Everything has a bias, especially people who claim to be unbiased. So if you really wanted to be "unbiased" you could at least spread that out.
My method is to monitor as many diverse sources as possible.
Left, Right, American, European, Russian, Chinese, Indian, Israeli, Ukrainian -- all with their own perspectives, agendas and their own "white lies".
Cross-reference, distill and enjoy the complexity of an objective reality and all the perspectives on it.
Left, Right, American, European, Russian, Chinese, Indian, Israeli, Ukrainian -- all with their own perspectives, agendas and their own "white lies".
Cross-reference, distill and enjoy the complexity of an objective reality and all the perspectives on it.
Then it's a question of holding those specific journalists on Substack accountable.
You hold them accountable by not paying them if you don't like their reporting.
I'm not sure that's accurate. Whether or not I like their reporting has no bearing on whether their reporting is true or accurate, which is what I need.
The only way to do that is for you to vet them. And the best way to vet is to read all sides of the issue.
Or put your trust in some external organization, which is what you're doing if you accept reported news as fact.
Or put your trust in some external organization, which is what you're doing if you accept reported news as fact.
That's why I only subscribe to journalists I don't like.
But don't you like reading things that you think are true? How do you put one before the other fully?
The point is that what you think is true might not necessarily be true. So only reading things you like and believe to be accurate could mean you’re getting the truth, but it could also mean you’re getting a feedback loop of misinformation and indoctrination.
No clue. I try not to have a fixed opinion on news stories as they come out, but do try to read books, articles, and news about particular topics and the history leading up to them. Then, sometimes, that coalesces into an actual, informed opinion – but on a few topics.
> You hold them accountable by not paying them if you don't like their reporting.
This means the journalists are now beholden to the class of people who pay substackers; I suspect the feedback loop is much tighter (lose subscribers soon after publishing an article that speaks truth-to-the-new-power). This also encourages echo-chambers - writers will learn to know what their readers like and will stick to it: their income literally depends on it!
This means the journalists are now beholden to the class of people who pay substackers; I suspect the feedback loop is much tighter (lose subscribers soon after publishing an article that speaks truth-to-the-new-power). This also encourages echo-chambers - writers will learn to know what their readers like and will stick to it: their income literally depends on it!
How is that different than what happens with major papers now?
At least the choice is the reader’s, the feedback is immediate and the start-up costs low.
At least the choice is the reader’s, the feedback is immediate and the start-up costs low.
We are in violent agreement - only that I think society is worse-off for the tighter coupling between readers biases and the echo-chambers they obtain news.
So "money comes before mission" again?
yeah but it's your money, as opposed to defense contractors money
I don't see that that matters. In either case, continuing operations means writing stuff your funders want to see. Piss them off, even if what you're saying is truthful, well written, etc., and your publication isn't long for the world.
People, in general, want what's good for people, in general. Defense contractors want what's good for defense contractors. The two in many, if not the majority, of cases are not aligned. "Defense" contractors benefit from war while society, in the vast majority of cases, loses. Of course that's where the media comes into play.
Invading Iraq on nonexistent evidence was actually 'saving the world from the imminent threat of an unhinged dictator actively developing WMD with the intent of using them, alongside endless irrefutable evidence.' The Iraq War, and especially the following two articles, played a major role in developing my worldview. I still return to read them on occasion. This is why you don't want media backed by the war machine:
Washington Post - "Irrefutable" : https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i...
NYTimes - "Irrefutable and Undeniable" : https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...
Invading Iraq on nonexistent evidence was actually 'saving the world from the imminent threat of an unhinged dictator actively developing WMD with the intent of using them, alongside endless irrefutable evidence.' The Iraq War, and especially the following two articles, played a major role in developing my worldview. I still return to read them on occasion. This is why you don't want media backed by the war machine:
Washington Post - "Irrefutable" : https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i...
NYTimes - "Irrefutable and Undeniable" : https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...
>People, in general, want what's good for people, in general.
That could mean hard hitting journalism that's truthful and unbiased, but it could also mean ragebait that keeps the audience angry, engaged, and affirms their views.
That could mean hard hitting journalism that's truthful and unbiased, but it could also mean ragebait that keeps the audience angry, engaged, and affirms their views.
> People, in general, want what's good for people, in general.
We know very different people. People I know say they want to eat healthy and learn new things. Then they eat McDonalds while watching TV reruns.
We know very different people. People I know say they want to eat healthy and learn new things. Then they eat McDonalds while watching TV reruns.
Journalism, to be useful to society, must be read. Pissing your readers off too badly is counterproductive to informing them, even if they don't pay your salary.
Well it could matter, in this hypothetical case where the public is directly funding journalists, because the public is not homogenous. I think there is a possible world where an ecosystem of journalism could develop.
So yes, each individual would be beholden to their audience. But it would be much healthier than everyone being beholden to the much smaller collection of groups who pull the strings of influence in our present situation.
So yes, each individual would be beholden to their audience. But it would be much healthier than everyone being beholden to the much smaller collection of groups who pull the strings of influence in our present situation.
> I think there is a possible world where an ecosystem of journalism could develop.
I think it's a recipe for insular bubbles.
I think it's a recipe for insular bubbles.
> If governments dictate when media outlets receive funding and how much, then it is unlikely that said media companies will be overly critical of the government.
That's why you need both. You need private journalism to serve as a check on government, and public journalism to serve as a check on private interests. Forbid political advertising in private papers, and forbid private journalists from working for government after leaving private media; forbid corporate advertising in public papers, and forbid public journalists from working for corporate interests after leaving public media.
That's why you need both. You need private journalism to serve as a check on government, and public journalism to serve as a check on private interests. Forbid political advertising in private papers, and forbid private journalists from working for government after leaving private media; forbid corporate advertising in public papers, and forbid public journalists from working for corporate interests after leaving public media.
I don’t see how substack solves audience capture
When have defense contractors ever bought ad space in national news? That seems like wasted ad dollars targeting a lot of people who aren't in the market to buy arms.
Honestly, I've gotten promoted ads on Twitter for Lockheed-Martin and Boeing's military hardware. No idea why, they must be targeting fairly broadly.
They definitely advertise in all sorts of media, especially stuff heavily read in Washington. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/20/us/nation-challenged-sale...
> James Fetig, a Lockheed spokesman, said that Lockheed resumed running print ads for its own Joint Strike Fighter model in The Washington Post and trade publications on Monday, and only after it saw that Boeing was pressing ahead with radio and print ads.
They definitely advertise in all sorts of media, especially stuff heavily read in Washington. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/20/us/nation-challenged-sale...
> James Fetig, a Lockheed spokesman, said that Lockheed resumed running print ads for its own Joint Strike Fighter model in The Washington Post and trade publications on Monday, and only after it saw that Boeing was pressing ahead with radio and print ads.
Three theories,
One, your ad profile is similar to people who may be in positions to make decisions about weapon spending.
Two, maybe the "look at this cool tech" ads are meant to attract talent to build them, not people to buy them.
Three they cast a wide net to influence voting decisions of Americans in regards to military spending.
One, your ad profile is similar to people who may be in positions to make decisions about weapon spending.
Two, maybe the "look at this cool tech" ads are meant to attract talent to build them, not people to buy them.
Three they cast a wide net to influence voting decisions of Americans in regards to military spending.
Leave it to HN to give the most technical answers that miss the point. Newspapers don't get revenue from Twitter ads. Twitter ads and any network ads are targeted based on algorithms and the editors won't even know until the story is published. They can direct sell ads but I seriously doubt any have ever sold ads to defense companies. Nor do newspapers even get most of their revenue from ads anymore, it's subscribers. Hell even the Fox cable channel doesn't need advertisers since they get their money from cable carriage fees. You have to connect way too many dots to say a sponsor is going to be able to bury critical news stories.
I've noticed the podcast Intelligence Matters, all the ads are literally for like the newest Lockheed Martin fighter jet. Surely some of the audience are decision makers about buying those jets, but it can't be the majority of listeners. Granted the host is former deputy director of the CIA, but the content is news of national interest..
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/intelligence-matters-a-cbs-news...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/intelligence-matters-a-cbs-news...
Cynical me thinks the ad spending is not specially for viewers, but rather to gain favor and influence on coverage, especially when it comes to justification for conflict.
They are not advertising to sell you weapons. They advertise to get their brand name inside your head associated with positive things.
http://honesthistory.net.au/wp/canberra-airport-advertising/
Not sure about airport in the US but this is what you used to see when getting into the Australian capital from the airport.
Not sure about airport in the US but this is what you used to see when getting into the Australian capital from the airport.
I see ads from Boeing regularly on my twitter feed.
> I see ads from Boeing regularly on my twitter feed.
Me too, but Twitter leans heavily toward people who are anti-war. It doesn't really support the parent comments' claims of journalistic conflicts.
Me too, but Twitter leans heavily toward people who are anti-war. It doesn't really support the parent comments' claims of journalistic conflicts.
All the time. Especially sports and NPR, weirdly.
GE owned NBC from 1986 to 2013.
> it is unlikely that said media companies will be overly critical of the government.
The (publicly funded) BBC is plenty critical of the British government. The same is true of ARD in Germany.
The (publicly funded) BBC is plenty critical of the British government. The same is true of ARD in Germany.
Oh please, the BBC is a mouthpiece of the British state
The BBC isn't critical of the government, it's critical of the Tories. That's not quite the same thing.
> If governments dictate when media outlets receive funding and how much
Parliaments decide how and how much funding media outlets receive. Not governments. And the people elect the members of parliaments. You make it so that every outlet that reaches over a certain threshold of viewers gets funding proportionate to the share of viewers it has. Just like public election funding and how parties receive funding based on their vote shares.
Parliaments decide how and how much funding media outlets receive. Not governments. And the people elect the members of parliaments. You make it so that every outlet that reaches over a certain threshold of viewers gets funding proportionate to the share of viewers it has. Just like public election funding and how parties receive funding based on their vote shares.
I didn't down-vote you, but your argument has holes.
Yes, people elect the govt, but they don't get to oversee every decision. So most people simply vote along part lines, because when you have a choice of 2, party affiliation is the only criteria that matters. And those people are only on the ballot in the first place because they are overwhelmingly party loyal.
So then fundamentally media funding would be based on viewer numbers, not quality. I'm not sure that incentivising a pure head-count would lead to better quality. Facebook has fantastic viewer numbers, but is tgst the standard of journalism we aspire to?
