8 ms·

Wondering if he'd feel the same way had the opposition candidate not used the internet and social media to help overcome the biases of the establishment mainstr

by coolso 9y ago

Wondering if he'd feel the same way had the opposition candidate not used the internet and social media to help overcome the biases of the establishment mainstream media and defeat the candidate Obama endorsed and campaigned for? Suddenly now, probably not coincidentally because of that result, the trend seems to be "social media is really bad guys" among people in the establishment - both government and the media. It's kind of ironic. I find his statements somewhat hypocritical given that the media, and government, has had the monopoly on irresponsibility, bias, putting forth alternative realities, and the Balkanisation of society, until just recently now that people are able to combat it and freely spread information among tens of millions of people instantly and so easily, instead of only getting their information from approved sources without citizens being able to freely discuss, disprove, etc. - e.g., directly from the White House, and a couple of privileged mainstream media organizations that are very in-bed with the government.

craftyguy 9y ago
Meh. Social media has always been a dangerous tool, it's only until relatively recently that the contrast has been turned way up and the danger made very obviously clear.
mozumder 9y ago
The media is the responsible party here. The public are the irresponsible ones. The public's voice should always be silenced in favor of professional media's voice. Remember, the public doesn't have social media editorial guidelines. Professional media does. Professional media reporters confirm facts with multiple sources, which is why they are more trustworthy. The public is simply allowed to lie on social media. This is why you should trust professional media over the public, since the public is irresponsible. Why would anyone trust a social media person that simply lies instead of a professional media organization that confirms facts with multiple sources?
- lbotos 9y ago
  > Why would anyone trust a social media person that simply lies instead of a professional media organization that confirms facts with multiple sources? Because they are "local" or because they confirm their biases. The other day on FB a friend shared a photoshopped Nancy Pelosi tweet (For international folks, she's a US Congress Person). Their comment on the shared photo "Did she really say that?". We live in the age of primary sources, we can easily go to their twitter to confirm. (Wasn't there) We also have great tools that help keep our American Politicians accountable: https://projects.propublica.org/politwoops/ https://projects.propublica.org/politwoops/ (Wasn't deleted either) In the time it took me to confirm that (~15 minutes) 3 people commented agreeing that she was insane for saying it.
  - xamuel 9y ago
    >we can easily go to their twitter to confirm Unless the tweet has been deleted (which it often will have been if it's damning)
    - lbotos 9y ago
      right, but in this case, we do have a resource that tracks deleted tweets. Beyond that, the point still stands, I believe we should always try and corroborate multiple sources (unless you have a primary source), we, the people aren't doing that and just confirming our biases.
- crusso 9y ago
  Honestly, I had a hard time telling whether or not you were being sarcastic. I find the notion that the media can be trusted as being responsible to be inconsistent with my observations. The media is made up of people. They fall along a spectrum of responsible and irresponsible.
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago
    I took it as trolling, and upvoted it accordingly. Or rather I upvoted it because I also had a hard time telling -- and that amuses me.
- chmln 9y ago
  Yeah, but factual reporting isn't necessarily fair reporting. Professional media also had an agenda, and the same set of facts can be presented in many different ways. Facts can be simply omitted, emphasized or underplayed, interpreted in both a positive or a negative way. Not to mention facts are only as good as the sources.
- gt_ 9y ago
  The answer is fairly simple. Media companies compete in ‘access capital’, which they earn through cooperation and partnership with entities they report on, such as government and private interests. Anyone who has worked in media will assure you these relationships make or break a media organization’s survival and success. And these relationships also harbor bias.
- RickJWag 9y ago
  I disagree. The media (left and right) is forever trying to twist things to their narrative. Social media democratizes this. But if I post crazy things all the time, I'll lose balanced followers and will probably pick up biased followers. The national media has little other governance. CNN ran amok for years-- it's time some balance was imposed.
jjtheblunt 9y ago
Absolutely agree. Not sure why your comment is faded/grey when it's kind of observing something unpopular but obvious.
- bitwize 9y ago
  Because Hackernews users are fond of shooting the messenger. If someone posts a truth that Hackernews wishes were not true, they'll be downmodded to oblivion.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Sometimes it's because HN is like a bunch of angry bees, and sometimes it's because your comment sucks.
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't take threads into this extremely repetitive territory. It breaks the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. One reason we have such a guideline is that usually the vote totals don't stay the way they were. Then we end up with a tedious subthread which is garbage in the additional sense that it's no longer connected to the thing it was referring to.
