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I've seen several people suggest that covering Trump is an unprecedented challenge which news orgs have no understanding of how to handle. This is a good remind

I've seen several people suggest that covering Trump is an unprecedented challenge which news orgs have no understanding of how to handle. This is a good reminder that this isn't true; even a presidency which is exceptional by American standards is well within the familiar scope of international news organizations.

nerfhammer 10y ago
International news organizations are used to covering tin-pot autocracies around the world. Before it just always seemed bemusedly distant.
varjag 10y ago
Yes, apparently the new administration isn't especially different in approach from covering warlords, post-Soviet dictators and Middle-Eastern autocrats.
jerf 10y ago
I realize that it may be a lot more fun and topical to blame Trump, but the HN gestalt has been discussing the increasingly hollowed-out nature of American news reporting for years now. Public trust of the press has been dropping for decades. If this manifests as "hey, we've all got to get back to real reporting", then it will be positive. (Not a mere rhetorical sop; that is genuinely my preferred, best-case outcome.) If this is a socially-acceptable way of saying "we've really got to double-down on the things that have been making HN discuss how crap most of the press' output is and has been causing our public trust to notch down another couple of percent every year for the past couple of decades", then it's just so many words on a screen. Given that people have been commenting that Reuters seems pretty good, which I tend to agree with, if this is a declaration that they're going to join the rest of the media, that's not going to be a positive. Just because you suddenly like the political orientation of the press in the last couple weeks doesn't mean anything has changed. It is still the same shallow, click-bait-driven, hype machine it was last year, it's just that now it's hitting you in a direction that many of you are less prepared to apply skepticism about. That doesn't mean anything's gotten better in the past couple of weeks... in fact as a whole, that is a sign the situation has gotten even worse.
- thegayngler 10y ago
  It's not the same click bait driven hype machine. The press used to be able to cover "real news". However, with their revenues declining many in the media have no choice but to use click bait driven headlines and the like. However, if users show an interest in "real news", the media will cater to that. I'd also argue that most of the people complaining about the media rarely if ever read the news. They sit around making claims like the media lied so that's why I don't read any of it. It's like yes people make mistakes. The news media in particular will generally go out of its way to correct mistakes in coverage or correct a mischaracterization of a story or fix errors. Remember if everyone was just discarded every time they made a mistake at work, there would be no one working. The media and people will make mistakes but you don't discard them simply because they made mistakes especially when they will correct the mistake once they are made aware of said mistake. I would be skeptical of those who don't believe in correcting their own mistakes when they happen and those who think they do no wrong.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Absolutely agreed. Depending on whether that 'you' is actually me or a general reader, I think my comment may have come off wrong. I'm not suggesting that the current tone in US news is a clear improvement, I'm just rejecting the claim that with this election we're in an unprecedented death-of-news situation. The state of most media in the US is deplorable. 'Fake news' sites aside, sources have been abandoned for access, and optimizing cost per click metrics has been interpreted as a reason to run unverified nonsense and press releases under the guise of actual journalism. That's even without the complete failures of domain knowledge, context, and objectivity; the NYT recently left my jaw on the floor with a piece about how US involvement in Honduras is making "the most dangerous place in the world" safer. The legacy of US coups there, and CIA backing of brutal paramilitaries, was not mentioned even once - an unfamiliar reader was left to believe that the country was hellish by its own efforts, and saved by American intervention. Passing that sort of myopia off as a feature story is an ugly reminder of just how bad "good" journalism gets. Good journalism still exists, with some effort. There are sites like The Intercept which report thoroughly and carefully, and which approach stories with a clear and predictable viewpoint - something I greatly prefer to the mock-neutral tone many groups use to bury the inescapable ideological choices of reporting. If we're lucky, Reuters just means they're going to refuse a personal stake in covering US political news. I wouldn't mind a movement towards a more distant, anthropological style of coverage. If Trump's 'opponents' line reminds reporters that good journalism is adversarial to power, we might see some of the old style come back.

nerfhammer 10y ago

International news organizations are used to covering tin-pot autocracies around the world. Before it just always seemed bemusedly distant.

varjag 10y ago

Yes, apparently the new administration isn't especially different in approach from covering warlords, post-Soviet dictators and Middle-Eastern autocrats.

jerf 10y ago

I realize that it may be a lot more fun and topical to blame Trump, but the HN gestalt has been discussing the increasingly hollowed-out nature of American news reporting for years now. Public trust of the press has been dropping for decades. If this manifests as "hey, we've all got to get back to real reporting", then it will be positive. (Not a mere rhetorical sop; that is genuinely my preferred, best-case outcome.) If this is a socially-acceptable way of saying "we've really got to double-down on the things that have been making HN discuss how crap most of the press' output is and has been causing our public trust to notch down another couple of percent every year for the past couple of decades", then it's just so many words on a screen. Given that people have been commenting that Reuters seems pretty good, which I tend to agree with, if this is a declaration that they're going to join the rest of the media, that's not going to be a positive. Just because you suddenly like the political orientation of the press in the last couple weeks doesn't mean anything has changed. It is still the same shallow, click-bait-driven, hype machine it was last year, it's just that now it's hitting you in a direction that many of you are less prepared to apply skepticism about. That doesn't mean anything's gotten better in the past couple of weeks... in fact as a whole, that is a sign the situation has gotten even worse.

thegayngler 10y ago
It's not the same click bait driven hype machine. The press used to be able to cover "real news". However, with their revenues declining many in the media have no choice but to use click bait driven headlines and the like. However, if users show an interest in "real news", the media will cater to that. I'd also argue that most of the people complaining about the media rarely if ever read the news. They sit around making claims like the media lied so that's why I don't read any of it. It's like yes people make mistakes. The news media in particular will generally go out of its way to correct mistakes in coverage or correct a mischaracterization of a story or fix errors. Remember if everyone was just discarded every time they made a mistake at work, there would be no one working. The media and people will make mistakes but you don't discard them simply because they made mistakes especially when they will correct the mistake once they are made aware of said mistake. I would be skeptical of those who don't believe in correcting their own mistakes when they happen and those who think they do no wrong.
Bartweiss 10y ago
Absolutely agreed. Depending on whether that 'you' is actually me or a general reader, I think my comment may have come off wrong. I'm not suggesting that the current tone in US news is a clear improvement, I'm just rejecting the claim that with this election we're in an unprecedented death-of-news situation. The state of most media in the US is deplorable. 'Fake news' sites aside, sources have been abandoned for access, and optimizing cost per click metrics has been interpreted as a reason to run unverified nonsense and press releases under the guise of actual journalism. That's even without the complete failures of domain knowledge, context, and objectivity; the NYT recently left my jaw on the floor with a piece about how US involvement in Honduras is making "the most dangerous place in the world" safer. The legacy of US coups there, and CIA backing of brutal paramilitaries, was not mentioned even once - an unfamiliar reader was left to believe that the country was hellish by its own efforts, and saved by American intervention. Passing that sort of myopia off as a feature story is an ugly reminder of just how bad "good" journalism gets. Good journalism still exists, with some effort. There are sites like The Intercept which report thoroughly and carefully, and which approach stories with a clear and predictable viewpoint - something I greatly prefer to the mock-neutral tone many groups use to bury the inescapable ideological choices of reporting. If we're lucky, Reuters just means they're going to refuse a personal stake in covering US political news. I wouldn't mind a movement towards a more distant, anthropological style of coverage. If Trump's 'opponents' line reminds reporters that good journalism is adversarial to power, we might see some of the old style come back.