A better argument _against_ govt funding is that the media is there to hold power to account, which would seem to be impossible for the media to do if power was paying the bills.
Yes, people elect the govt, but they don't get to oversee every decision. So most people simply vote along part lines, because when you have a choice of 2, party affiliation is the only criteria that matters. And those people are only on the ballot in the first place because they are overwhelmingly party loyal.
So then fundamentally media funding would be based on viewer numbers, not quality. I'm not sure that incentivising a pure head-count would lead to better quality. Facebook has fantastic viewer numbers, but is tgst the standard of journalism we aspire to?
A better argument _against_ govt funding is that the media is there to hold power to account, which would seem to be impossible for the media to do if power was paying the bills.
> So most people simply vote along part lines
Im assuming that you are talking about the Angloamerican political context because your arguments seem to be ones which people who are used to only that context make.
In the majority of the world, there arent 'party lines'. There are party PROGRAMS. Each party publicizes their program if they get elected, and ask for votes based on the program. If a coalition government is founded, the program of the government is created by negotiations in between the member parties by combining their programs based on their electoral weights. It works very well.
The same party programs would decide how to distribute the public funding, and based on what criteria.
> And those people are only on the ballot in the first place because they are overwhelmingly party loyal.
It doesn't work like that outside the US or the UK where FPTP is used. A large swath of parties in Europe use internal elections in which the leadership is elected based on their own program, just like how a party is elected to the government based on its program.
> So then fundamentally media funding would be based on viewer numbers, not quality. I'm not sure that incentivising a pure head-count would lead to better quality. Facebook has fantastic viewer numbers, but is tgst the standard of journalism we aspire to?
Facebook does not classify itself as a news organization. If it does, it will have to oblige by the journalism regulations in those countries. The US has practically none, obviously, so it wouldnt make a difference. But for the rest of the world that isnt a problem.
> A better argument _against_ govt funding is that the media is there to hold power to account, which would seem to be impossible for the media to do if power was paying the bills
That's the case with private media as of this moment.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/five-reason...
And that's the UK. And that's the most blatant and unrepentant. The US is phenomenally worse with ~3 corporations consolidating a whopping 90% of the media and news and the people have absolutely no say in it since there is absolutely no alternative that can compete against those due to the capital difference.
Im assuming that you are talking about the Angloamerican political context because your arguments seem to be ones which people who are used to only that context make.
In the majority of the world, there arent 'party lines'. There are party PROGRAMS. Each party publicizes their program if they get elected, and ask for votes based on the program. If a coalition government is founded, the program of the government is created by negotiations in between the member parties by combining their programs based on their electoral weights. It works very well.
The same party programs would decide how to distribute the public funding, and based on what criteria.
> And those people are only on the ballot in the first place because they are overwhelmingly party loyal.
It doesn't work like that outside the US or the UK where FPTP is used. A large swath of parties in Europe use internal elections in which the leadership is elected based on their own program, just like how a party is elected to the government based on its program.
> So then fundamentally media funding would be based on viewer numbers, not quality. I'm not sure that incentivising a pure head-count would lead to better quality. Facebook has fantastic viewer numbers, but is tgst the standard of journalism we aspire to?
Facebook does not classify itself as a news organization. If it does, it will have to oblige by the journalism regulations in those countries. The US has practically none, obviously, so it wouldnt make a difference. But for the rest of the world that isnt a problem.
> A better argument _against_ govt funding is that the media is there to hold power to account, which would seem to be impossible for the media to do if power was paying the bills
That's the case with private media as of this moment.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/five-reason...
And that's the UK. And that's the most blatant and unrepentant. The US is phenomenally worse with ~3 corporations consolidating a whopping 90% of the media and news and the people have absolutely no say in it since there is absolutely no alternative that can compete against those due to the capital difference.
> In the majority of the world, there arent 'party lines'. There are party PROGRAMS
Party lines still exist in multi-party systems. Some parties are known to never deliver. Other parties are tiny and won’t ever make it to parliament. There’s next to no chance to find a party which program looks entirely fine AND you can trust the party to deliver. In the end, you just vote along for least worst option. Or strategically against something.
Party lines still exist in multi-party systems. Some parties are known to never deliver. Other parties are tiny and won’t ever make it to parliament. There’s next to no chance to find a party which program looks entirely fine AND you can trust the party to deliver. In the end, you just vote along for least worst option. Or strategically against something.
> Party lines still exist in multi-party systems
Ideologies exist. Not 'lines'.
> Some parties are known to never deliver.
No party which consistently does not deliver gets elected in a proportional representation system.
> Other parties are tiny and won’t ever make it to parliament
10 or more parties in a parliament are enough.
> There’s next to no chance to find a party which program looks entirely fine AND you can trust the party to deliver.
Sorry. Thats just nonsense.
> In the end, you just vote along for least worst option
You are literally projecting the Angloamerican system to entire world and claiming that is the norm. It isn't. That's one mistake of the people who live in such FPTP systems. Thinking that 'everywhere is the same'.
Ideologies exist. Not 'lines'.
> Some parties are known to never deliver.
No party which consistently does not deliver gets elected in a proportional representation system.
> Other parties are tiny and won’t ever make it to parliament
10 or more parties in a parliament are enough.
> There’s next to no chance to find a party which program looks entirely fine AND you can trust the party to deliver.
Sorry. Thats just nonsense.
> In the end, you just vote along for least worst option
You are literally projecting the Angloamerican system to entire world and claiming that is the norm. It isn't. That's one mistake of the people who live in such FPTP systems. Thinking that 'everywhere is the same'.
[deleted]
This wasn’t supposed to be a problem because to get airwaves from the FCC broadcasters had to agree to broadcast a certain amount of public interest programming, which they do with news.
The problem is basically everyone seems to be trying to see how far they can push the line on “good enough” without ending up getting fined.
And the FCC knows how dangerous it is to try to rein that in.
And media consolidation means you can produce crappy news and not fail because you only compete with yourself or one other corporation that also happens to try to send as little possible on news.
All incentives to do a good job (as a corporation) are gone. And as long as the slide wasn’t too fast they wouldn’t get called on it.
So here we are.
Edit: and oh yeah, not airing a prime time presidential address to the nation because your ratings would go down. I’m sure the public interest rule was designed to protect your ratings above all else.
The problem is basically everyone seems to be trying to see how far they can push the line on “good enough” without ending up getting fined.
And the FCC knows how dangerous it is to try to rein that in.
And media consolidation means you can produce crappy news and not fail because you only compete with yourself or one other corporation that also happens to try to send as little possible on news.
All incentives to do a good job (as a corporation) are gone. And as long as the slide wasn’t too fast they wouldn’t get called on it.
So here we are.
Edit: and oh yeah, not airing a prime time presidential address to the nation because your ratings would go down. I’m sure the public interest rule was designed to protect your ratings above all else.
>Edit: and oh yeah, not airing a prime time presidential address to the nation because your ratings would go down. I’m sure the public interest rule was designed to protect your ratings above all else.
"TV networks not wanting to air a prime time presidential address because of ratings" is one way of framing it. The other is "TV networks giving what their viewers want and not shoving a presidential address down their throats". In the era of cable TV and c-span.org, people who want politics can get it. The person tuning in at prime time to watch NCIS or whatever doesn't care for the president's speech, and I'm not sure what good can come from trying to force people to watch it.
"TV networks not wanting to air a prime time presidential address because of ratings" is one way of framing it. The other is "TV networks giving what their viewers want and not shoving a presidential address down their throats". In the era of cable TV and c-span.org, people who want politics can get it. The person tuning in at prime time to watch NCIS or whatever doesn't care for the president's speech, and I'm not sure what good can come from trying to force people to watch it.
It's in the public interest to hear from the president during significant events. With on demand streaming and syndication folks with get their NCIS fix one way or another.
>It's in the public interest to hear from the president during significant events.
for the purpose of argument, let's assume this premise is true. It's not hard to imagine that a biden supporter would be amendable to the idea there's a "public interest" to hear from him. However, how would this work if it's a president you oppose? Would you support allowing trump in 2020 to hijack prime time TV so he could rant about how "biden and ANTIFA democrats are mounting a dangerous attack on the country’s values, and Americans must fight back"[1]? Absent a principled way of determining what counts as "public interest", what you're saying just boils down to "people should be forced to hear the speech that I like".
[1] quote adapted from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/01/biden-sla...
>With on demand streaming and syndication folks with get their NCIS fix one way or another.
I haven't had cable for a while, but I'm pretty sure that "on demand streaming and syndication" doesn't allow you to watch episodes as they're being aired. Moreover, not everyone knows how to operate a streaming service. In contrast if you wanted to hear biden's speech you could easily tune into CNN or c-span. Therefore it's pretty clear that canceling prime time TV has more of an impact on people's options than not airing biden's speech does.
for the purpose of argument, let's assume this premise is true. It's not hard to imagine that a biden supporter would be amendable to the idea there's a "public interest" to hear from him. However, how would this work if it's a president you oppose? Would you support allowing trump in 2020 to hijack prime time TV so he could rant about how "biden and ANTIFA democrats are mounting a dangerous attack on the country’s values, and Americans must fight back"[1]? Absent a principled way of determining what counts as "public interest", what you're saying just boils down to "people should be forced to hear the speech that I like".
[1] quote adapted from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/01/biden-sla...
>With on demand streaming and syndication folks with get their NCIS fix one way or another.
I haven't had cable for a while, but I'm pretty sure that "on demand streaming and syndication" doesn't allow you to watch episodes as they're being aired. Moreover, not everyone knows how to operate a streaming service. In contrast if you wanted to hear biden's speech you could easily tune into CNN or c-span. Therefore it's pretty clear that canceling prime time TV has more of an impact on people's options than not airing biden's speech does.
FWIW I hate most presidential speeches, regardless of party, and all their obligatory "God bless America" fluff. Yet I do see value in the bully pulpit during genuine crises.
With broadcast TV giving way to on demand it's my hope there will be a way to at least prompt the nation to take a moment to hear from our elected leader. Even if it's just a text with a link to a live stream.
With broadcast TV giving way to on demand it's my hope there will be a way to at least prompt the nation to take a moment to hear from our elected leader. Even if it's just a text with a link to a live stream.
