6 ms·

Why the Public Can't Read the Press

83 points by gabbo 11y ago

bstanfield 11y ago
Fantastic, fantastic read.
jensen123 11y ago
Interesting article. However, at the end there is this idea that the government should fund news reporting. I grew up in Norway where the government did exactly that (the only TV channel when I was a kid was run by the government). Thing is, that government funded news outlet almost never said anything really critical about the government.
- antimagic 11y ago
  This type of arrangement does actually exist already. The BBC in the UK, and the ABC in Australia are both openly critical of governments - I know that the political right in Australia finds the ABC overly biased to the left, and the political left finds it overly biased to the right (although the right seems to be a bit more serious about this - they routinely try to hamstring the ABC when in power, whereas the left tends to increase funding). Anyway, the point is that publicly funded broadcasters can and do criticise their governments.
  - cbd1984 11y ago
    > Anyway, the point is that publicly funded broadcasters can and do criticise their governments. But only to a certain point.
    - VLM 11y ago
      You need to provide a concrete example. I agree with you and one concrete example was the BBC coverage of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum was cringeworthy in its level of intense propagandistic sophistic bias. London told them what to write, and they rolled and wrote what they were told, to the letter. For a news outlet with an otherwise excellent reputation it was truly awful. Possibly they did such a juvenile job of political propaganda spreading as a form of civil disobedience, which would be kind of brave of them.
      - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
        The BBC is more like a collection of fiefdoms than a single entity with a well-defined editorial policy. So it's not good at being consistent. But as a rule it's pro-Establishment - sometimes smarmily so - with occasional progressive breakouts. Generally the media in the UK are terrible, with a definite right-wing slant, even from supposedly left-leaning dailies like The Guardian = which practically exploded with rage and 'What's wrong with all you peasants?" indignation when Corbyn was elected to lead the Labour party. Unfortunately racism and hate have a big audience. The Murdoch papers and The Mail would have no influence if people decided they were trash and stopped buying them. But no one ever went bust pandering to lowest-common-denominator smear-and-fear journalism.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    As do the Norwegian one. The claim that they leave the left alone have been a empty refrain from the "libertarian" right for a generation. Their real beef that it is funded by a fee rather than "commercially", as they have a fervent belief in only paying for something they use (and clearly they don't "use" the national broadcaster).
    - reitanqild 11y ago
      I'm one of the many who thinks that Norwegian press, including state TV, is heavily biased towards the left. I've had to change few of my strongly held beliefs a few times but I currently maintain the view stated above. Feel free to check my posting history and feel free to dismiss my view afterwards : )
  - oconnore 11y ago
    They also don't need to be critical. Being critical is necessarily editorializing, which we have no shortage of. The shortage is of hard journalism.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    Regardless of what a politician says, if they try to increase the funding (or keep program alive) then they like it and their complaint is pro-forma only. Its fun to watch floor speeches in the US then see what they actually amended the funding bill to be.
  - vlehto 11y ago
    Finland has YLE. It's good to have. But it's a mess really. Their most recent stuff is called YLE kioski. Click bait website combined with TV show discussing click bait stuff. YLE tries to be neutral, but when that fails they are obviously left leaning. All this while bleeding money by running three separate TV channels and buying broadcasting from a monopoly company they created themselves.
- roel_v 11y ago
  Article proposes limited-time contracts though, quite different from the old (and failed) state-run media organizations we used to have across Europe.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  It is theoretically possible to have a news channel completely separate from government but funded by the government? It works for the federal reserve, why cannot it work for news?
  - mahouse 11y ago
    Of course, don't you know RT?
  - corin_ 11y ago
    In theory the UK has that with the BBC (albeit more than "a news channel" is included, and albeit that it's funded by a separate license fee), the problem is you still have ways for the Government to pressure an independant organisation, by implicitly or explicitly threatening to cut or offering to boost budgets.
    - littletimmy 11y ago
      Something like the BBC is what I had in mind. I know it is not perfect, but I like the BBC more than any other news channel. Very professional, nothing is sensationalized, extensive news coverage, and good interviews.
      - protomyth 11y ago
        I listened to the Business News on BBC Worldwide on SirusXM one night. A more left-leaning broadcast would be pretty hard. I found it pretty biased. I turn into the BBC for breaking news, but their analysis is biased.
        Someone1234 11y ago
        The BBC isn't biased, they're just British, and the UK has a known liberal bias (along with all of Europe). In the same way that the BBC tells things from a Western-European perspective, that isn't an organisational bias, that is a national one. Even the US's left wing party (Democrats) would be considered right wing in the UK (and you can compare/contrast the UK Conservative Party with the US Democratic party). Although Sanders/Warren would fit right in. US news by contrast (CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly) to me sound like a Cold War era propaganda machine. Constantly drum-beating the drums of potential war, singing songs about patriotism and bravery, and telling the audience the several things they should be "scared" of tonight (daily moral panic, typically foreigners, but sometimes hackers, terrorists, new fangled technology, photographers, et al).
- 3pt14159 11y ago
