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> But they're not in the same league as Brietbart What concrete evidence leads you to think this is true? What is it about the process that produces "mainstrea

> But they're not in the same league as Brietbart What concrete evidence leads you to think this is true? What is it about the process that produces "mainstream" journalism that you think makes it more reliable than something like Breitbart?

lukev 10y ago
Because it doesn't even pretend to serve the truth instead of a particular agenda. "We are the platform of the alt-right" are words Bannon has used, verbatim. This bias is evident in even a cursory analysis of their headlines on any given day. They ran virtually no stories critical of Trump during the election, and mentioned every single salacious speculation about Clinton. As far as I can tell, they are very nearly the definition of a partisan, biased news organization (i.e, propaganda). And I'm going to go ahead and preempt your "but the MSM is worse!!" response. First of all, it's not. The stories it chooses to cover are demonstrably more diverse than those of Breitbart, and any bias is much more subtle. But even if it did have the same sort of agenda, saying that "CNN is just as bad" doesn't in any way justify that kind of behavior from anyone else. We all need to be doing better. We can't buy into the epistemological relativism that allows us to say that fake news isn't an issue, no matter where it's coming from. Truth is real and truth matters.
- laretluval 10y ago
  I agree with you for the most part. But I invite you to consider why we put so much instinctive faith in NYT/CNN/etc., especially on political topics. What have they done to earn our trust? The fact that they have a neutral tone does not speak to their accuracy. There is big talk about neutralness and impartiality, but do we know that there are effective practices to enforce these things? Have we closely considered the process that produces their content and determined that it maximizes accuracy? I have almost never seen anyone arguing in these terms. I see no reason to believe that standard journalistic practice leads to high accuracy. Consider that the NYT encourages writers to fit stories to a predetermined narrative: "By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line." http://deadline.com/2016/11/shocked-by-trump-new-york-times-finds-time-for-soul-searching-1201852490/ http://deadline.com/2016/11/shocked-by-trump-new-york-times-... Furthermore, consider journalistic practice around quotations--an area where newspapers would want to be extraordinarily accurate, because quotes are easily verified and people expect them to be verbatim. On the contrary, it is standard practice to give paraphrastic, i.e. incorrect, quotations: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=6200 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=6200 None of this is to say NYT is worse than Breitbart, based on my personal judgment. But being better than Breitbart is a pretty low bar. My point is, on what basis do we privilege the old, established media?

lukev 10y ago

Because it doesn't even pretend to serve the truth instead of a particular agenda. "We are the platform of the alt-right" are words Bannon has used, verbatim. This bias is evident in even a cursory analysis of their headlines on any given day. They ran virtually no stories critical of Trump during the election, and mentioned every single salacious speculation about Clinton. As far as I can tell, they are very nearly the definition of a partisan, biased news organization (i.e, propaganda). And I'm going to go ahead and preempt your "but the MSM is worse!!" response. First of all, it's not. The stories it chooses to cover are demonstrably more diverse than those of Breitbart, and any bias is much more subtle. But even if it did have the same sort of agenda, saying that "CNN is just as bad" doesn't in any way justify that kind of behavior from anyone else. We all need to be doing better. We can't buy into the epistemological relativism that allows us to say that fake news isn't an issue, no matter where it's coming from. Truth is real and truth matters.

laretluval 10y ago
I agree with you for the most part. But I invite you to consider why we put so much instinctive faith in NYT/CNN/etc., especially on political topics. What have they done to earn our trust? The fact that they have a neutral tone does not speak to their accuracy. There is big talk about neutralness and impartiality, but do we know that there are effective practices to enforce these things? Have we closely considered the process that produces their content and determined that it maximizes accuracy? I have almost never seen anyone arguing in these terms. I see no reason to believe that standard journalistic practice leads to high accuracy. Consider that the NYT encourages writers to fit stories to a predetermined narrative: "By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line." http://deadline.com/2016/11/shocked-by-trump-new-york-times-finds-time-for-soul-searching-1201852490/ http://deadline.com/2016/11/shocked-by-trump-new-york-times-... Furthermore, consider journalistic practice around quotations--an area where newspapers would want to be extraordinarily accurate, because quotes are easily verified and people expect them to be verbatim. On the contrary, it is standard practice to give paraphrastic, i.e. incorrect, quotations: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=6200 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=6200 None of this is to say NYT is worse than Breitbart, based on my personal judgment. But being better than Breitbart is a pretty low bar. My point is, on what basis do we privilege the old, established media?