What address and what network(s) are you referring to?
he was probably referring to this article that made the rounds a few weeks ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/09/02/biden-speech...
Thanks.
> not airing a prime time presidential address to the nation because your ratings would go down
The networks didn’t air it because it was deemed to be an election year political speech.
The networks didn’t air it because it was deemed to be an election year political speech.
When I got into journalism a little less than two decades ago it was common to see “firewalls” between different departments at major publications like newspapers and magazines, which protected the coverage.
That is, the advertiser had no influence on the editorial coverage, and opinion doesn’t bleed into the content.
I think in the digital age, the complicating factor is that the decision-makers have winnowed down this work so much that the firewalls just don’t hold up as well as they used to. Owners with an agenda may not care about church-state arguments. In the case of small publications, the writer or the editor is also the ad-seller. And in publications that lean more ideological, opinion-oriented content can prove deeply influential on the editorial coverage. (See what’s happened to cable TV over the last quarter-century.)
All of which is to say that the reason this point of view is prevalent is because we haven’t done enough to invest in these institutions to ensure that firewall exists in the first place. To do it right, you need:
- An owner that actually cares about having a firewall
- Strong ethical rules for the journalists
- Advertising standards that help ad-buyers understand where the wall is
For newspapers, a key element of show a limit of ad influence is the front page. If there’s a deeply integrated ad of some kind, that reflects a negative influence on the coverage. But in the online world, we have native ads and tracking, and both of these can be deeply integrated into the experience.
I think what we’re seeing is that there aren’t strong enough firewalls—and if I were to blame anyone, I would blame the ad department. They allowed their standards to lower to the point where publications simply gave advertisers too much. We need to get back to more magazine-style advertising in publications where a single sponsor buys a premium spot and it pays for a good chunk of the coverage.
That is, the advertiser had no influence on the editorial coverage, and opinion doesn’t bleed into the content.
I think in the digital age, the complicating factor is that the decision-makers have winnowed down this work so much that the firewalls just don’t hold up as well as they used to. Owners with an agenda may not care about church-state arguments. In the case of small publications, the writer or the editor is also the ad-seller. And in publications that lean more ideological, opinion-oriented content can prove deeply influential on the editorial coverage. (See what’s happened to cable TV over the last quarter-century.)
All of which is to say that the reason this point of view is prevalent is because we haven’t done enough to invest in these institutions to ensure that firewall exists in the first place. To do it right, you need:
- An owner that actually cares about having a firewall
- Strong ethical rules for the journalists
- Advertising standards that help ad-buyers understand where the wall is
For newspapers, a key element of show a limit of ad influence is the front page. If there’s a deeply integrated ad of some kind, that reflects a negative influence on the coverage. But in the online world, we have native ads and tracking, and both of these can be deeply integrated into the experience.
I think what we’re seeing is that there aren’t strong enough firewalls—and if I were to blame anyone, I would blame the ad department. They allowed their standards to lower to the point where publications simply gave advertisers too much. We need to get back to more magazine-style advertising in publications where a single sponsor buys a premium spot and it pays for a good chunk of the coverage.
How about, ban ads on news networks. At least anywhere near the news. The money's the root of the evil here.
I would argue that actually has its limits. Fox News can barely keep any ads from major companies on air these days, but it's insulated because of carriage fees.
The problem is that digital is cutting the revenue up into too many pieces and customers have been resistant to paying in many cases. The solution is not to discourage financial support for products, as businesses need to business, but to separate these influences internally. Journalists reporting about global conflicts or crime or political corruption shouldn't have to think about how the lights are kept on to do their jobs.
The problem is that digital is cutting the revenue up into too many pieces and customers have been resistant to paying in many cases. The solution is not to discourage financial support for products, as businesses need to business, but to separate these influences internally. Journalists reporting about global conflicts or crime or political corruption shouldn't have to think about how the lights are kept on to do their jobs.
If you pay 0 you get 0. If it’s free, you are the product.
As pointed out, the payment for Over the Air news was supposed to be the airwaves. The news is supposed to be 'public interest programming' or whatever the phrase was.
I'd be willing to pay for news from organizations like the AP or Reuters. Trad newspapers like NYT/WSJ seem to just cater to their bases. Cable companies are more entertainment and are beholden to their advertisers.
I felt things like PBS are a public good. Growing up I got educational programming from there and that should be available to the public as a last resort.
I felt things like PBS are a public good. Growing up I got educational programming from there and that should be available to the public as a last resort.
A bit tangential but HUGE shout-out to PBS for their science shows on YouTube. I follow PBS Eons and PBS Space Time, both are fantastic and highly educational.
The AP is made up of CNN, USA Today, NBC, Washington Post, etc writers be them local or national branch. Reuters is slightly better but this isn’t a problem that can be solved with just throwing more money at someone.
It’s a lack of integrity.
It’s a lack of integrity.
Integrity is what people complain about when they aren’t willing to pay up for aligned incentives.
You need aligned incentives.
You need aligned incentives.
How is "aligned incentives" supposed to help integrity? We've seen with partisan news media that not having integrity (ie. being biased and catering to one side) is a viable business strategy.
The people professing the need for it need to be willing to as aggressively fund journalists as much as the ardent supporters of a cause.
If the incentives are aligned it doesn’t matter whether people have integrity. They do what they need to do to win and winning is the the thing we want them to do. That’s the whole point. I don’t think hedge funds are bastions of integrity but their incentives are fully lined up. If you make a lot of money for your clients you get a lot of money.
No, just the facts.
The current media gives you facts. They just present them in specific ways or downplay or omit other facts.
Getting all the facts is as bad as getting no facts, because we aren't capable of paraing then all. Curation of facts is what these companies do, and how they curate them is how they express their bias.
News companies aren't lying (even if some pundits do). They just present facts in ways to support the narrative they want. It is impossible to relay facts without doing so, but how objective they are and how much vias is injected is variable.
Getting all the facts is as bad as getting no facts, because we aren't capable of paraing then all. Curation of facts is what these companies do, and how they curate them is how they express their bias.
News companies aren't lying (even if some pundits do). They just present facts in ways to support the narrative they want. It is impossible to relay facts without doing so, but how objective they are and how much vias is injected is variable.
Omission of critical aspects seems more insidious than straight up lies. At least with the latter, you can dispute it. The former, hides behind the facade of integrity while doing more covert damage.
Ah, yes. I too listen to NPR occasionally.
> No, just the facts.
Facts are meaningless without proper context. You can take the same facts and present them under a different light and get completely different stories. Check "selective editing" if you are not aware of the term.
Facts are meaningless without proper context. You can take the same facts and present them under a different light and get completely different stories. Check "selective editing" if you are not aware of the term.
I sorta wish I could buy a subscription to one publication that was the news sections of both NYT and WSJ but neither of their opinion sections.
That is almost what Apple News is.
Yea me too. I got combustive when I read what i thought were outrageous op-eds in those two and just canceled them. One from left and one from right wing opinions.
Even when I read unbiased information/data driven articles there’s still a bias - someone chose this information for me to digest. Did they choose it to influence how i feel? Maybe just because they think the most people will click on it so it’s published? Anyways, I’m not entitled to “truth” so I guess I have to keep reading/doom scrolling.
Even when I read unbiased information/data driven articles there’s still a bias - someone chose this information for me to digest. Did they choose it to influence how i feel? Maybe just because they think the most people will click on it so it’s published? Anyways, I’m not entitled to “truth” so I guess I have to keep reading/doom scrolling.
Disclosure: I work in public media. It's a pretty broad ecosystem of NPR and PBS affiliates and independent news sources like Pro Publica, The Guardian or niche sources like The Markup or Grist. If you follow a few big ones and few local ones, you'll get almost everything you'd need. That being said, I think it's impossible to live without the top tier papers of records like Axios, NY Times and WaPo. They definitely push profitability, but they also unmatched resources to dig up hard news and get it to a huge audience. I even love CNN (cnn.com, not the TV network) just because their coverage is so broad and exhaustive even if so much of it is fluff. There's stuff that sucks about all of them, but we'd be much worse off if they didn't exist.
> I think it's impossible to live without the top tier papers of records
That is a US-centric viewpoint. I'm in the US now and I don't find any need for those. Maybe because I'm too busy outside doing fun stuff most days and living. I don't know of a good reason to give those publications more than a glance once per year.
That is a US-centric viewpoint. I'm in the US now and I don't find any need for those. Maybe because I'm too busy outside doing fun stuff most days and living. I don't know of a good reason to give those publications more than a glance once per year.
You can avoid reading them but every journalist in the world reads them and when they break news it gets reported everywhere else.
> You can avoid reading them but every journalist in the world reads them and when they break news it gets reported everywhere else.
Maybe, that's literally the problem. It's become a massive echo chamber. Not hard to imagine how the conspiracy theorists have come up with the mockingbird media moniker
Maybe, that's literally the problem. It's become a massive echo chamber. Not hard to imagine how the conspiracy theorists have come up with the mockingbird media moniker
The term "echo chamber" refers to reinforcing opinions and exclusion of outside sources, not the spreading of facts. If WaPo or Pro Publica uncover documents and interview a source that yields probative information then getting that info spread to every media outlet is an unequivocally good thing. When The Guardian published the Snowden leaks, do you think everyone else should have ignored it?
A bit of a tangent, but since we're discussing NPR...
I remember a while back (maybe 10 years?) NPR spent some airtime trying to address head-on their alleged liberal bias. I respect that, I think their effort was sincere.
What left me frustrated, though, was they never addressed what I saw as their main vector of bias: they seemed to broadcast many more interviews with people unhappy about conservative policies, than people happy with conservative policies.
E.g., illegal immigration was a hot topic at the time. NPR provided a lot of sympathetic interviews with illegal immigrants, both adults and children. I don't think I heard even one NPR interview with individuals in other groups, e.g. construction companies that get out-bid by competitors who pay illegal immigrants under the table, or would-be immigrants who are awaiting their turn to legally enter the U.S.
Again, I don't doubt the integrity of Bob Edwards and other NPR staff who tackled that project. But I think it shows how hard it can be for liberals to accurately understand conservative perspectives.
I remember a while back (maybe 10 years?) NPR spent some airtime trying to address head-on their alleged liberal bias. I respect that, I think their effort was sincere.
What left me frustrated, though, was they never addressed what I saw as their main vector of bias: they seemed to broadcast many more interviews with people unhappy about conservative policies, than people happy with conservative policies.