  Well I'm in Canada and the CBC is quite critical of our government. There is a way to do it right.
  - psycr 11y ago
    When Harper was in power, sure. Lately, the coverage has been a bit, shall we say, fawning? Regardless, I suspect given the nature of media and ideology, and how fickle our notions of bias really are, that any subtle critique of the CBC is bound to be buried in shibboleth dynamics.
    - 3pt14159 11y ago
      I remember the CBC under Martin and Chretien (both Liberals), it was far from fawning then. Right now the government is doing good things, it's good that they aren't always critical, then it would be a useless signal. And the CBC was pretty even balanced during the first 3 years of CPC leadership, it was only after the Scientist muzzling and the lack of media access / questions that the CBC starting upping the criticism.
    - pakled_engineer 11y ago
      When Herr Harper cut a lot of their funding CBC changed into trying to emulate private media with these political clickbait pieces and celebrity gossip to boost income, haven't seen it since. When I grew up in 80s/90s they would have fascinating documentaries by real scientists most of those disappeared or became political too.
      - psycr 11y ago
        Herr Harper private media political clickbait celebrity gossip real scientists political too The shibboleth speaks! But in all seriousness this is, in so many words, exactly what I was describing.
      - rwj 11y ago
        To be fair to the CBC, they were very critical of Harper from the start, even before the funding cuts.
- goodcanadian 11y ago
  That is an interesting perspective. For myself, I have always been reasonably happy with the BBC, the CBC, and the ABC (British broadcasting corporation, Canadian . . ., Australian . . .) all of which are funded by their respective governments. Before people start to quibble, none of those outlets are perfect. I feel CBC vacillates between being too government friendly and too critical, for example, but overall, they are all pretty good.
johnm1019 11y ago
Would be neat to see these outlets offer individuals non-commercial licenses at heavily reduced prices. I wonder if some parts of the geek population would enjoy access to good(better?) information.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  This might work if they offered this some time later - say a delay of a week might be ok.
  - ashark 11y ago
    I'd love some good monthly, quarterly, or even annual digests on the topics of foreign affairs and certain academic disciplines that I'd like to follow but don't have a great enough interest in to pay for and follow several major journals to find the interesting or important bits. I'd definitely pay for such things—though not nearly as much as the cost of the services the article mentions as I don't need my news to be that fresh or comprehensive, though actual good coverage would be appreciated.
personjerry 11y ago
Where's the news/political startup we need?
- forgottenpass 11y ago
  At the wrong end of a pivot into lowest common denominator trash "reporting". The news websites have already caught up with contemporary web design, selling of user data and subscription services. Does the tech startup playbook even have other moves they're not using?
rubidium 11y ago
"One of the highest-profile acquisitions came in 2011 when Bloomberg—already a behemoth in the business-intelligence sphere—bought a longtime employee-owned trade outlet, the Bureau of National Affairs. BNA, as it is known, went for $990 million. [...] Contrast that with the recent sales and acquisitions of more household names in journalism. The Washington Post was sold to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2013 for $250 million. The Boston Globe sold in 2013 for $70 million. " Thing I learned from this article: There are real paying customers for the news, and --surprise surprise-- it's the people whose jobs depend on it. The bulk of the American public doesn't care enough to pay, and so won't get the full news. I'm not sure that there's a way around this... ideas?
- protomyth 11y ago
  Put an synopsis version of the story outside the firewall and do the in-depth article with reference, graphs, etc. inside the firewall. Paid subscription with a google friendly, ad supported front-end. People who aren't going to pay the fee probably just want the synopsis (executive summary) version anyway.
  - wodenokoto 11y ago
    I don't know why this is being down voted as its a fairly good solution. My idea was to have the general news media subscribe to these services and write delayed smaller summaries, kinda like how they subscribe to Reuter.
  - apozem 11y ago
    Not a bad idea, but it would only work for stories with the appropriate depth to support a longer exploration that would make people feel like they got their money's worth. Some stories just aren't worth more than 300 words and don't lend themselves to major explorations.
    - protomyth 11y ago
      I've thought about this one a bit, and taken as one story what you say is true, but I think there is no such thing as a standalone story. Links to previous stories either by type or area, links to stats (e.g. CDC ranking of mortality), etc. could provide some valuable context as opposed to sensational headlines.
logn 11y ago
What about cities and counties funding newspapers? The author thinks that there's at least some good DC reporting from national papers and non-profit media, but that what suffers are the local papers. Funding at the local level could be provided by ballot initiatives that pull money directly from taxes instead of the general budget. That way local politicians can't influence the news too much. People are pretty passionate about funding libraries. I could see the same people accepting newspaper taxes.
vlehto 11y ago
Here is an idea: First there is put up reddit/quora mashup. List of questions submitted by people. Ranked by up-votes. And you can dismiss questions by clicking "I have seen this". Only catch is that everything has to be a question. Then put bounties and deadlines for the questions. Regular users can pay to increase the bounty. A week after the question is posted comes the deadline. Then every article written as answer gets posted to everybody who up voted the question. Then the money is distributed so that 20% goes to the company running the website, 80% is shared among the authors, closely reflecting the up votes of paying users.