chmln 9y ago
I think there's definitely something in your comment. Similarly, I wonder whether there would be so much activism directed towards fake news, had the "right" candidate won.
bovermyer 9y ago
Generally speaking, the public are uninformed or misinformed. Rarely does the average person bother to fact-check, investigate sources, or otherwise test and validate information. Even rarer still does someone actually offer up proof that they did in fact do their due diligence. Ergo, the public (vis a vis social media) cannot be trusted. Professional media, on the other hand, is crucified whenever it fails to fact-check, investigate sources, or otherwise test and validate information. This is because their entire reason for existing is to provide those services. Just because sometimes professional media sources fail in their mission doesn't mean that their mission is flawed, or that they should give up and let the public handle dissemination of information.
- collyw 9y ago
  "Professional media, on the other hand, is crucified whenever it fails to fact-check" Not in my experience.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - unethical_ban 9y ago
    Dan Rather, Brian Williams, Brian Ross, Rolling Stone UVA story, CNN re: recent Trump misinformation. "Crucified" is strong, but there are consequences. "On the Media" is a great program for analysing some of this behavior. Also, NYTimes Op-ed called it out recently. Frank Bruni, I think.
  - whamlastxmas 9y ago
    Agreed. There are endless examples of politically damaging stories that make headlines for days and are later retracted with no coverage.
bomb199 9y ago
" to help overcome the biases of the establishment mainstream media " Trump won BECAUSE of the biases of the establishment media. https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2016/11/04/study-top-newspapers-give-clinton-email-story-more-coverage-all-other-trump-stories/214309 https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2016/11/04/study-top-n... Can find tons of studies on this, it's an interesting topic. "I find his statements somewhat hypocritical given that the media, and government, has had the monopoly on irresponsibility, bias, putting forth alternative realities, and the Balkanisation of society, until just recently now that people are able to combat it and freely spread information among tens of millions of people instantly and so easily, instead of only getting their information from approved sources without citizens being able to freely discuss, disprove, etc. - e.g., directly from the White House, and a couple of privileged mainstream media organizations that are very in-bed with the government." Look no further than the President on what social media is doing for understanding issues. Somewhere around 90% of his tweets are straight-up lies that people take as truth because he's the President.
- astrodust 9y ago
  Some people take it as the "truth" because he has power, nothing more. They're used to taking their talking points from their superiors, be those the ones in their religious hierarchy, their social circles, or their corporate environment. If the President said gravity didn't exist you can be certain Fox News would be explaining why to its viewers.
- bassman9000 9y ago
  It's worth mentioning https://www.mediamatters.org/about https://www.mediamatters.org/about Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Can find tons of studies on this, it's an interesting topic. Please post. Edit: spelling.
  - bomb199 9y ago
    Hopefully Harvard isn't too progressive: https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud
booleandilemma 9y ago
Flashback to 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html
meritt 9y ago
Your 7-day-old account is being almost exclusively used to push pro-GOP messaging and anti-Obama rhetoric.
- bassman9000 9y ago
  Nothing on the contents of the comment itself? Appeal to authority, or lack of, in this case.
- coolso 9y ago
  > 7-day-old How many days should I wait until I'm allowed to post here? I didn't realize that the age of an account was relevant here, unless the account was clearly a puppet account used for spamming or posting highly inflammatory comments. Mentioning the age of my account reminds me of the old days of internet forums when posters with thousands of posts (the post count and account age being displayed under their avatar) would throw their high post counts and high account ages around in an attempt to stifle viewpoints they disagreed with. > pro-GOP I despise the GOP. > anti-Obama rhetoric Literally one other "anti-Obama" comment aside from this one, neither of which had much "rhetoric" in my opinion, and both of which were received positively in the form of upvotes. Also you failed to mention my negative comments towards W and McCain. > almost exclusively I could probably look through your comments and find something you almost exclusively use your account for but I'd rather just respond to your comment on its merits/lack of merits alone.
mark_l_watson 9y ago
As a life long democrat, I agree with you. President Obama and the Democratic Party machine stole the nomination from Senator Sanders, in my opinion: Chris Mathews in MSNBC did a one hour a night attack on Sanders while the Clinton machine gave Mathew’s wife a ton of money to run for Congress. Vile corruption, in my opinion. I stopped watching any NBC altogether after that. Chris Mathews helped elect Trump and he still has a job. NBC nope.