E.g., illegal immigration was a hot topic at the time. NPR provided a lot of sympathetic interviews with illegal immigrants, both adults and children. I don't think I heard even one NPR interview with individuals in other groups, e.g. construction companies that get out-bid by competitors who pay illegal immigrants under the table, or would-be immigrants who are awaiting their turn to legally enter the U.S.
Again, I don't doubt the integrity of Bob Edwards and other NPR staff who tackled that project. But I think it shows how hard it can be for liberals to accurately understand conservative perspectives.
"JOURNALISM 101 RULE: If someone says it’s raining, and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out of the fucking window and find out which is true."
I don't understand why that would apply here. Mind connecting the dots for me?
IIRC there is some research in psychology that seems to prove this. It involves a questionnaire about political topics in which you take a representative sample of people on the left and right, then split that population into quarters. One half is told to answer the questions truthfully, as they believe. The other half is told to answer in the way they think someone with the opposite politics to themselves would answer.
The results are then compared. The findings are apparently always the same when this is done: conservatives pretending to be left wingers give answers much closer to the real left wingers than vice-versa. That is, the right understands the left but the left doesn't understand the right. It's been some years since I read about this but iirc the failure mode was that the left imagined people on the right as having far more extreme views than they really do, amongst other problems.
W.R.T. the construction companies - see my comment elsewhere in this thread about the quote-sourcing feedback loop. Not so many companies are willing to talk to journalists about illegal immigration, because they know journalists are left-biased and because it'd realistically have to be the CEO doing it, and he/she is busy. That in turn means journalists don't hear alternative perspectives, causing them to become more biased, and repeat.
The results are then compared. The findings are apparently always the same when this is done: conservatives pretending to be left wingers give answers much closer to the real left wingers than vice-versa. That is, the right understands the left but the left doesn't understand the right. It's been some years since I read about this but iirc the failure mode was that the left imagined people on the right as having far more extreme views than they really do, amongst other problems.
W.R.T. the construction companies - see my comment elsewhere in this thread about the quote-sourcing feedback loop. Not so many companies are willing to talk to journalists about illegal immigration, because they know journalists are left-biased and because it'd realistically have to be the CEO doing it, and he/she is busy. That in turn means journalists don't hear alternative perspectives, causing them to become more biased, and repeat.
Citation please. This sounds like some completely fabricated bullshit.
Here's a reference to a reference that you might be referring to (a passage from Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind referring to a study by Graham, Haidt, and Nosek)
https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conserva...
> "In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Qyestionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a “typical liberal” would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a “typical conservative” would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to assess how accurate they were by comparing people’s expectations about “typical” partisans to the actual responses from partisans on the left and the right)’ Who was best able to pretend to be the other?"
I believe this passage refers to work done Study 2 in "Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations"
https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~jhaidt/articles/graham.haidt.no...
In my brief reading of the paper, it's not clear to me whether they've reporting their findings on the understanding aspect, though the materials section for Study 2 sounds like the situation described. (They may have, I just haven't read it closely.)
> "As with relevance items, there were three versions of the moral judgment items—answered as oneself, as a typical liberal, or as a typical conservative. For both types of items, only results for the self versions are reported here."
https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conserva...
> "In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Qyestionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a “typical liberal” would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a “typical conservative” would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to assess how accurate they were by comparing people’s expectations about “typical” partisans to the actual responses from partisans on the left and the right)’ Who was best able to pretend to be the other?"
I believe this passage refers to work done Study 2 in "Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations"
https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~jhaidt/articles/graham.haidt.no...
In my brief reading of the paper, it's not clear to me whether they've reporting their findings on the understanding aspect, though the materials section for Study 2 sounds like the situation described. (They may have, I just haven't read it closely.)
> "As with relevance items, there were three versions of the moral judgment items—answered as oneself, as a typical liberal, or as a typical conservative. For both types of items, only results for the self versions are reported here."
Wish I could find that research.
WaPo is owned by one of the richest ~corporations~ people (thank you for the correction) in the history of the world (~Amazon~ Bezos); it is in absolutely no way “top tier.” Imo, everything it publishes should be viewed as if it was filtered through by Bezos himself.
It absolutely is and it breaks huge stories all the time. There's absolutely zero evidence that Bezos influences editorial decisions and plenty of stories critical of Amazon that they've run.
No it’s not. It’s owned by Bezos.
You can say whatever you want about how/if you think that influences their coverage.
But it is not an arm of Amazon.
You can say whatever you want about how/if you think that influences their coverage.
But it is not an arm of Amazon.
Ooh, thank you for the correction. I thought “Bezos bought WaPo” equated to “Amazon bought WaPo” back when I read those headlines, but your comment made me realize it’s a separate entity rather than a subsidiary.
I don’t think it changes my point too much, but it’s absolutely a worthwhile amendment.
I don’t think it changes my point too much, but it’s absolutely a worthwhile amendment.
Every source you mention is left-wing. They all report the same stories in the same way. And worse, they all ignore or cover up the same stories in the same way.
There is an old saying: Reality has a liberal bias.
Case in point: The last time I looked at the conservative news was a few weeks ago. They were making a big deal about some lawsuit one of the states was bringing against the Biden administration. The administration allegedly censored news outlets, starting early 2020. The lawsuit even provides a specific example from October 2020, and names Biden specifically as the defendant.
Reputable news agencies mostly ignored these allegations because they are complete nonsense: Biden wasn't president when the incidents occurred, so his administration could not have been responsible!
Case in point: The last time I looked at the conservative news was a few weeks ago. They were making a big deal about some lawsuit one of the states was bringing against the Biden administration. The administration allegedly censored news outlets, starting early 2020. The lawsuit even provides a specific example from October 2020, and names Biden specifically as the defendant.
Reputable news agencies mostly ignored these allegations because they are complete nonsense: Biden wasn't president when the incidents occurred, so his administration could not have been responsible!
Actual leftist here. There is nothing even vaguely left-leaning about any of the organizations mentioned. There is, however, the minor issue of political expedience driving a wedge between right-wing politicians and observable reality. Demand better from your people.
If you are to insist that you are an actual leftist and that these organizations are not even vaguely left-leaning, I'd like to know how you define the term "leftist" and "left," as they clearly deviate from what many people intuit.
My best guess is you think anything but pure anti-capitalism must be right-wing, but if you view the left-right ideology spectrum as a reflection one's views on economic policies, it's quite clear that would not be the case.
My best guess is you think anything but pure anti-capitalism must be right-wing, but if you view the left-right ideology spectrum as a reflection one's views on economic policies, it's quite clear that would not be the case.
"I'd like to know how you define the term "leftist" and "left," as they clearly deviate from what many people intuit."
You don't get to hold me accountable for others failures. If you're hazy on the definition of the term "leftist" I expect google could help you with that.
You don't get to hold me accountable for others failures. If you're hazy on the definition of the term "leftist" I expect google could help you with that.
> You don't get to hold me accountable for others failures. If you're hazy on the definition of the term "leftist" I expect google could help you with that.
I'm holding you accountable for self describing yourself as an "actual leftist," which obviously means your idea of what it leftist means deviates from what is the commonly held belief. The person you initially responded to said that all the sources the person listed was left-wing. You obviously took issue with that but you failed to explain why they're not, you simply used it as an excuse to lazily jab at the right-wingers.
If you don't want people to hold you accountable for your words, don't make asinine comments completely devoid of substance.
I'm holding you accountable for self describing yourself as an "actual leftist," which obviously means your idea of what it leftist means deviates from what is the commonly held belief. The person you initially responded to said that all the sources the person listed was left-wing. You obviously took issue with that but you failed to explain why they're not, you simply used it as an excuse to lazily jab at the right-wingers.
If you don't want people to hold you accountable for your words, don't make asinine comments completely devoid of substance.
Commonly held belief by whom? Right wing extremists who think anything short of you-keep-what-you-kill libertarianism is a commie plot? Neoliberals who bandy about the term "left" while flogging center-right economic policy? "commonly held belief" being unable to accurately place political ideologies on the political spectrum is due to 4 parts political expedience (how do you accuse your opponents of being communists if they're on the same side of the political spectrum as you?) and 1 part dull-eyed credulity, none of which is my fault. Incidentally, assinine is veering off topic to try to fabricate a shit-flinging contest over easily defined vocabulary terms. You certain you've got a handle on who the ass is in this exchange?
Leftist: a person with left-wing political views
Left-Wing: the section of a political party or system that advocates for greater social and economic equality, and typically favors socially liberal ideas; the liberal or progressive group or section.
There you go. Those are the definitions provided from the Oxford English Dictionary. These clearly fall in line with what most people think of the terms and coincide neatly with what the above person was suggesting — those publications are left-wing.
> being unable to accurately place political ideologies on the political spectrum
This is largely because the the left-right political spectrum is bogus. Clearly you think you're a "real" leftist even though your idea of leftism is quite clearly contradictory to its definition which was my whole point. You had an opportunity to elucidate your point of view but instead you expect other people not only to perform that labor for you, but get upset when it doesn't match your head canon. No one else knows what "Leftist" means to you except you.
> Incidentally, assinine is veering off topic to try to fabricate a shit-flinging contest over easily defined vocabulary terms. You certain you've got a handle on who the ass is in this exchange?
The whole conversation is about what words mean, so no, it's not veering off topic.
If one person says "These publications are left-wing" and you say "I'm a real leftist and I say they're not," it is not unreasonable to ask you to define those terms. You are contradicting them, it absolutely is your fault when you don't define what those terms mean from your point of view. So I once again ask you, what is a "leftist" and what is "left-wing," from your point of view? If you can't even define them, how can you claim to be them?
Left-Wing: the section of a political party or system that advocates for greater social and economic equality, and typically favors socially liberal ideas; the liberal or progressive group or section.
There you go. Those are the definitions provided from the Oxford English Dictionary. These clearly fall in line with what most people think of the terms and coincide neatly with what the above person was suggesting — those publications are left-wing.
> being unable to accurately place political ideologies on the political spectrum
This is largely because the the left-right political spectrum is bogus. Clearly you think you're a "real" leftist even though your idea of leftism is quite clearly contradictory to its definition which was my whole point. You had an opportunity to elucidate your point of view but instead you expect other people not only to perform that labor for you, but get upset when it doesn't match your head canon. No one else knows what "Leftist" means to you except you.