83 points by gabbo 11y ago

Fantastic, fantastic read.

Interesting article. However, at the end there is this idea that the government should fund news reporting. I grew up in Norway where the government did exactly that (the only TV channel when I was a kid was run by the government). Thing is, that government funded news outlet almost never said anything really critical about the government.

antimagic 11y ago
This type of arrangement does actually exist already. The BBC in the UK, and the ABC in Australia are both openly critical of governments - I know that the political right in Australia finds the ABC overly biased to the left, and the political left finds it overly biased to the right (although the right seems to be a bit more serious about this - they routinely try to hamstring the ABC when in power, whereas the left tends to increase funding). Anyway, the point is that publicly funded broadcasters can and do criticise their governments.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  > Anyway, the point is that publicly funded broadcasters can and do criticise their governments. But only to a certain point.
  - VLM 11y ago
    You need to provide a concrete example. I agree with you and one concrete example was the BBC coverage of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum was cringeworthy in its level of intense propagandistic sophistic bias. London told them what to write, and they rolled and wrote what they were told, to the letter. For a news outlet with an otherwise excellent reputation it was truly awful. Possibly they did such a juvenile job of political propaganda spreading as a form of civil disobedience, which would be kind of brave of them.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      The BBC is more like a collection of fiefdoms than a single entity with a well-defined editorial policy. So it's not good at being consistent. But as a rule it's pro-Establishment - sometimes smarmily so - with occasional progressive breakouts. Generally the media in the UK are terrible, with a definite right-wing slant, even from supposedly left-leaning dailies like The Guardian = which practically exploded with rage and 'What's wrong with all you peasants?" indignation when Corbyn was elected to lead the Labour party. Unfortunately racism and hate have a big audience. The Murdoch papers and The Mail would have no influence if people decided they were trash and stopped buying them. But no one ever went bust pandering to lowest-common-denominator smear-and-fear journalism.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  As do the Norwegian one. The claim that they leave the left alone have been a empty refrain from the "libertarian" right for a generation. Their real beef that it is funded by a fee rather than "commercially", as they have a fervent belief in only paying for something they use (and clearly they don't "use" the national broadcaster).
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    I'm one of the many who thinks that Norwegian press, including state TV, is heavily biased towards the left. I've had to change few of my strongly held beliefs a few times but I currently maintain the view stated above. Feel free to check my posting history and feel free to dismiss my view afterwards : )
- oconnore 11y ago
  They also don't need to be critical. Being critical is necessarily editorializing, which we have no shortage of. The shortage is of hard journalism.
- protomyth 11y ago
  Regardless of what a politician says, if they try to increase the funding (or keep program alive) then they like it and their complaint is pro-forma only. Its fun to watch floor speeches in the US then see what they actually amended the funding bill to be.
- vlehto 11y ago
  Finland has YLE. It's good to have. But it's a mess really. Their most recent stuff is called YLE kioski. Click bait website combined with TV show discussing click bait stuff. YLE tries to be neutral, but when that fails they are obviously left leaning. All this while bleeding money by running three separate TV channels and buying broadcasting from a monopoly company they created themselves.
roel_v 11y ago