by coolso 9y ago

craftyguy 9y ago

Meh. Social media has always been a dangerous tool, it's only until relatively recently that the contrast has been turned way up and the danger made very obviously clear.

mozumder 9y ago

The media is the responsible party here. The public are the irresponsible ones. The public's voice should always be silenced in favor of professional media's voice. Remember, the public doesn't have social media editorial guidelines. Professional media does. Professional media reporters confirm facts with multiple sources, which is why they are more trustworthy. The public is simply allowed to lie on social media. This is why you should trust professional media over the public, since the public is irresponsible. Why would anyone trust a social media person that simply lies instead of a professional media organization that confirms facts with multiple sources?

lbotos 9y ago
> Why would anyone trust a social media person that simply lies instead of a professional media organization that confirms facts with multiple sources? Because they are "local" or because they confirm their biases. The other day on FB a friend shared a photoshopped Nancy Pelosi tweet (For international folks, she's a US Congress Person). Their comment on the shared photo "Did she really say that?". We live in the age of primary sources, we can easily go to their twitter to confirm. (Wasn't there) We also have great tools that help keep our American Politicians accountable: https://projects.propublica.org/politwoops/ https://projects.propublica.org/politwoops/ (Wasn't deleted either) In the time it took me to confirm that (~15 minutes) 3 people commented agreeing that she was insane for saying it.
- xamuel 9y ago
  >we can easily go to their twitter to confirm Unless the tweet has been deleted (which it often will have been if it's damning)
  - lbotos 9y ago
    right, but in this case, we do have a resource that tracks deleted tweets. Beyond that, the point still stands, I believe we should always try and corroborate multiple sources (unless you have a primary source), we, the people aren't doing that and just confirming our biases.
crusso 9y ago
Honestly, I had a hard time telling whether or not you were being sarcastic. I find the notion that the media can be trusted as being responsible to be inconsistent with my observations. The media is made up of people. They fall along a spectrum of responsible and irresponsible.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  I took it as trolling, and upvoted it accordingly. Or rather I upvoted it because I also had a hard time telling -- and that amuses me.
chmln 9y ago
Yeah, but factual reporting isn't necessarily fair reporting. Professional media also had an agenda, and the same set of facts can be presented in many different ways. Facts can be simply omitted, emphasized or underplayed, interpreted in both a positive or a negative way. Not to mention facts are only as good as the sources.
gt_ 9y ago
The answer is fairly simple. Media companies compete in ‘access capital’, which they earn through cooperation and partnership with entities they report on, such as government and private interests. Anyone who has worked in media will assure you these relationships make or break a media organization’s survival and success. And these relationships also harbor bias.
RickJWag 9y ago
I disagree. The media (left and right) is forever trying to twist things to their narrative. Social media democratizes this. But if I post crazy things all the time, I'll lose balanced followers and will probably pick up biased followers. The national media has little other governance. CNN ran amok for years-- it's time some balance was imposed.

jjtheblunt 9y ago

Absolutely agree. Not sure why your comment is faded/grey when it's kind of observing something unpopular but obvious.

bitwize 9y ago
Because Hackernews users are fond of shooting the messenger. If someone posts a truth that Hackernews wishes were not true, they'll be downmodded to oblivion.
- astrodust 9y ago
  Sometimes it's because HN is like a bunch of angry bees, and sometimes it's because your comment sucks.
dang 9y ago
Please don't take threads into this extremely repetitive territory. It breaks the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. One reason we have such a guideline is that usually the vote totals don't stay the way they were. Then we end up with a tedious subthread which is garbage in the additional sense that it's no longer connected to the thing it was referring to.

chmln 9y ago

I think there's definitely something in your comment. Similarly, I wonder whether there would be so much activism directed towards fake news, had the "right" candidate won.