> Incidentally, assinine is veering off topic to try to fabricate a shit-flinging contest over easily defined vocabulary terms. You certain you've got a handle on who the ass is in this exchange?
The whole conversation is about what words mean, so no, it's not veering off topic.
If one person says "These publications are left-wing" and you say "I'm a real leftist and I say they're not," it is not unreasonable to ask you to define those terms. You are contradicting them, it absolutely is your fault when you don't define what those terms mean from your point of view. So I once again ask you, what is a "leftist" and what is "left-wing," from your point of view? If you can't even define them, how can you claim to be them?
Thank you for illustrating my point so vividly.
I'm sorry that you find it difficult to be confronted with any sort of dissent that might force you to have to consider what your values actually are, which apparently cannot be defined. Spend some time thinking about what they are before telling other people they're wrong about it.
I think there's the fundamental problem that the political spectrum is subjective and not fixed. Journalism should aim to report facts as holistically as possible and (I think) be willing to bias towards basic human rights and decency. There simply are not any other news sources that uphold strong journalistic integrity, run deep investigations and align with right wing politics.
WSJ is probably the closest. They don't dig into culture wars but definitely skew capitalist. The Bulwark is a decent independent source but they're small and do more opinion and analysis than reporting. Mainstream conservative news like Fox is just garbage and hopelessly corrupt. The level of direct collusion between Fox stars like Hannity and sitting republicans is utterly shameful. They aren't just biased they are downright running campaign ads disguised as news. And they're staring down a $1B defamation suit for stories they ran at the behest of the Trump admin which should bury the last shred of credibility.
WSJ is probably the closest. They don't dig into culture wars but definitely skew capitalist. The Bulwark is a decent independent source but they're small and do more opinion and analysis than reporting. Mainstream conservative news like Fox is just garbage and hopelessly corrupt. The level of direct collusion between Fox stars like Hannity and sitting republicans is utterly shameful. They aren't just biased they are downright running campaign ads disguised as news. And they're staring down a $1B defamation suit for stories they ran at the behest of the Trump admin which should bury the last shred of credibility.
Nice Polite Republicans is hardly left wing. At best they’re right of center.
It’s hard for me to take seriously anyone who suggests any major news media operation in the US is “left-wing”. This country doesn’t have a big or strong enough “left” to matter.
It’s hard for me to take seriously anyone who suggests any major news media operation in the US is “left-wing”. This country doesn’t have a big or strong enough “left” to matter.
opensecrets.org indicates the opposite.
> I'd be willing to pay for news from organizations like the AP or Reuters.
reuters.com is free as an invdividual, you just need to make an (entirely free) account or you get limited to X articles per month. I don't think apnews.com even asks you to make an account.
reuters.com is free as an invdividual, you just need to make an (entirely free) account or you get limited to X articles per month. I don't think apnews.com even asks you to make an account.
I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong. PBS generally has been some of the best news / reporting I’ve seen.
That said, it’s still driven by ideology — “good” being defined by someone. You can see it in the titles of their documentaries and programming.
If you go through their programming objectively and put yourselves in the mindset the opposing side it becomes rather clear. This includes things like portraying nationalism as bad or Christianity as evil (see some of their frontline documentaries)
While the bias is there. PBS is generally one of the least bias in the space, I think that’s what makes it so frustrating. A slight improvement in breadth and depth would make it amazing.
I also have to give credit to pbs for often releasing full-length interviews. I’ve really appreciated watching hours long interviews with various people about a specific topic. See “Putin files”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk9igTqTx9s
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b1HWNcLDK88
or Steve bannons interview on frontline.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pm5xxlajTW0
That said, it’s still driven by ideology — “good” being defined by someone. You can see it in the titles of their documentaries and programming.
If you go through their programming objectively and put yourselves in the mindset the opposing side it becomes rather clear. This includes things like portraying nationalism as bad or Christianity as evil (see some of their frontline documentaries)
While the bias is there. PBS is generally one of the least bias in the space, I think that’s what makes it so frustrating. A slight improvement in breadth and depth would make it amazing.
I also have to give credit to pbs for often releasing full-length interviews. I’ve really appreciated watching hours long interviews with various people about a specific topic. See “Putin files”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk9igTqTx9s
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b1HWNcLDK88
or Steve bannons interview on frontline.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pm5xxlajTW0
I really enjoy PBS and generally agree with you but we’re at a place so far removed from objectivity in news gathering when the best still stand by this rationale.
> We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions
Terence Samuels, NPR's Managing Editor for News on the NY Post Hunter Biden story
https://mobile.twitter.com/nprpubliceditor/status/1319281101...
> We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions
Terence Samuels, NPR's Managing Editor for News on the NY Post Hunter Biden story
https://mobile.twitter.com/nprpubliceditor/status/1319281101...
PBS/NPR has skewed left in last 5 years. It used to be amazing and not partisan.
PBS doesn't seem too bad from my limited exposure but NPR has more than "skewed."
Yeah, I urge people to just listen to 20+ year old American media, doesn't matter, left/right, it was so much more civil, courteous and intellectual. Read NewYorker magazine from 1980's. Spectacular writing, and genuine insight that people from all political spectrums can be engaged with.
It makes me sad. Sometimes, I listen to old archives from archive.org: https://archive.org/details/npr-all-things-considered
and stuff like Car Talk on NPR. It was a beautiful world.
I have no trust left for NYT, WaPo or whatever right wing media is around blasting stuff on TV today. It is toxic.
It makes me sad. Sometimes, I listen to old archives from archive.org: https://archive.org/details/npr-all-things-considered
and stuff like Car Talk on NPR. It was a beautiful world.
I have no trust left for NYT, WaPo or whatever right wing media is around blasting stuff on TV today. It is toxic.
Haha skewed, NPR has been a staple liberal stereotype since my grandpa listened to them. If you’ve noticed anything it’s that the gap between liberals and conservatives widened massively starting in the late 2000s when the Republican party started slipping so they manufactured a wedge issue out of gay marriage and when that died down trans healthcare with some opportunistic blm thrown in. And look, it worked. It paid off huge for them but at the cost of literally bifurcating the country and hollowing out moderates and independents. So now it’s much much easier to see the side they’ve always been on since the contrast has been turned up to 11.
As much as I personally think the Republican party is absolutely fucking evil for the specific issues they capitalized on — because good god lower taxes, eliminating government agencies, and less powerful unions doesn’t pour gasoline on festering racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia creating a tire fire of hate and violence that will outlive me — I’m not mad at the game in abstract, Democrats play it too.
As much as I personally think the Republican party is absolutely fucking evil for the specific issues they capitalized on — because good god lower taxes, eliminating government agencies, and less powerful unions doesn’t pour gasoline on festering racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia creating a tire fire of hate and violence that will outlive me — I’m not mad at the game in abstract, Democrats play it too.
Iirc Reuters sells a subscription
> news from organizations like the AP
AP is just as biased as the rest. Even if you remove ads the people with agenda are still everywhere.
> PBS are a left public good.
Fixed that for you, because it's so obvious how it has changed.
AP is just as biased as the rest. Even if you remove ads the people with agenda are still everywhere.
> PBS are a left public good.
Fixed that for you, because it's so obvious how it has changed.
Isn’t the AP the organization that insists Black be capitalized while insisting that White not be capitalized? They are just as biased and steeped in the culture war as anyone else. For the record I don’t care if both are capitalized or both are not but taking the divisive approach of choosing one and disallowing the other causes me to lose all trust in them.
This is likely why: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php
Yep; the AP cited similar motivations (https://apnews.com/article/archive-race-and-ethnicity-910566...). I think CJR's is a better explanation; that many Black folks in the US have no idea which country their ancestors came from, and thus don't have the Irish / Chinese / German / etc. identifiers of origin many Americans honor and celebrate.
gfdsgfsgf(1)
That article fails to explain why White isn't capitalized. It just claims in a very tautological manner that "capitalizing the word in this context risks following the lead of white supremacists."
In America, Black people as a whole are a distinct cultural group with their own foods, words, holidays, mannerisms, and media. The are in the special case where they don't identify with their ancestral lands because all culture pertaining to that was forcibly stripped away.
White people, at least in America, aren't a group with shared culture. The only thing that really unites them is the color of their skin. White people also tend to have an actual ancestral culture they identify with highly-- usually the culture of a European country their predecessors emigrated from. And as far as I know the vast majority of them don't want to identify as 'white', as they value their ancestral culture more.
White people, at least in America, aren't a group with shared culture. The only thing that really unites them is the color of their skin. White people also tend to have an actual ancestral culture they identify with highly-- usually the culture of a European country their predecessors emigrated from. And as far as I know the vast majority of them don't want to identify as 'white', as they value their ancestral culture more.
So a black person who moved from Africa is then lower-case black, because they are not part of the Black (uppercase) culture?
What on earth, white people in America certainly do share a culture, it’s called American culture. I think and hope that black Americans share the same culture too. Actually I oversimplify slightly because I do see differences in coastal elite vs middle American cultures. The differences between I, a Texan, and someone from California or New York seem far greater than the trivial differences in culture I’ve seen between myself and Texans of _any_ other race, ethnicity, or gender/sexual orientation.
You spend the first part of your comment claiming their is a white culture, and the rest of the comment saying its a transracial American culture. Except for the first half of your sentence, you are exactly correct. White people (and black people) share an American culture. White people often have additional cultural (e.g. Irish-American or Italian-American) with distinct food or holidays or music or whatever. It's those uses that Black culture refers to.
I think it fairly clearly made a case that in transporting people for slavery we stripped them of a lot of cultural identity, and now a lot of their identity is the lack of a prior one and their prior treatment in our nation, while white people often have other cultural identities and history to fall back on.
Whether you agree with that or not is one thing, but I'm not sure why you're ignoring it.
Whether you agree with that or not is one thing, but I'm not sure why you're ignoring it.
Well, it does completely ignore the cultural identity of African-descendant people who don’t have slaves as ancestors (some of which were actually facilitators of said transportations, as well, but I suppose that’s tangential).
Also erasing the difference between descendants of slaves from the Americas and the descendants of people who were enslaved in the US. Colin Powell and Kamala Harris are the first without being the second.
According to AllSides, AP Politics is definitely sided[0], but it doesn't affect the AP outside of the politics section[1]. A lot better than nothing, especially since anyone more centrist would not publish anywhere near the volume of stories.
