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Excellent article. However, there is one glaring issue. I completely agree that part of the increasing radicalism among younger Americans is coming from an inc

Excellent article. However, there is one glaring issue. I completely agree that part of the increasing radicalism among younger Americans is coming from an increasing sensationalistic media that will say anything and do anything for clicks. [0] Unfortunately, there is a reason for that. Another absolutely phenomenal article that was written by a 50 year veteran of the news industry is "The Bad News About the News." [1] It describes more in detail precisely why the media has become what it has become. And the answer can be summed up in one word: money. For many decades a small handful of media organizations had an effective monopoly on news, and access to information in general. That entailed a practically endless stream of money. Ethics and integrity cost nothing in a world where money is no concern. But then enter the internet. It, as a competitor to traditional news outlets, started very slow. And that slowness led traditional news media to fail to appreciate its potential. In short order the internet not only showed its potential but turned traditional media outlets borderline obsolete. They died from a fatal case of myopia. And we replaced them with social media which has shown that negative news, partisan news, emotionally charged news, and sensationalized news is what gets clicks. Even better when you combine them together. And in the end, if you can't beat them join them. This has likely only been urged on by the ownership of the news media today. Time Warner owns CNN. Comcast owns NBC. Disney owns ABC. These are not exactly the first names you think of in altruism, which is what valuing an informed public over profitable quarters comes down to. The BBC is a peculiarity. They have ostensibly no profit motive, but I'm not familiar enough with their funding/directives/etc to even try to hypothesize why they've also jumped on the bandwagon. I can say something about ostensibly not for profit organizations in the US like NPR. NPR has been struggling. In the past 10 years alone they've had to buy out contracts and downsize multiple times. The only way they keep afloat is by donations, and mostly large donations. With them barely staying afloat if they publish anything that might cause a corporate donor to pull their support, it would be enough to put the company back in crisis. The company itself ends up beholden to special interests in a way that's even more insidious than Time Warner owning CNN. That's a direct and visible line. The line between donor interests and 'not for profit' organizations is less apparent to many. I'm in no way defending what the news media has become. But like the article emphasizes, I think the first step before judging a group is to try your best to try to genuinely understand why they behave/think the way they do, in lieu of just attaching a label to them and calling them evil. [0] - An image that sums up the state of the media today. https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg [1] - http://csweb.brookings.edu/content/research/essays/2014/bad-news.html http://csweb.brookings.edu/content/research/essays/2014/bad-...

matt4077 9y ago
> [0] - An image that sums up the state of the media today. https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg I see maybe one or two people in that crowd that could be professional photographers or cameramen. It just shows how people in general may prefer whatever sin is implied. And while TV probably gets more attention today, real journalism has always and still does happen mostly at newspapers. The WSJ/NYT/Economist/New Yorker of today are no worse than they ever were. In fact, it's not that long ago that almost all publishers were unabashed propagandists for some cause or party. But it's true that changing economics have roughly halved the revenue journalism has available, and contrary to all the armchair publicists everywhere, we have yet to find a way to stop the profession from further deterioration. Those large organisations above may survive by virtue of their size, and the goodwill of people enamoured with what they represent. But at the local level, many communities will soon have to function without any good sources of news. And voting without information means all the incentives, and the mechanisms, of democracy will seize to function. It's en vogue now to disparage all journalists as hacks of similar low caliber, differing only in the name that signs the cheques they get for pushing their benefactors' viewpoints. But that really doesn't help, because it removes all incentives to do good work. If some journo at The Economist gets "You're a lying puppet sucking Wall Street's dick" on twitter every morning, they'll soon run out of any remaining idealism. So I'd wish people would be as appreciative of good work as they are critical of shoddy work. Highlight the excellent shows on NPR just as often as denouncing the drivel at MSNBC. Note how CNN fires staffers that approved a story they ultimately couldn't prove just as often as reminding everyone how wrong the NYT was about Iraqi WMD 16 years ago.
- indubitable 9y ago
  Here [1] is the New York Times on Watergate, just before the 1972 election and shortly before Nixon would genuinely be impeached. It clearly explains the entire situation without speculation or judgement. It provides all information necessary and pertinent to the issue at hand, nothing more - nothing less. Nearly all statements of fact are well sourced and verifiable. There is the most bare minimum usage of anonymous sources. That is journalistic excellence. Consider their articles today. For instance the first non-opinion article I received when searching specifically for their site and Trump Russia was this [2]. The following 7 statements are the leads to 7 different paragraphs in that story. - "The tactics reflect some of the hard-charging — and polarizing — personalities of Mr. Mueller’s team" - "“They seem to be pursuing this more aggressively, taking a much harder line, than you’d expect to see in a typical white-collar case,”" - "“They are setting a tone. It’s important early on to strike terror in the hearts of people in Washington, or else you will be rolled,”" - "The moves against Mr. Manafort are just a glimpse of the aggressive tactics used by Mr. Mueller and his team of prosecutors " - "The tactics reflect some of the hard-charging — and polarizing — personalities of Mr. Mueller’s team" - "Admirers of Andrew Weissmann, one of the team’s senior prosecutors, describe him as relentless and uncompromising" - "Some lawyers defending people who have been caught up in Mr. Mueller’s investigation privately complain that the special counsel’s team is unwilling to engage in the usual back-and-forth" The piece reads like a trailer for a new low brow crime TV show. There's practically 0 valuable information, but it creates drama and starts building up characters to get readers ready for the next exciting entry. If you didn't get it - this prosecutor, he's a serious hardass - wow! Isn't that incredible!? In case you somehow missed it, they also added a picture of him looking like a hardass with the caption: "Robert S. Mueller III, a former F.B.I director, is known to dislike meandering investigations that languish for years." What a cowboy! The sheriff is in town boys! It's sad that we now find this sort of journalism acceptable. And it's certainly not the reporters' doing it. That article carries no less than 3 names on the byline with 3 contributing reporters as well. It's like blaming developers for a shoddy piece of software. They create it no doubt, but the conditions and direction of which they are operating within are outside of their control so long as they continue to retain their employment there. That Watergate story was phenomenally interesting and informative, but it wouldn't hit the lowest common denominator. For that you need that emotional attachment - the characters, the story, the sensationalism. And so that is what the NYTimes today delivers. I hope that the NYTimes new paywall push is a resounding success. So long as they are a slave to clicks, their quality will continue to deteriorate. [1] - http://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/01/archives/the-watergate-mystery-the-watergate-mystery-after-19-weeks-of.html?mcubz=1 http://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/01/archives/the-watergate-mys... [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/mueller-russia-investigation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/mueller-russi...

