6 ms·

I don't understand how thick headed the mainstream media (MSM) seems to be in not getting it. This "upset" win of Trump (upset in the sense that it didn't play

by msravi 10y ago

I don't understand how thick headed the mainstream media (MSM) seems to be in not getting it. This "upset" win of Trump (upset in the sense that it didn't play by the MSM's wishes) was not an isolated incident - it's happened in India (2014), it happened in UK (Brexit), and it has been repeated in the US. The fundamental driver for all three instances has been the removal of all filters on social media. The problem was that for too long the MSM used their power to filter content to its readers/viewers, and the filter was tuned by a group that wanted to script reality in a form that they wished to see come to fruition, even if their stand was hypocritical. So for example, you'd see a huge hue and cry in the MSM about how freedom of expression was being harmed because a right wing outfit threatened someone for speaking out against a majority religion, and yet, when someone spoke out against Islam, and Islamic groups placed a bounty on his head, the same MSM would just go silent. It is this blatant hypocrisy that finally got them. And now, with social media, for the first time people have access to unfiltered news and can form their own opinions. And for better or worse, the hypocrisy of the MSM is glaringly obvious for people who have access to multiple viewpoints on an incident - not just a filtered viewpoint. With the hypocrisy bare, it's basically been a revolt against the established media. And unless the established media takes it upon themselves to be more honest in whatever stand they take, this is going to repeat, because, people aren't fools you know.