bovermyer 9y ago

Generally speaking, the public are uninformed or misinformed. Rarely does the average person bother to fact-check, investigate sources, or otherwise test and validate information. Even rarer still does someone actually offer up proof that they did in fact do their due diligence. Ergo, the public (vis a vis social media) cannot be trusted. Professional media, on the other hand, is crucified whenever it fails to fact-check, investigate sources, or otherwise test and validate information. This is because their entire reason for existing is to provide those services. Just because sometimes professional media sources fail in their mission doesn't mean that their mission is flawed, or that they should give up and let the public handle dissemination of information.

collyw 9y ago
"Professional media, on the other hand, is crucified whenever it fails to fact-check" Not in my experience.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- unethical_ban 9y ago
  Dan Rather, Brian Williams, Brian Ross, Rolling Stone UVA story, CNN re: recent Trump misinformation. "Crucified" is strong, but there are consequences. "On the Media" is a great program for analysing some of this behavior. Also, NYTimes Op-ed called it out recently. Frank Bruni, I think.
- whamlastxmas 9y ago
  Agreed. There are endless examples of politically damaging stories that make headlines for days and are later retracted with no coverage.

bomb199 9y ago

" to help overcome the biases of the establishment mainstream media " Trump won BECAUSE of the biases of the establishment media. https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2016/11/04/study-top-newspapers-give-clinton-email-story-more-coverage-all-other-trump-stories/214309 https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2016/11/04/study-top-n... Can find tons of studies on this, it's an interesting topic. "I find his statements somewhat hypocritical given that the media, and government, has had the monopoly on irresponsibility, bias, putting forth alternative realities, and the Balkanisation of society, until just recently now that people are able to combat it and freely spread information among tens of millions of people instantly and so easily, instead of only getting their information from approved sources without citizens being able to freely discuss, disprove, etc. - e.g., directly from the White House, and a couple of privileged mainstream media organizations that are very in-bed with the government." Look no further than the President on what social media is doing for understanding issues. Somewhere around 90% of his tweets are straight-up lies that people take as truth because he's the President.

astrodust 9y ago
Some people take it as the "truth" because he has power, nothing more. They're used to taking their talking points from their superiors, be those the ones in their religious hierarchy, their social circles, or their corporate environment. If the President said gravity didn't exist you can be certain Fox News would be explaining why to its viewers.
bassman9000 9y ago
It's worth mentioning https://www.mediamatters.org/about https://www.mediamatters.org/about Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Can find tons of studies on this, it's an interesting topic. Please post. Edit: spelling.
- bomb199 9y ago
  Hopefully Harvard isn't too progressive: https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud

booleandilemma 9y ago

Flashback to 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html

meritt 9y ago

Your 7-day-old account is being almost exclusively used to push pro-GOP messaging and anti-Obama rhetoric.

bassman9000 9y ago
Nothing on the contents of the comment itself? Appeal to authority, or lack of, in this case.
coolso 9y ago
> 7-day-old How many days should I wait until I'm allowed to post here? I didn't realize that the age of an account was relevant here, unless the account was clearly a puppet account used for spamming or posting highly inflammatory comments. Mentioning the age of my account reminds me of the old days of internet forums when posters with thousands of posts (the post count and account age being displayed under their avatar) would throw their high post counts and high account ages around in an attempt to stifle viewpoints they disagreed with. > pro-GOP I despise the GOP. > anti-Obama rhetoric Literally one other "anti-Obama" comment aside from this one, neither of which had much "rhetoric" in my opinion, and both of which were received positively in the form of upvotes. Also you failed to mention my negative comments towards W and McCain. > almost exclusively I could probably look through your comments and find something you almost exclusively use your account for but I'd rather just respond to your comment on its merits/lack of merits alone.

mark_l_watson 9y ago

As a life long democrat, I agree with you. President Obama and the Democratic Party machine stole the nomination from Senator Sanders, in my opinion: Chris Mathews in MSNBC did a one hour a night attack on Sanders while the Clinton machine gave Mathew’s wife a ton of money to run for Congress. Vile corruption, in my opinion. I stopped watching any NBC altogether after that. Chris Mathews helped elect Trump and he still has a job. NBC nope.