matt4077 9y ago

> [0] - An image that sums up the state of the media today. https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg I see maybe one or two people in that crowd that could be professional photographers or cameramen. It just shows how people in general may prefer whatever sin is implied. And while TV probably gets more attention today, real journalism has always and still does happen mostly at newspapers. The WSJ/NYT/Economist/New Yorker of today are no worse than they ever were. In fact, it's not that long ago that almost all publishers were unabashed propagandists for some cause or party. But it's true that changing economics have roughly halved the revenue journalism has available, and contrary to all the armchair publicists everywhere, we have yet to find a way to stop the profession from further deterioration. Those large organisations above may survive by virtue of their size, and the goodwill of people enamoured with what they represent. But at the local level, many communities will soon have to function without any good sources of news. And voting without information means all the incentives, and the mechanisms, of democracy will seize to function. It's en vogue now to disparage all journalists as hacks of similar low caliber, differing only in the name that signs the cheques they get for pushing their benefactors' viewpoints. But that really doesn't help, because it removes all incentives to do good work. If some journo at The Economist gets "You're a lying puppet sucking Wall Street's dick" on twitter every morning, they'll soon run out of any remaining idealism. So I'd wish people would be as appreciative of good work as they are critical of shoddy work. Highlight the excellent shows on NPR just as often as denouncing the drivel at MSNBC. Note how CNN fires staffers that approved a story they ultimately couldn't prove just as often as reminding everyone how wrong the NYT was about Iraqi WMD 16 years ago.

indubitable 9y ago
Here [1] is the New York Times on Watergate, just before the 1972 election and shortly before Nixon would genuinely be impeached. It clearly explains the entire situation without speculation or judgement. It provides all information necessary and pertinent to the issue at hand, nothing more - nothing less. Nearly all statements of fact are well sourced and verifiable. There is the most bare minimum usage of anonymous sources. That is journalistic excellence. Consider their articles today. For instance the first non-opinion article I received when searching specifically for their site and Trump Russia was this [2]. The following 7 statements are the leads to 7 different paragraphs in that story. - "The tactics reflect some of the hard-charging — and polarizing — personalities of Mr. Mueller’s team" - "“They seem to be pursuing this more aggressively, taking a much harder line, than you’d expect to see in a typical white-collar case,”" - "“They are setting a tone. It’s important early on to strike terror in the hearts of people in Washington, or else you will be rolled,”" - "The moves against Mr. Manafort are just a glimpse of the aggressive tactics used by Mr. Mueller and his team of prosecutors " - "The tactics reflect some of the hard-charging — and polarizing — personalities of Mr. Mueller’s team" - "Admirers of Andrew Weissmann, one of the team’s senior prosecutors, describe him as relentless and uncompromising" - "Some lawyers defending people who have been caught up in Mr. Mueller’s investigation privately complain that the special counsel’s team is unwilling to engage in the usual back-and-forth" The piece reads like a trailer for a new low brow crime TV show. There's practically 0 valuable information, but it creates drama and starts building up characters to get readers ready for the next exciting entry. If you didn't get it - this prosecutor, he's a serious hardass - wow! Isn't that incredible!? In case you somehow missed it, they also added a picture of him looking like a hardass with the caption: "Robert S. Mueller III, a former F.B.I director, is known to dislike meandering investigations that languish for years." What a cowboy! The sheriff is in town boys! It's sad that we now find this sort of journalism acceptable. And it's certainly not the reporters' doing it. That article carries no less than 3 names on the byline with 3 contributing reporters as well. It's like blaming developers for a shoddy piece of software. They create it no doubt, but the conditions and direction of which they are operating within are outside of their control so long as they continue to retain their employment there. That Watergate story was phenomenally interesting and informative, but it wouldn't hit the lowest common denominator. For that you need that emotional attachment - the characters, the story, the sensationalism. And so that is what the NYTimes today delivers. I hope that the NYTimes new paywall push is a resounding success. So long as they are a slave to clicks, their quality will continue to deteriorate. [1] - http://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/01/archives/the-watergate-mystery-the-watergate-mystery-after-19-weeks-of.html?mcubz=1 http://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/01/archives/the-watergate-mys... [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/mueller-russia-investigation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/mueller-russi...