bryanlarsen 10y ago
"yet, when someone spoke out against Islam, and Islamic groups placed a bounty on his head, the same MSM would just go silent." Salmon Rushdie, Charlie Hebdo and Jyllands–Posten all seem to be a cause célèbre of the liberal media even though the liberal media would otherwise despise Charlie Hebdo.
- lagadu 10y ago
  That was only true until the refugee crisis gained momentum in the news cycles. You'll have troubling finding a peep defending the person and groups you listed in most international, big name media.
csydas 10y ago
I agree, with a "but", however. It's not just that now there are more points of views to reference and understand, it's that now people do have the ability to reinforce their beliefs with articles and commentaries from virtually anywhere on the planet. While this has eroded what was an openly more liberal western media influence, it's what is seeping in through the cracks isn't exactly concrete journalism either. Ease of access to information is a good thing, and I am in no way condemning or suggesting that the freedom of access to information we have is bad; but we also have a large public that isn't very well versed in how to do research for themselves. With mass media no longer serving as gatekeepers for information and everyone just finding sources for themselves, we're in the middle of what I'd consider a very arrogant age where we assume we are experts on virtually any subject because we can find information on it so quickly. We're ready to defend any position because, odds are, there's probably supporting evidence for it somewhere, if you just search long enough. And it happens regardless of political affiliation - outside of politics, you'll see such debates all the time on Facebook or forums with people constantly just posting citation lists at one another without actually taking the time to understand what the information they're citing actually means, if it's relevant, or processing it. Mass media probably could stand to tone down the commentary and go back to facts - it would be nice, and we do occasionally get some really good pieces of journalism as a result of an editorial/opinion piece, but some more bare facts info would probably be better. But at the same time, people like the opinionated stuff, as long as the opinion is congruent with the viewer's own opinion. Not only that, but the opinion stuff sells; what was yelling at the TV screen is now screaming at the laptop screen while typing up a post furiously on Facebook. But as a populous, we are complicit in it as well - the information available to us has made us very arrogant and very hard-headed/hard-hearted, since no matter what position we take, we know there's likely evidence enough to support it and to keep going without concession. Yes, this year the media got caught with its pants down because they didn't appreciate the fact that they now have completely lost their position as gatekeepers. But it's not just media hypocrisy that is causing these changes, it's a world that more than ever is ready to fight and is armed with a whole new wave of information. I don't know what major media's role is going to be in the years going forward - I do hope though that as people, we get past our arrogant stage of believing we know everything. The whole world is basically a bunch of college freshmen right now having just passed their first semester - we think we know all there is to know, and need to have the humility beat into us with the cudgel that is how much we don't know.
pg314 10y ago
Yes, there are biases in e.g. the NYT and Washington Post. However, in terms of objectivity, they are miles ahead of the "unfiltered news" on social media. The written press try to check their sources, and hedge their statements if they are not certain. I admit that they do sometimes filter some stories that go against their beliefs/interests. However, they have things like op-eds that often contain different perspectives. If you look at the "unfiltered news" on social media, most of it starts from a tidbit of information and then twists it to fit whatever narrative they are trying to promote. On top of that, in the social media bubble, you literally never get exposed to contrasting opinions. As an example, a week ago Wikileaks leaked a mail about 'spirit cooking', and tweeted a misleading message. That got picked up by 'news' stories on social media and turned into some satanic ritual. It even got mentions on Fox News. If you were trying to figure out what 'spirit cooking' really was, in the first days the first few pages of google were only links to dubious websites reinforcing that it was some satanic ritual (with authoritative sounding names like usapoliticstoday.com). Only later did you get links to sites debunking the story. I very much doubt that the average reader of these stories ever even went to Google to check the background story. You say people aren't fools. I would say people are easily fooled. Add to this active disinformation campaigns (alt-right 'news' websites, twitter bots, troll farms), a constant drip of easily twisted Wikileak emails and an FBI director putting his whole weight on the scale during the last week of the election, and you get this disastrous election result.
- msravi 10y ago
  I'll repeat what I said in response to another comment: I think you're underestimating the intelligence of people. We like to think that we're much better than the average Joe at separating the wheat from the chaff, but the truth is that the average Joe just isn't so bad at it either - or at least, isn't much worse than an editor sitting in his echo chamber. If I look at my twitter feed now, for example, I have a bunch of tweets criticizing a new decision of the government to withdraw high-denomination currencies (I'm from India), and for every such tweet there are others that are calling out the fallacies of the argument put forth. And vice versa. Gives me all the viewpoints I need to form an opinion.
  - 10y ago
Kurtz79 10y ago
Can't speak for the US, but the Brexit result in large part was driven by "traditional" media, in the form of tabloids that have a large circulation among the bulk of Brexit supporters and have long held nationalist and anti-EU positions.
dcposch 10y ago
> I don't understand how thick headed the mainstream media (MSM) seems to be in not getting it. This "upset" win of Trump (upset in the sense that it didn't play by the MSM's wishes) was not an isolated incident - it's happened in India (2014), it happened in UK (Brexit), and it has been repeated in the US. Hubris. Hubris, to a hilarious degree. Here's a story published 72 hours ago: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/election-day-things-look-good-for-democrats_us_5821cb07e4b0d9ce6fbe91e4 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/election-day-things-look... The first sentence says Hillary has a "98.2 percent chance of winning the presidency". It only gets better from there.
- caseysoftware 10y ago
  I bet against Hillary starting in May. I was nervous in October when the "grab them" audio came out but I stuck with it. Buffet's rule of going opposite the analysis that everyone knows can work out well. Turn out you can make a lot of money betting $5 per electoral vote..
- yk 10y ago
  > The first sentence says Hillary has a "98.2 percent chance of winning the presidency". It only gets better from there. That is why physicists demand 99.99% (three sigma) significance before they are calling it hints. The thing is, it is absolutely true that (some) polling models predicted a 98% chance of an Hillary win. It is just the problem that these models have trouble to predict the behavior of Trump voters. And frankly that is the problem with models. I have predicted, on reddit, that Trump would win. And I managed to do that precisely by not having a model, I just looked at the model outputs of Real Clear Politics and added a fudge factor, because usually models underestimate right wing populists, for perfectly understandable reasons. However, having a model means that you can not just add in a fudge factor, honesty demands that you have to justify each and every parameter and actually all forecasts where I did bother to look, did that. But the thing is at rather uncertain predictions like 98% the fudge factors reign.
id 10y ago
If the Facebook filter bubble and new non-mainstream media outlets like infowars are the new narrative, good luck world. You will need it.
matt4077 10y ago
It's sad how this fetishization of "objectivity" has spread – unlike other urban legends, even smart people have bought into it. The idea already breaks down because journalists have to make judgements when deciding on what to print – page space is limited, and that holds for the digital realm as well, if you include the prominence a story gets. It appears these critics want journalists to judge everything without deference to prior knowledge. When they get an anonymous letter saying Obama kills puppies, it deserves the same billing as press release by the CDC about the recommended flu shots. Because it's "bias" to consider the CDC a more reliable source, or not to question the existence of this supposed "flu". I don't know the example you're mentioning. I knew about the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and I learnt about it from mainstream sources. There are many clerics in islam, and maybe, in your example, it wasn't reported because it's some self-declared mufti whose opinion has no actual weight in islam? Or maybe it's a man-bites-dog situation: the intolerance within islam is well known and not "news", whereas we still hold domestic organization to a higher standard, as we should. So here we are now. Everyone is equal. Facebook gives "the average joe (janes need not apply)" the same tools as the NYT. Let me ask you: are we better for it? Do you believe you are better informed reading a random twitter feed instead of having a subscription to the NYT or WSJ? The answer is pretty obvious. Even Republicans marvel how easy it was to elevate what amounts to a random youtube comment threat to the national conversation. Grandpa's forwards, previously laughed at with their caps lock stuck and a tenuous grasp of basic grammar will soon be turned into laws.
SonicSoul 10y ago
I'd like to believe this. You seem to paint a picture of each person having objective view of reality but that has not been the case in my experience watching the online discourse. Voters on each side of the fence were so far up their asses they couldn't fathom to give a shred of doubt to their own views. The liberals had the blind spots outlined in OP article while the conservative actually believed Obama is a Muslim, he never went to law school, Hillary killed our soldiers and sent secret emails to Russia. So if the news were indeed unfiltered both sides would have some objective insight and lean one way or another, instead completely dismissing the other side as fascist or criminal.