Article proposes limited-time contracts though, quite different from the old (and failed) state-run media organizations we used to have across Europe.
littletimmy 11y ago
It is theoretically possible to have a news channel completely separate from government but funded by the government? It works for the federal reserve, why cannot it work for news?
- mahouse 11y ago
  Of course, don't you know RT?
- corin_ 11y ago
  In theory the UK has that with the BBC (albeit more than "a news channel" is included, and albeit that it's funded by a separate license fee), the problem is you still have ways for the Government to pressure an independant organisation, by implicitly or explicitly threatening to cut or offering to boost budgets.
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    Something like the BBC is what I had in mind. I know it is not perfect, but I like the BBC more than any other news channel. Very professional, nothing is sensationalized, extensive news coverage, and good interviews.
    - protomyth 11y ago
      I listened to the Business News on BBC Worldwide on SirusXM one night. A more left-leaning broadcast would be pretty hard. I found it pretty biased. I turn into the BBC for breaking news, but their analysis is biased.
      - Someone1234 11y ago
        The BBC isn't biased, they're just British, and the UK has a known liberal bias (along with all of Europe). In the same way that the BBC tells things from a Western-European perspective, that isn't an organisational bias, that is a national one. Even the US's left wing party (Democrats) would be considered right wing in the UK (and you can compare/contrast the UK Conservative Party with the US Democratic party). Although Sanders/Warren would fit right in. US news by contrast (CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly) to me sound like a Cold War era propaganda machine. Constantly drum-beating the drums of potential war, singing songs about patriotism and bravery, and telling the audience the several things they should be "scared" of tonight (daily moral panic, typically foreigners, but sometimes hackers, terrorists, new fangled technology, photographers, et al).
3pt14159 11y ago
Well I'm in Canada and the CBC is quite critical of our government. There is a way to do it right.
- psycr 11y ago
  When Harper was in power, sure. Lately, the coverage has been a bit, shall we say, fawning? Regardless, I suspect given the nature of media and ideology, and how fickle our notions of bias really are, that any subtle critique of the CBC is bound to be buried in shibboleth dynamics.
  - 3pt14159 11y ago
    I remember the CBC under Martin and Chretien (both Liberals), it was far from fawning then. Right now the government is doing good things, it's good that they aren't always critical, then it would be a useless signal. And the CBC was pretty even balanced during the first 3 years of CPC leadership, it was only after the Scientist muzzling and the lack of media access / questions that the CBC starting upping the criticism.
  - pakled_engineer 11y ago
    When Herr Harper cut a lot of their funding CBC changed into trying to emulate private media with these political clickbait pieces and celebrity gossip to boost income, haven't seen it since. When I grew up in 80s/90s they would have fascinating documentaries by real scientists most of those disappeared or became political too.
    - psycr 11y ago
      Herr Harper private media political clickbait celebrity gossip real scientists political too The shibboleth speaks! But in all seriousness this is, in so many words, exactly what I was describing.
    - rwj 11y ago
      To be fair to the CBC, they were very critical of Harper from the start, even before the funding cuts.
goodcanadian 11y ago
That is an interesting perspective. For myself, I have always been reasonably happy with the BBC, the CBC, and the ABC (British broadcasting corporation, Canadian . . ., Australian . . .) all of which are funded by their respective governments. Before people start to quibble, none of those outlets are perfect. I feel CBC vacillates between being too government friendly and too critical, for example, but overall, they are all pretty good.