[0]: https://archive.ph/aqpJM,
[1]: https://archive.ph/1rhNj
Archive since they've merged the ratings for clarification, but haven't actually changed their minds.
[0]: https://archive.ph/aqpJM,
[1]: https://archive.ph/1rhNj
Archive since they've merged the ratings for clarification, but haven't actually changed their minds.
Capitalizing "Black" but not "white" seems arguably reasonable for the same reason we have a "Black History Month" but no "White History Month".
We don't have a "White History Month" because white history is the default in the US. In a sense every month is a white history month here. Note that we do have months for some subsets of white, e.g., Irish-American Heritage Month (March).
Same for why we have LGBT Pride month but no straight pride month. Straight is the default.
We don't have a "White History Month" because white history is the default in the US. In a sense every month is a white history month here. Note that we do have months for some subsets of white, e.g., Irish-American Heritage Month (March).
Same for why we have LGBT Pride month but no straight pride month. Straight is the default.
I've seen outlets start to capitalize "Brown" which confused me.
This is very far down the list of things for me to be outraged about.
Most news organizations say their mission is to inform people, but their actual mission is to tell people what to think, regardless of what the facts are. Their political agenda shines through their "reporting" on just about everything but the weather report.
Strike that, even the weather report has become politicized.
It makes me wonder, has it always been this way, or do I just notice it more as I grow older?
As for government funding of news media, we all know where that leads - all you'll read in it is the government's political agenda. Do you really want to get your news from the White House press secretary?
Strike that, even the weather report has become politicized.
It makes me wonder, has it always been this way, or do I just notice it more as I grow older?
As for government funding of news media, we all know where that leads - all you'll read in it is the government's political agenda. Do you really want to get your news from the White House press secretary?
"Mission", huh?
Do people in America (or anywhere else) actually believe that news organizations actually follow some kind of "mission"? Why? How does being a news organization suddenly puts you apart from any other organization/corporation with all the corruption factors?
I don't really get this mythos of journalists being white knights in shining armor or wise sages with a holy "mission".
From where I stand, it seems like an over-glorification of people who are essentially just experts on writing texts, and not much else. And just as all the other people and organizations, they will have their own agenda, their own biases and their own ways of corruption.
Personally, I don't really see much point of modern journalism, other than maybe political signaling. Narrative writing style became a weird norm and it just feels like you are being treated like cattle. I want facts, references, comparisons, critical analysis. Instead I get a story-time and have to do all the analysis myself - most of the times the story ends up being a misrepresentative or omitting crucial facts. And you just sit there wondering, whether it was a deliberate "control the narrative" kind of manipulation, or maybe it's just the author being an idiot, or maybe today it's this post-truth thing of not addressing the parts of truth that may be beneficial to adversaries.
Do people in America (or anywhere else) actually believe that news organizations actually follow some kind of "mission"? Why? How does being a news organization suddenly puts you apart from any other organization/corporation with all the corruption factors?
I don't really get this mythos of journalists being white knights in shining armor or wise sages with a holy "mission".
From where I stand, it seems like an over-glorification of people who are essentially just experts on writing texts, and not much else. And just as all the other people and organizations, they will have their own agenda, their own biases and their own ways of corruption.
Personally, I don't really see much point of modern journalism, other than maybe political signaling. Narrative writing style became a weird norm and it just feels like you are being treated like cattle. I want facts, references, comparisons, critical analysis. Instead I get a story-time and have to do all the analysis myself - most of the times the story ends up being a misrepresentative or omitting crucial facts. And you just sit there wondering, whether it was a deliberate "control the narrative" kind of manipulation, or maybe it's just the author being an idiot, or maybe today it's this post-truth thing of not addressing the parts of truth that may be beneficial to adversaries.
Well of course they do. The "mission" doesn't pay squat in the current environment. Fabricated outrage and tribal politics is far more lucrative and all the integrity in the world wont save you from operation expenses. People mostly just use news articles as justification for their existing political biases and the news organizations are happy to accommodate.
It's mission before money, but not the mission you think.
This. The main goal of news organizations may involve profit motivators, but ultimately they want to be able to influence the population.
To what end do news organizations want to influence the population?
Seriously? Why does Besos own a media conglomerate? Why does Bill Gates "donate" to media organizations? For influence, to launder their reputation, for power... Look behind the curtain, see the emperor has no clothes.
to create dependence on their organizations from power structures that require public manipulation
To serve their owners interests
It’s difficult to accept the amorality of something you are interacting with, particularly if you are reacting to it. It forces accountability onto oneself which one often tries to avoid.
Think of it like a drug. It’s totally amoral, but it will take you to the end if you let it. Blaming the drug shifts accountability. Once you realize the drug is amoral and it is you who must stop, that’s when you take accountability.
The institution of the Media is amoral. If we sit here and say they do things for money is the same as saying such and such drug is addictive, or even more ridiculous, such and such drug has nicotine in it. Okay? It’s amoral.
Facing something amoral within yourself or outside of yourself is often unbelievable. You will always try to describe it or comprehend it, but the answer is simple and frightening.
The media actually hasn’t shifted from its virtues. We want them to be divorced from what they report and who they report it to. The amoral quality is of the essence to do it right. They should not care about right or wrong, just do, report. That same underlying trait is manifesting in another way, is all.
Think of it like a drug. It’s totally amoral, but it will take you to the end if you let it. Blaming the drug shifts accountability. Once you realize the drug is amoral and it is you who must stop, that’s when you take accountability.
The institution of the Media is amoral. If we sit here and say they do things for money is the same as saying such and such drug is addictive, or even more ridiculous, such and such drug has nicotine in it. Okay? It’s amoral.
Facing something amoral within yourself or outside of yourself is often unbelievable. You will always try to describe it or comprehend it, but the answer is simple and frightening.
The media actually hasn’t shifted from its virtues. We want them to be divorced from what they report and who they report it to. The amoral quality is of the essence to do it right. They should not care about right or wrong, just do, report. That same underlying trait is manifesting in another way, is all.
Most of what we call “news” these days are not really news, but reporting on an endless stream of negative events, because negativity and sensationalism attracts more viewership (and thus, money).
Real news should be mostly local, about all of the good and bad things around us that actually matter in our lives. Otherwise, there’s really no sense in following the “news”, it’s just a meaningless waste of our lives.
Real news should be mostly local, about all of the good and bad things around us that actually matter in our lives. Otherwise, there’s really no sense in following the “news”, it’s just a meaningless waste of our lives.
Nationalizing the most watched news sources leads to horrible political consequences. Politicians quickly figure out that whomever gets more airtime wins and elections so the news becomes a visual diary of the activities of whoever is in power + whomever owns non-government media. In Eastern Europe the mafia bought most media in small countries, and now they cannot be dislodged.
That’s the argument to kill live C-SPAN coverage.
We know politicians play to the cameras constantly. It’s obvious. Politicians have made their entire careers by becoming famous for their speeches on the floor.
Do they really make a lot of those ridiculous charts and pictures for other politicians?
I remember hearing from reporters and maybe even ex-representatives that things changed once the cameras came in. Things got worse. You couldn’t look weak by talking to/compromising with the other side. Bombast worked. It made polarization worse. It wasn’t a big club anymore, it was “us” and “them”.
It won’t fix the rest of the media, but maybe C-SPAN is a failed experiment. The observer effect took over and changed the outcome.
We know politicians play to the cameras constantly. It’s obvious. Politicians have made their entire careers by becoming famous for their speeches on the floor.
Do they really make a lot of those ridiculous charts and pictures for other politicians?
I remember hearing from reporters and maybe even ex-representatives that things changed once the cameras came in. Things got worse. You couldn’t look weak by talking to/compromising with the other side. Bombast worked. It made polarization worse. It wasn’t a big club anymore, it was “us” and “them”.
It won’t fix the rest of the media, but maybe C-SPAN is a failed experiment. The observer effect took over and changed the outcome.
In Seattle it's even worse. There's a law that says that no discussion among city councilmembers can take place in private. So, all discussion is in the council chamber, with cameras recording it.
You can guess where that leads. Nothing but grandstanding to the cameras. No horse-trading. No compromise.
It's awful.
You can guess where that leads. Nothing but grandstanding to the cameras. No horse-trading. No compromise.
It's awful.
As a general rule, people aren’t willing to pay for the things considered public goods.
Then they whine that said news chases views.
Like Republican communities that underpay teachers and wonder why their kids have no futures because someone with a brain built a robot to do their repetitive trivial job.
Then they whine that said news chases views.
Like Republican communities that underpay teachers and wonder why their kids have no futures because someone with a brain built a robot to do their repetitive trivial job.
It’s funny. I actually worry about the opposite.
It's so crazy to me how many people are OK with ad-supported news while complaining about the objectivity of news generally. IMO (having worked for news organizations), this one of the biggest problems with the industry.
I worked for a non-profit news org in 2016 and we spent a lot of time and energy covering the presidential race. One of the biggest ethical challenges we constantly faced as an organization was the reality that a certain candidate for president drew astronomical traffic to our site when his name was in a headline compared to everyone else, which meant more revenue for us. It wasn't even close.
We hated this because we wanted to apply coverage to candidates equally, but the discrepancies in traffic were impossible to ignore. And so every time we ran another story about this candidate, we had to ask ourselves if it was appropriate or not since he was not local to our state or region.
The news industry has been dying a painfully slow death ever since the internet arrived and it's not easy to leave money on the table with any sort of regularity. And when news organizations do choose to leave the money on the table, they are never recognized for it because nobody will come out and say "we really wanted to run another story about X, but we chose not to because we didn't feel it was right to keep doing that". It's a no-win situation.
Here's the bottom line: ad-based news models rely heavily on traffic metrics to generate ad revenue, which is derived from serving ads. I believe this is the single most poisonous aspect of making news today because those who make news can quite easily see what kind of news sells and what doesn't. As long as news organizations are focused on driving traffic to their site to generate ad revenue, this will be a problem. But people don't want to pay for news, so where does that leave our system? We're not willing as a society to give up the convenience that this deeply corrupt system gives us.
I worked for a non-profit news org in 2016 and we spent a lot of time and energy covering the presidential race. One of the biggest ethical challenges we constantly faced as an organization was the reality that a certain candidate for president drew astronomical traffic to our site when his name was in a headline compared to everyone else, which meant more revenue for us. It wasn't even close.