by msravi 10y ago

bryanlarsen 10y ago

"yet, when someone spoke out against Islam, and Islamic groups placed a bounty on his head, the same MSM would just go silent." Salmon Rushdie, Charlie Hebdo and Jyllands–Posten all seem to be a cause célèbre of the liberal media even though the liberal media would otherwise despise Charlie Hebdo.

lagadu 10y ago
That was only true until the refugee crisis gained momentum in the news cycles. You'll have troubling finding a peep defending the person and groups you listed in most international, big name media.

csydas 10y ago

I agree, with a "but", however. It's not just that now there are more points of views to reference and understand, it's that now people do have the ability to reinforce their beliefs with articles and commentaries from virtually anywhere on the planet. While this has eroded what was an openly more liberal western media influence, it's what is seeping in through the cracks isn't exactly concrete journalism either. Ease of access to information is a good thing, and I am in no way condemning or suggesting that the freedom of access to information we have is bad; but we also have a large public that isn't very well versed in how to do research for themselves. With mass media no longer serving as gatekeepers for information and everyone just finding sources for themselves, we're in the middle of what I'd consider a very arrogant age where we assume we are experts on virtually any subject because we can find information on it so quickly. We're ready to defend any position because, odds are, there's probably supporting evidence for it somewhere, if you just search long enough. And it happens regardless of political affiliation - outside of politics, you'll see such debates all the time on Facebook or forums with people constantly just posting citation lists at one another without actually taking the time to understand what the information they're citing actually means, if it's relevant, or processing it. Mass media probably could stand to tone down the commentary and go back to facts - it would be nice, and we do occasionally get some really good pieces of journalism as a result of an editorial/opinion piece, but some more bare facts info would probably be better. But at the same time, people like the opinionated stuff, as long as the opinion is congruent with the viewer's own opinion. Not only that, but the opinion stuff sells; what was yelling at the TV screen is now screaming at the laptop screen while typing up a post furiously on Facebook. But as a populous, we are complicit in it as well - the information available to us has made us very arrogant and very hard-headed/hard-hearted, since no matter what position we take, we know there's likely evidence enough to support it and to keep going without concession. Yes, this year the media got caught with its pants down because they didn't appreciate the fact that they now have completely lost their position as gatekeepers. But it's not just media hypocrisy that is causing these changes, it's a world that more than ever is ready to fight and is armed with a whole new wave of information. I don't know what major media's role is going to be in the years going forward - I do hope though that as people, we get past our arrogant stage of believing we know everything. The whole world is basically a bunch of college freshmen right now having just passed their first semester - we think we know all there is to know, and need to have the humility beat into us with the cudgel that is how much we don't know.

pg314 10y ago

Yes, there are biases in e.g. the NYT and Washington Post. However, in terms of objectivity, they are miles ahead of the "unfiltered news" on social media. The written press try to check their sources, and hedge their statements if they are not certain. I admit that they do sometimes filter some stories that go against their beliefs/interests. However, they have things like op-eds that often contain different perspectives. If you look at the "unfiltered news" on social media, most of it starts from a tidbit of information and then twists it to fit whatever narrative they are trying to promote. On top of that, in the social media bubble, you literally never get exposed to contrasting opinions. As an example, a week ago Wikileaks leaked a mail about 'spirit cooking', and tweeted a misleading message. That got picked up by 'news' stories on social media and turned into some satanic ritual. It even got mentions on Fox News. If you were trying to figure out what 'spirit cooking' really was, in the first days the first few pages of google were only links to dubious websites reinforcing that it was some satanic ritual (with authoritative sounding names like usapoliticstoday.com). Only later did you get links to sites debunking the story. I very much doubt that the average reader of these stories ever even went to Google to check the background story. You say people aren't fools. I would say people are easily fooled. Add to this active disinformation campaigns (alt-right 'news' websites, twitter bots, troll farms), a constant drip of easily twisted Wikileak emails and an FBI director putting his whole weight on the scale during the last week of the election, and you get this disastrous election result.

