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> It's a time when we need to rely on trusted news sources That's the rub, isn't it? Who's a "trusted" new source? All the major players have shown biases, c

> It's a time when we need to rely on trusted news sources That's the rub, isn't it? Who's a "trusted" new source? All the major players have shown biases, corruption, and manipulation. Lots of people therefore consider some fly-by-night facebook feed that says what the majors don't to be more "trusted" in response. We shouldn't "rely" on single points of perceived trust, especially in this massive for-profit, for-power media industry. We need to be broadly informed from various angles to have a better chance of piecing together a reasonable sense of what's going on.

untog 9y ago
> All the major players have shown biases, corruption, and manipulation. Bunching those together feels disingenuous. Do the New York Times, Washington Post, WSJ, etc etc all have their own perspectives? Sure. That's bias, to an extent. But when have they been corrupt? When have they manipulated their reporting? To put it simply: if a reputable outlet was caught modifying a video of Trump to put words in his mouth it would be a publication-ending scandal. The same is not the case for Infowars. I agree with you that everyone should have as diverse a media diet as they can, but suggesting that every company is as bad as each other is simply inaccurate.
- carry_bit 9y ago
  > To put it simply: if a reputable outlet was caught modifying a video of Trump to put words in his mouth it would be a publication-ending scandal. Caught how? You could show people the original video, but the reputable outlet and its allies would be pushing the narrative that the so-called "original" video is a deep fake produced and pushed by conspiracy theorists. After all, our outlet would never lie, would they? I suspect the scandal would be less publication-ending than you think.
- white-flame 9y ago
  The magnitude of incorrectness/malicousness in reporting is irrelevant to this: No single source will leave you with a broadly-informed understanding, even if by simple way of time/space constraints in their output. Even the simplest of biases affects editorial decisions as to which content to prefer over others. Omissions of viewpoints or of counterpoint example stories means you don't get the big picture, even without some massive media scandal. People scream distrust at media channels for leaving out information they view as critical, and go elsewhere to find those details (for better or worse).
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- syshum 9y ago
  >>But when have they been corrupt? When have they manipulated their reporting? I think this is your bias showing if you believe the New York Times, Washington Post, and WSJ are not just a manipulative in their reporting as CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Do they outright lie, of course not, but they omit things, they choose not to run some stories that do not fit their narrative, they choose to "expose" the most extreme version of the story. The Current Gun Rights debate highlights this nicely for all of them.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    I think CNN was clearly corrupt in the last election cycle. That's pretty well documented (especially helping Hillary against Bernie). It wasn't just "manipulative in their reporting". It was out-and-out helping a campaign win. Are the NYT, WP, and WSJ biased? Sure. Are they corrupt in the sense that CNN was? I haven't seen evidence of it.
    - colordrops 9y ago
      If anything the Washington Post was worse than CNN. They ran 16 anti-Bernie stories in 16 hours [1]. Their outright complete support of Hillary was very obvious. [1] https://fair.org/home/washington-post-ran-16-negative-stories-on-bernie-sanders-in-16-hours/ https://fair.org/home/washington-post-ran-16-negative-storie... NY Times often used spurious polling and statistics to push Hillary. They messaged that Hillary was in the lead before primaries even began based on predicted super delegate numbers. They claimed with over 90% certainty that Hillary would win the election on election day, even when it was obvious to casual observers such as myself that that number was totally wrong. They were trying to manufacture consent.
      - ceejayoz 9y ago
        > They messaged that Hillary was in the lead before primaries even began based on predicted super delegate numbers. Which was true. > They claimed with over 90% certainty that Hillary would win the election on election day, even when it was obvious to casual observers such as myself that that number was totally wrong. Even election day doesn't necessarily prove that "wrong". 90% chance of Hillary winning means a 10% chance of Trump winning. If I draw a red ace of clubs out of a deck of cards, I don't go "that's statistically unlikely, fake news!" It appears that 538's model was better, in hindsight, as he appears to have been correct to give more credence to the chances of a multi-state polling miss. It's not clear the NYT's model was necessarily wrong, through.