johnm1019 11y ago

Would be neat to see these outlets offer individuals non-commercial licenses at heavily reduced prices. I wonder if some parts of the geek population would enjoy access to good(better?) information.

danieltillett 11y ago
This might work if they offered this some time later - say a delay of a week might be ok.
- ashark 11y ago
  I'd love some good monthly, quarterly, or even annual digests on the topics of foreign affairs and certain academic disciplines that I'd like to follow but don't have a great enough interest in to pay for and follow several major journals to find the interesting or important bits. I'd definitely pay for such things—though not nearly as much as the cost of the services the article mentions as I don't need my news to be that fresh or comprehensive, though actual good coverage would be appreciated.

personjerry 11y ago

Where's the news/political startup we need?

forgottenpass 11y ago
At the wrong end of a pivot into lowest common denominator trash "reporting". The news websites have already caught up with contemporary web design, selling of user data and subscription services. Does the tech startup playbook even have other moves they're not using?

rubidium 11y ago

"One of the highest-profile acquisitions came in 2011 when Bloomberg—already a behemoth in the business-intelligence sphere—bought a longtime employee-owned trade outlet, the Bureau of National Affairs. BNA, as it is known, went for $990 million. [...] Contrast that with the recent sales and acquisitions of more household names in journalism. The Washington Post was sold to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2013 for $250 million. The Boston Globe sold in 2013 for $70 million. " Thing I learned from this article: There are real paying customers for the news, and --surprise surprise-- it's the people whose jobs depend on it. The bulk of the American public doesn't care enough to pay, and so won't get the full news. I'm not sure that there's a way around this... ideas?

protomyth 11y ago
Put an synopsis version of the story outside the firewall and do the in-depth article with reference, graphs, etc. inside the firewall. Paid subscription with a google friendly, ad supported front-end. People who aren't going to pay the fee probably just want the synopsis (executive summary) version anyway.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  I don't know why this is being down voted as its a fairly good solution. My idea was to have the general news media subscribe to these services and write delayed smaller summaries, kinda like how they subscribe to Reuter.
- apozem 11y ago
  Not a bad idea, but it would only work for stories with the appropriate depth to support a longer exploration that would make people feel like they got their money's worth. Some stories just aren't worth more than 300 words and don't lend themselves to major explorations.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    I've thought about this one a bit, and taken as one story what you say is true, but I think there is no such thing as a standalone story. Links to previous stories either by type or area, links to stats (e.g. CDC ranking of mortality), etc. could provide some valuable context as opposed to sensational headlines.

logn 11y ago

What about cities and counties funding newspapers? The author thinks that there's at least some good DC reporting from national papers and non-profit media, but that what suffers are the local papers. Funding at the local level could be provided by ballot initiatives that pull money directly from taxes instead of the general budget. That way local politicians can't influence the news too much. People are pretty passionate about funding libraries. I could see the same people accepting newspaper taxes.

vlehto 11y ago

Here is an idea: First there is put up reddit/quora mashup. List of questions submitted by people. Ranked by up-votes. And you can dismiss questions by clicking "I have seen this". Only catch is that everything has to be a question. Then put bounties and deadlines for the questions. Regular users can pay to increase the bounty. A week after the question is posted comes the deadline. Then every article written as answer gets posted to everybody who up voted the question. Then the money is distributed so that 20% goes to the company running the website, 80% is shared among the authors, closely reflecting the up votes of paying users.