msravi 10y ago
I'll repeat what I said in response to another comment: I think you're underestimating the intelligence of people. We like to think that we're much better than the average Joe at separating the wheat from the chaff, but the truth is that the average Joe just isn't so bad at it either - or at least, isn't much worse than an editor sitting in his echo chamber. If I look at my twitter feed now, for example, I have a bunch of tweets criticizing a new decision of the government to withdraw high-denomination currencies (I'm from India), and for every such tweet there are others that are calling out the fallacies of the argument put forth. And vice versa. Gives me all the viewpoints I need to form an opinion.
- 10y ago

Kurtz79 10y ago

Can't speak for the US, but the Brexit result in large part was driven by "traditional" media, in the form of tabloids that have a large circulation among the bulk of Brexit supporters and have long held nationalist and anti-EU positions.

dcposch 10y ago

> I don't understand how thick headed the mainstream media (MSM) seems to be in not getting it. This "upset" win of Trump (upset in the sense that it didn't play by the MSM's wishes) was not an isolated incident - it's happened in India (2014), it happened in UK (Brexit), and it has been repeated in the US. Hubris. Hubris, to a hilarious degree. Here's a story published 72 hours ago: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/election-day-things-look-good-for-democrats_us_5821cb07e4b0d9ce6fbe91e4 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/election-day-things-look... The first sentence says Hillary has a "98.2 percent chance of winning the presidency". It only gets better from there.

caseysoftware 10y ago
I bet against Hillary starting in May. I was nervous in October when the "grab them" audio came out but I stuck with it. Buffet's rule of going opposite the analysis that everyone knows can work out well. Turn out you can make a lot of money betting $5 per electoral vote..
yk 10y ago
> The first sentence says Hillary has a "98.2 percent chance of winning the presidency". It only gets better from there. That is why physicists demand 99.99% (three sigma) significance before they are calling it hints. The thing is, it is absolutely true that (some) polling models predicted a 98% chance of an Hillary win. It is just the problem that these models have trouble to predict the behavior of Trump voters. And frankly that is the problem with models. I have predicted, on reddit, that Trump would win. And I managed to do that precisely by not having a model, I just looked at the model outputs of Real Clear Politics and added a fudge factor, because usually models underestimate right wing populists, for perfectly understandable reasons. However, having a model means that you can not just add in a fudge factor, honesty demands that you have to justify each and every parameter and actually all forecasts where I did bother to look, did that. But the thing is at rather uncertain predictions like 98% the fudge factors reign.

id 10y ago

If the Facebook filter bubble and new non-mainstream media outlets like infowars are the new narrative, good luck world. You will need it.

matt4077 10y ago

It's sad how this fetishization of "objectivity" has spread – unlike other urban legends, even smart people have bought into it. The idea already breaks down because journalists have to make judgements when deciding on what to print – page space is limited, and that holds for the digital realm as well, if you include the prominence a story gets. It appears these critics want journalists to judge everything without deference to prior knowledge. When they get an anonymous letter saying Obama kills puppies, it deserves the same billing as press release by the CDC about the recommended flu shots. Because it's "bias" to consider the CDC a more reliable source, or not to question the existence of this supposed "flu". I don't know the example you're mentioning. I knew about the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and I learnt about it from mainstream sources. There are many clerics in islam, and maybe, in your example, it wasn't reported because it's some self-declared mufti whose opinion has no actual weight in islam? Or maybe it's a man-bites-dog situation: the intolerance within islam is well known and not "news", whereas we still hold domestic organization to a higher standard, as we should. So here we are now. Everyone is equal. Facebook gives "the average joe (janes need not apply)" the same tools as the NYT. Let me ask you: are we better for it? Do you believe you are better informed reading a random twitter feed instead of having a subscription to the NYT or WSJ? The answer is pretty obvious. Even Republicans marvel how easy it was to elevate what amounts to a random youtube comment threat to the national conversation. Grandpa's forwards, previously laughed at with their caps lock stuck and a tenuous grasp of basic grammar will soon be turned into laws.

SonicSoul 10y ago

I'd like to believe this. You seem to paint a picture of each person having objective view of reality but that has not been the case in my experience watching the online discourse. Voters on each side of the fence were so far up their asses they couldn't fathom to give a shred of doubt to their own views. The liberals had the blind spots outlined in OP article while the conservative actually believed Obama is a Muslim, he never went to law school, Hillary killed our soldiers and sent secret emails to Russia. So if the news were indeed unfiltered both sides would have some objective insight and lean one way or another, instead completely dismissing the other side as fascist or criminal.