JeremyMorgan 9y ago
The problem lies in the motive. News organizations are (not surprisingly) entirely motivated by profit. Breaking even is not enough. Doing well is not enough. Improving profit drastically quarter over quarter is the goal. To do that, you cannot simply "provide news" anymore. You need conflict. You need confirmation bias. You need to create a wild, screaming echo chamber that induces panic and fear. You need conflict, even if you have to fudge the details to get it. You need to focus on some things and ignore others to increase it. It's no longer a partisan issue. I'm 40 years old. I remember when you had to really pay attention to catch bias in the news. Do this yourself: go back and look at newsreels from the 80s and 90s. It's almost surreal. They were still biased, but presented information in a factual manner and then tossed in some emotional stuff. Many of them even... showed both sides of the argument. It's weird to watch now. A news network simply cannot run with this format in 2018. Fox News was the leader, they were using bias, fearmongering, and propaganda almost from the start. They enjoyed very high ratings because of it. Now the other side has caught up. Because they had to. It's a mess, but one thing is for sure: we can't trust any of them anymore. Not 100%.
- vollmond 9y ago
  As a political radio host I used to listen to once said (on air, paraphrased from a memory from the early 2000s): "You should doubt and check everything I say. My job is not to inform you or tell you the truth. My job is to keep you listening so advertisers will pay my employer to run their ads."
- colordrops 9y ago
  > News organizations are (not surprisingly) entirely motivated by profit. That's an over-simplication. Sure, Jeff Bezos probably wants to make a profit with his purchase of the Washington Post. But the profits there are probably not his main objective as they are too small to make much of a difference to a person of Bezo's wealth. Bezo's goal is to have a mouthpiece to push his agendas, such as pushing Amazon and trashing Musk properties. So you say that the purpose in doing that is to make more money. But the problem with that line of thinking is that you could reduce almost any action to "profit". You could reach further back and go a level lower and say that making profit is motivated by reproductive fitness, and thus "News organizations are entirely motivated by sex". But at some point you have to let go of the circuitous route from action to final motivation and focus on the immediate drivers of an action. Politics, money, sex, job security, prestige, etc all all motivations for news organizations, as well as many other organizations.
jadedhacker 9y ago
You're right that it's for profit and sensationalism, but it's worse than that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suFzznCHjko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suFzznCHjko
- nunyabuizness 9y ago
  Awesome interview, thanks for the link. The end of the interview where Chomsky describes the Internet as a double-edged sword and (correctly) suggests that it could turn into "a home-marketing service, and a way of marginalizing people even further" is particularly interesting. https://youtu.be/suFzznCHjko?t=27m7s https://youtu.be/suFzznCHjko?t=27m7s
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nylonstrung 9y ago
I think we will need to increasingly rely on cryptographic certifications of authenticity. Instead of disproving what is fake it will be about proving what is real
- robotrout 9y ago
  What does that mean? That my camera will embed a cryptographic certification into the video? I suspect people would be able to disassemble a camera and cause it to certify video that originated in a fake news studio.
  - fellellor 9y ago
    Yes, the requirement isn't that a piece of media came from some digitally signed hardware, but the process of recording involved (idk) sampling from a real world source. I don't know how you would do that in the absence of the real world source, since the recording event would no longer exist.
amoorthy 9y ago
You are correct that all sources have bias. It's difficult for readers to check every article for this and gauge their credibility. So my startup, CivikOwl, built a Chrome extension that makes it easy to check the quality of citations in an article and scores it based on this and other signals. If you're interested check it out: http://www.civikowl.com http://www.civikowl.com. Feedback welcome (If you want to check out beta mobile app hit me up: arjunm at civikowl dot com) (There's also a whole business model behind this that helps news orgs move away from reliance on ads but that's a longer discussion).
darepublic 9y ago
I don't trust any mainstream media source because their biases are so obvious by what they choose and choose not to report.