We hated this because we wanted to apply coverage to candidates equally, but the discrepancies in traffic were impossible to ignore. And so every time we ran another story about this candidate, we had to ask ourselves if it was appropriate or not since he was not local to our state or region.
The news industry has been dying a painfully slow death ever since the internet arrived and it's not easy to leave money on the table with any sort of regularity. And when news organizations do choose to leave the money on the table, they are never recognized for it because nobody will come out and say "we really wanted to run another story about X, but we chose not to because we didn't feel it was right to keep doing that". It's a no-win situation.
Here's the bottom line: ad-based news models rely heavily on traffic metrics to generate ad revenue, which is derived from serving ads. I believe this is the single most poisonous aspect of making news today because those who make news can quite easily see what kind of news sells and what doesn't. As long as news organizations are focused on driving traffic to their site to generate ad revenue, this will be a problem. But people don't want to pay for news, so where does that leave our system? We're not willing as a society to give up the convenience that this deeply corrupt system gives us.
> But people don't want to pay for news
I don’t know that that is actually true. I know that for me, I’m not interested in paying for:
- The daily homicide report
- 3 minutes of news per half hour, mixed in with 19 minutes of “stories” that are paid placement for products, movies, recording artists, etc., followed by 8 minutes of advertisements, mostly for medications I don’t need for some reason
- Weak interviews and reporting that ignores very obvious lies from the people being reported on with absolutely no mention of that fact
- Both-siding a story where one side has clear facts and the other side is quite possibly literally crazy, or at the very least being obviously heavily manipulated by special interests and that’s not mentioned at all
- Reporting on what someone tweeted, especially with no indication that what was tweeted is known to be bogus or unconfirmed
I do happily give to PBS and NPR because they have reasonable coverage of most news, but over the last 5 years, even they have been sucked into the sensationalism and reporting on tweets that regular news outlets have fallen victim to. They’re still miles better, but it’s a low bar to begin with.
I don’t know that that is actually true. I know that for me, I’m not interested in paying for:
- The daily homicide report
- 3 minutes of news per half hour, mixed in with 19 minutes of “stories” that are paid placement for products, movies, recording artists, etc., followed by 8 minutes of advertisements, mostly for medications I don’t need for some reason
- Weak interviews and reporting that ignores very obvious lies from the people being reported on with absolutely no mention of that fact
- Both-siding a story where one side has clear facts and the other side is quite possibly literally crazy, or at the very least being obviously heavily manipulated by special interests and that’s not mentioned at all
- Reporting on what someone tweeted, especially with no indication that what was tweeted is known to be bogus or unconfirmed
I do happily give to PBS and NPR because they have reasonable coverage of most news, but over the last 5 years, even they have been sucked into the sensationalism and reporting on tweets that regular news outlets have fallen victim to. They’re still miles better, but it’s a low bar to begin with.
This is a huge part of why I stopped watching “the news”.
“Representative X said A. When asked about it, representative Y said they were wrong so B. Now sports.”
Huh? Who was right? Was it a matter of fact you can judge? If so why don’t you? Even on opinions there is usually good contextual facts you can add.
But when you just repeat crazy or dangerous or factually incorrect you normalize it. And by never calling anyone out on things you signal it’s all equally correct.
“The president said F. We said no, G. He said but F, H, and I are all true, I said them. Sunny tomorrow…”
Soundbites without analysts are horrible. Repeatedly letting people get away with lying about objective facts and continuing to give them airtime to say it is useless.
Reporting “science” that comes from press releases on non-reviewed pre-release papers in journals no one has heard of that contradicts what you said was real last week destroys trust in science.
And telling me feel good stories about kids who started lemonade stands to pay for their own chemo completely misses the point.
And I don’t care about Kanye. It doesn’t matter other than the fact that at this point people appear to be taking advantage of his mental illness. But no one is covering that that I’ve seen.
“Representative X said A. When asked about it, representative Y said they were wrong so B. Now sports.”
Huh? Who was right? Was it a matter of fact you can judge? If so why don’t you? Even on opinions there is usually good contextual facts you can add.
But when you just repeat crazy or dangerous or factually incorrect you normalize it. And by never calling anyone out on things you signal it’s all equally correct.
“The president said F. We said no, G. He said but F, H, and I are all true, I said them. Sunny tomorrow…”
Soundbites without analysts are horrible. Repeatedly letting people get away with lying about objective facts and continuing to give them airtime to say it is useless.
Reporting “science” that comes from press releases on non-reviewed pre-release papers in journals no one has heard of that contradicts what you said was real last week destroys trust in science.
And telling me feel good stories about kids who started lemonade stands to pay for their own chemo completely misses the point.
And I don’t care about Kanye. It doesn’t matter other than the fact that at this point people appear to be taking advantage of his mental illness. But no one is covering that that I’ve seen.
I don't think it's the fact that money comes in from ads per se--it's the simple fact that news corps are businesses too and that they need money to survive, so they need to serve the interests of whomever the money is coming from.
If people wanted news to be as objective as news could be, then they better be prepared to apportion their taxes to news orgs (should news orgs be privately or publicly owned is a longer discussion but the latter is implied), to read news that are as boring and as declarative as an encyclopedia article, or to avoid news altogether and to be physically present in the places where news happen to see events for themselves, but people are not willing to do any of those nor are those always feasible. So up to what extent is the expectation of objectiveness from journalism realistic?
I mean, I never thought for the life of me that news are supposed to be 100% objective, precisely because events are being reported from the understanding of someone else. This is why you consume information from more than one source. What if the people consuming news are part of the problem?
If people wanted news to be as objective as news could be, then they better be prepared to apportion their taxes to news orgs (should news orgs be privately or publicly owned is a longer discussion but the latter is implied), to read news that are as boring and as declarative as an encyclopedia article, or to avoid news altogether and to be physically present in the places where news happen to see events for themselves, but people are not willing to do any of those nor are those always feasible. So up to what extent is the expectation of objectiveness from journalism realistic?
I mean, I never thought for the life of me that news are supposed to be 100% objective, precisely because events are being reported from the understanding of someone else. This is why you consume information from more than one source. What if the people consuming news are part of the problem?
> but the discrepancies in traffic were impossible to ignore
Why? I have no doubt it was more profitable to cover that one candidate, but the point of a non-profit news org is that you shouldn't have to follow mass market dictates like that.
> when news organizations do choose to leave the money on the table, they are never recognized for it because nobody will come out and say "we really wanted to run another story about X, but we chose not to because we didn't feel it was right to keep doing that"
I feel like that's your own fault. You're a news organization, you could have gotten the word out. IIRC in 2016 there were lots of articles about the meta of covering X, and by 2020 X explicitly not being covered the same way was an official stance of news organizations.
Why? I have no doubt it was more profitable to cover that one candidate, but the point of a non-profit news org is that you shouldn't have to follow mass market dictates like that.
> when news organizations do choose to leave the money on the table, they are never recognized for it because nobody will come out and say "we really wanted to run another story about X, but we chose not to because we didn't feel it was right to keep doing that"
I feel like that's your own fault. You're a news organization, you could have gotten the word out. IIRC in 2016 there were lots of articles about the meta of covering X, and by 2020 X explicitly not being covered the same way was an official stance of news organizations.
> It's so crazy to me how many people
So shaming consumers will solve the problem? Is that what people who've worked for news orgs think?
The things I pay for and point my friends toward don't treat people that way.
> news industry has been dying a painfully slow death ever since the internet arrived
Well I go to Substack and Rumble, among others. The news industry is dying because it can't handle competition. R.I.P., "The News." Now let's imagine a world a little more informative than three television networks telling us all the same stories the same ways . . .
So shaming consumers will solve the problem? Is that what people who've worked for news orgs think?
The things I pay for and point my friends toward don't treat people that way.
> news industry has been dying a painfully slow death ever since the internet arrived
Well I go to Substack and Rumble, among others. The news industry is dying because it can't handle competition. R.I.P., "The News." Now let's imagine a world a little more informative than three television networks telling us all the same stories the same ways . . .
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I’ll happily call bullshit. It’s not money - money in news organizations is drying up and everyone knows it. It’s the CYA mentality that comes before the product these days. With so little money to go around, no one wants to be the one to have screwed up in their organization for management to blame their money woes on.
Journalists don't even write their own article titles, which then become click-bait by "editors".
That basically sums up the state of "reporting".
Payout is view-driven which means anything goes to survive.
Media today is the equivalent of going to work sick "whatever it takes to not become homeless, frack everyone else".
That basically sums up the state of "reporting".
Payout is view-driven which means anything goes to survive.
Media today is the equivalent of going to work sick "whatever it takes to not become homeless, frack everyone else".
Lots of papers are in death spirals regardless. The long-term strategy for many is becoming non-profits.
They’ve all become hyper polarized in the last ~10 years. Go find some footage of BBC or CNN or MSNBC from pre-2010. You might be a bit shocked how, well, boring it all is.
I apologize for my American-centric view of politics, but something fundamentally changed about the world around the time Trump, Bernie, etc were making waves in 2015-2016 in US politics. It’s almost like we entered a parallel reality. Shortly after the media has gone extremist, not only in the US but globally.
I apologize for my American-centric view of politics, but something fundamentally changed about the world around the time Trump, Bernie, etc were making waves in 2015-2016 in US politics. It’s almost like we entered a parallel reality. Shortly after the media has gone extremist, not only in the US but globally.
It's hardly just the media that's seen a change of tone; go look at a Presidential debate from 20-30 years ago. Look at how Bush and Reagan debated the issue of illegal immigration in 1980; it's a short clip, but it feels totally foreign these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixi9_cciy8w
That clip should be quite the wake-up call for those who are ignorant of how far the Republican party has veered right today. Those two candidates, Bush and Reagan, would be Democrats today.
Reagan [wrt Mexico]: "rather than talking about putting up a fence... and open the border both ways by understanding their problems"
Reagan [wrt Mexico]: "rather than talking about putting up a fence... and open the border both ways by understanding their problems"
Listening to old speeches or interviews (like radio interviews before TV) is also eye opening.
The thing is, everyone wants to blame politicians. But we as people have deteriorated. These people are who we choose. We're so concerned about winning at all costs that we don't even care about the abhorrent behavior of our candidates, on both sides. It's a race to the bottom now. Hopefully our experiment survives.
The thing is, everyone wants to blame politicians. But we as people have deteriorated. These people are who we choose. We're so concerned about winning at all costs that we don't even care about the abhorrent behavior of our candidates, on both sides. It's a race to the bottom now. Hopefully our experiment survives.
I agree and I can’t figure it out. It’s not only the media either - it’s everyone. Extreme polarization is everywhere, and all of it seems to boil down to a struggle for power. Rich vs poor, citizens vs police, republican vs democrat, autocratic vs democratic - all being seen in extreme forms. It’s like the world has fallen under a spell or a mass psychosis.
I would love to hear theories of what the root cause is. Is it due to massive state sponsored manipulation campaigns via social media?
Worth reading: https://consilienceproject.org/social-media-enables-undue-in...
I would love to hear theories of what the root cause is. Is it due to massive state sponsored manipulation campaigns via social media?
Worth reading: https://consilienceproject.org/social-media-enables-undue-in...
You ever heard a comedian work the crowd where he tells a gender specific joke? Goes something along the lines of “blah blah blah - fellas am I right? Clap if you know what I mean fellas”.
And then all the men in the crowd cheer and clap, and all the women boo. And vice versa if the joke had been for the women.
The two sides enjoy the clamoring.
I’m sure you heard this song:
[ANNIE] Anything you can do I can do better I can do anything better than you
[FRANK] No, you can't
[ANNIE] Yes, I can
[FRANK] No, you can't
[ANNIE] Yes, I can
[FRANK] No, you can't
Is that from a Broadway musical or the News/Internet?
Or a comedy show? Hah, maybe that’s what’s going on.
And then all the men in the crowd cheer and clap, and all the women boo. And vice versa if the joke had been for the women.
The two sides enjoy the clamoring.
I’m sure you heard this song:
[ANNIE] Anything you can do I can do better I can do anything better than you
[FRANK] No, you can't
[ANNIE] Yes, I can
[FRANK] No, you can't
[ANNIE] Yes, I can
[FRANK] No, you can't
Is that from a Broadway musical or the News/Internet?
Or a comedy show? Hah, maybe that’s what’s going on.
Media consolidation in the 90s took decades to degrade our public discourse. I fear for what things will look like in another 10 years.
I disagree. I saw a huge change when Clinton passed the baton to George W. Bush. For the last 2 years of Clinton’s presidency, the press (all of it, CNN, NBC, Fox, etc.) were reporting daily on the various scandals in the White House. They seemed to be asking hard-hitting questions all around and being very skeptical of the answers. Literally the first weeks of Bush’s presidency, it was like all of that went out the window and they just started accepting whatever his cabinet told them. It was like stepping into Bizarro land. Even the supposedly liberal outlets felt like they just gave up. It was so strange.
It is hard not to feel that way. I guess most of the staff at those organizations would say that the mission comes first, but they have to stay in business to do the mission.
Credulity, noun:
a tendency to be too ready to believe that something is real or true.
"moneylenders prey upon their credulity and inexperience"
a tendency to be too ready to believe that something is real or true.
"moneylenders prey upon their credulity and inexperience"
It’s weird that Americans don’t realize that money is the mission. Why do they not think holistically about these things?
What is the 'mission' of a news organization? There are facts, e.g. a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was discovered with lots of unfavorable emails, an unruly group of people broke into the US Capitol on Jan 6 and wreaked all sorts of havoc, George Floyd died while in police custody, Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine, etc, etc. But quickly after reporting these 'facts' nuance enters the discussion, why, what does it mean, what is the impact, who cause it, etc, etc. Why should we expect reporters to not view and report the nuance through their own personal filters? A reporter also lives in the country and/or community in which he/she is reporting and has their own biases and beliefs and, yes, political leanings. Why should they then report a nuance that might reflect poorly on the things they personally believe to be correct or their personal world view?
It's silly to compare money to mission of a news organization (or any other entity for that matter). It's like asking what influences a human being more, food to air? You need both. For a news organization to have impact it needs money. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't even NPR solicit money on a regular basis - don't they have to cater to the supplier of that money to some extent to continue their service? I hear their fund raising and they often read comments from contributors which all more or less say "you give me what I want". So their money comes from those with whom their style and nuance of reporting resonates and it's reasonable to assume that NPR reporting then continues in that direction.
It's silly to compare money to mission of a news organization (or any other entity for that matter). It's like asking what influences a human being more, food to air? You need both. For a news organization to have impact it needs money. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't even NPR solicit money on a regular basis - don't they have to cater to the supplier of that money to some extent to continue their service? I hear their fund raising and they often read comments from contributors which all more or less say "you give me what I want". So their money comes from those with whom their style and nuance of reporting resonates and it's reasonable to assume that NPR reporting then continues in that direction.
Serious question: what is the benefit for a journalist to work for a news org vs working solo?
Same as any other line of work: they only have to focus on writing, not on all the other aspects of running a sole proprietorship (health insurance, taxes, etc.)
There’s also a built-in, base audience.
In some cases, there’s prestige that comes with working for certain publications.
There’s also a built-in, base audience.
In some cases, there’s prestige that comes with working for certain publications.
Stable pay. No one pays journalists or writers besides a select few.
I mean, is that truly not the case?
I've never thought it was about money. But I am sure that modern media is about power and the ability to influence people to one's point of view. This is why you see Bezos, Musk, Soros, Iger and Murdoch investing. This is why you see people willing to go into the media despite the ability to be significantly better compensated in other fields.
The demand that the media be generally truthful has disappeared since the abolition of the fairness doctrine. This is a reflection of the growing cultural battle not between left and right but rather between authoritarianism and Liberalism (big L liberalism). If you control what speech is amplified, you don't need to control what speech is uttered in the first place. China, in particular, has learned this lesson well.
Meanwhile, the lessons that western culture has learned from WWI and WWII about the dangers of no separation of government and media is resulting in Millennials and gen-z being willing further to expand the role of the government in media.
The demand that the media be generally truthful has disappeared since the abolition of the fairness doctrine. This is a reflection of the growing cultural battle not between left and right but rather between authoritarianism and Liberalism (big L liberalism). If you control what speech is amplified, you don't need to control what speech is uttered in the first place. China, in particular, has learned this lesson well.
Meanwhile, the lessons that western culture has learned from WWI and WWII about the dangers of no separation of government and media is resulting in Millennials and gen-z being willing further to expand the role of the government in media.
> the fairness doctrine
Wow, that is so cool. TIL.
I only wish my country would copy things like this, instead of things like "Foreign Agents Registration Act" :\
Wow, that is so cool. TIL.
I only wish my country would copy things like this, instead of things like "Foreign Agents Registration Act" :\
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The mindset in the report seems well-represented here in the comments.
Most Americans think that? Try most Americans know that.
Everything is biased, too.
Like people on the right think Fox is unbiased and fair, and on the left, they think NPR is unbiased and fair.
Not only does money come before mission, so does policital agenda. Both sides.
Everything is biased, too.
Like people on the right think Fox is unbiased and fair, and on the left, they think NPR is unbiased and fair.
Not only does money come before mission, so does policital agenda. Both sides.
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They're for-profit organizations, for mission to come before money would be highly aberrant.
We live in a system which is basically designed to encourage chasing profit over all other considerations, with a complex web of regulations which supposedly attempt to restrain some of the worst consequences, or at least the consequences that the voting public may make a fuss over.
People are fickle though, voting for politicians who promote small government, low taxes, and economic inequality, then complaining about things like price-gouging during disasters (which is basically economics 101 in a free market, supply and demand curves), or monopolists setting their prices to maximize their profits (also found in economics 101), or wanting safe food and buildings or better newspapers.
People are fickle though, voting for politicians who promote small government, low taxes, and economic inequality, then complaining about things like price-gouging during disasters (which is basically economics 101 in a free market, supply and demand curves), or monopolists setting their prices to maximize their profits (also found in economics 101), or wanting safe food and buildings or better newspapers.
Which is also true for heathcare, education, prisons and many, many more aspects of US society.
Making money IS the mission.
Making money IS the mission.
for profit organization's mission is primarily make money.
Fortunately, they can only make money by pleasing their customers.
This is not even remotely true. Making your customers angry is a much more profitable media strategy than "pleasing" them. All studies have replicated the consumption of more news with more negative emotions because "if it bleeds, it leads." People make poor rational choices with alcohol, drugs, junk food, media, and pretty much everything else.
> This is not even remotely true.
Does that mean you regret nearly every purchase you make?
> Making your customers angry
As a businessman, I can attest that making my customers angry is very unprofitable.
> People make poor rational choices with alcohol, drugs, junk food, media, and pretty much everything else.
That doesn't mean they aren't pleased with their purchase.
Does that mean you regret nearly every purchase you make?
> Making your customers angry
As a businessman, I can attest that making my customers angry is very unprofitable.
> People make poor rational choices with alcohol, drugs, junk food, media, and pretty much everything else.
That doesn't mean they aren't pleased with their purchase.
>> People make poor rational choices with alcohol, drugs, junk food, media, and pretty much everything else.
> That doesn't mean they aren't pleased with their purchase.
That just goes to show you that "pleased customers" is a bad metric to optimize a society on.
> That doesn't mean they aren't pleased with their purchase.
That just goes to show you that "pleased customers" is a bad metric to optimize a society on.
> As a businessman, I can attest that making my customers angry is very unprofitable.
Are you in the news business?
https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Left-%20and%20Ri...
Are you in the news business?
https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Left-%20and%20Ri...
You're not making people angry with anything related to your business of presenting news. Guests and topics may make people angry, but that's an externality.
Pleasing their customers != Telling them the truth
You also forget about the role of shareholders.
You also forget about the role of shareholders.
Defrauding customers is against the law in free market economies.
Curious how it still happens all the time, on every degree of free market from lasseiz-faire to state capitalism.
Sometimes what isn’t reported can be as interesting as how what is reported is.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hw0QSbDQNo
And then you'll read stories like this which are only about one single part of the trial:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/10/20/darrel...
The funny thing is that I don't think there's a single statement in the second article that's actually factually inaccurate with what USA Today said. They're just repeating what was said in court in that one part of the trial and just not mentioning that some of those statements are completely and utterly bogus for myriad reasons that anyone who watched the trial could tell you.
But damn if it doesn't give you a different impression of how things are going in court than actually watching the thing itself with context.