untog 9y ago

> All the major players have shown biases, corruption, and manipulation. Bunching those together feels disingenuous. Do the New York Times, Washington Post, WSJ, etc etc all have their own perspectives? Sure. That's bias, to an extent. But when have they been corrupt? When have they manipulated their reporting? To put it simply: if a reputable outlet was caught modifying a video of Trump to put words in his mouth it would be a publication-ending scandal. The same is not the case for Infowars. I agree with you that everyone should have as diverse a media diet as they can, but suggesting that every company is as bad as each other is simply inaccurate.

carry_bit 9y ago
> To put it simply: if a reputable outlet was caught modifying a video of Trump to put words in his mouth it would be a publication-ending scandal. Caught how? You could show people the original video, but the reputable outlet and its allies would be pushing the narrative that the so-called "original" video is a deep fake produced and pushed by conspiracy theorists. After all, our outlet would never lie, would they? I suspect the scandal would be less publication-ending than you think.
white-flame 9y ago
The magnitude of incorrectness/malicousness in reporting is irrelevant to this: No single source will leave you with a broadly-informed understanding, even if by simple way of time/space constraints in their output. Even the simplest of biases affects editorial decisions as to which content to prefer over others. Omissions of viewpoints or of counterpoint example stories means you don't get the big picture, even without some massive media scandal. People scream distrust at media channels for leaving out information they view as critical, and go elsewhere to find those details (for better or worse).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
syshum 9y ago
>>But when have they been corrupt? When have they manipulated their reporting? I think this is your bias showing if you believe the New York Times, Washington Post, and WSJ are not just a manipulative in their reporting as CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Do they outright lie, of course not, but they omit things, they choose not to run some stories that do not fit their narrative, they choose to "expose" the most extreme version of the story. The Current Gun Rights debate highlights this nicely for all of them.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  I think CNN was clearly corrupt in the last election cycle. That's pretty well documented (especially helping Hillary against Bernie). It wasn't just "manipulative in their reporting". It was out-and-out helping a campaign win. Are the NYT, WP, and WSJ biased? Sure. Are they corrupt in the sense that CNN was? I haven't seen evidence of it.
  - colordrops 9y ago
    If anything the Washington Post was worse than CNN. They ran 16 anti-Bernie stories in 16 hours [1]. Their outright complete support of Hillary was very obvious. [1] https://fair.org/home/washington-post-ran-16-negative-stories-on-bernie-sanders-in-16-hours/ https://fair.org/home/washington-post-ran-16-negative-storie... NY Times often used spurious polling and statistics to push Hillary. They messaged that Hillary was in the lead before primaries even began based on predicted super delegate numbers. They claimed with over 90% certainty that Hillary would win the election on election day, even when it was obvious to casual observers such as myself that that number was totally wrong. They were trying to manufacture consent.
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      > They messaged that Hillary was in the lead before primaries even began based on predicted super delegate numbers. Which was true. > They claimed with over 90% certainty that Hillary would win the election on election day, even when it was obvious to casual observers such as myself that that number was totally wrong. Even election day doesn't necessarily prove that "wrong". 90% chance of Hillary winning means a 10% chance of Trump winning. If I draw a red ace of clubs out of a deck of cards, I don't go "that's statistically unlikely, fake news!" It appears that 538's model was better, in hindsight, as he appears to have been correct to give more credence to the chances of a multi-state polling miss. It's not clear the NYT's model was necessarily wrong, through.

JeremyMorgan 9y ago

The problem lies in the motive. News organizations are (not surprisingly) entirely motivated by profit. Breaking even is not enough. Doing well is not enough. Improving profit drastically quarter over quarter is the goal. To do that, you cannot simply "provide news" anymore. You need conflict. You need confirmation bias. You need to create a wild, screaming echo chamber that induces panic and fear. You need conflict, even if you have to fudge the details to get it. You need to focus on some things and ignore others to increase it. It's no longer a partisan issue. I'm 40 years old. I remember when you had to really pay attention to catch bias in the news. Do this yourself: go back and look at newsreels from the 80s and 90s. It's almost surreal. They were still biased, but presented information in a factual manner and then tossed in some emotional stuff. Many of them even... showed both sides of the argument. It's weird to watch now. A news network simply cannot run with this format in 2018. Fox News was the leader, they were using bias, fearmongering, and propaganda almost from the start. They enjoyed very high ratings because of it. Now the other side has caught up. Because they had to. It's a mess, but one thing is for sure: we can't trust any of them anymore. Not 100%.

vollmond 9y ago
As a political radio host I used to listen to once said (on air, paraphrased from a memory from the early 2000s): "You should doubt and check everything I say. My job is not to inform you or tell you the truth. My job is to keep you listening so advertisers will pay my employer to run their ads."
colordrops 9y ago
> News organizations are (not surprisingly) entirely motivated by profit. That's an over-simplication. Sure, Jeff Bezos probably wants to make a profit with his purchase of the Washington Post. But the profits there are probably not his main objective as they are too small to make much of a difference to a person of Bezo's wealth. Bezo's goal is to have a mouthpiece to push his agendas, such as pushing Amazon and trashing Musk properties. So you say that the purpose in doing that is to make more money. But the problem with that line of thinking is that you could reduce almost any action to "profit". You could reach further back and go a level lower and say that making profit is motivated by reproductive fitness, and thus "News organizations are entirely motivated by sex". But at some point you have to let go of the circuitous route from action to final motivation and focus on the immediate drivers of an action. Politics, money, sex, job security, prestige, etc all all motivations for news organizations, as well as many other organizations.

jadedhacker 9y ago

You're right that it's for profit and sensationalism, but it's worse than that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suFzznCHjko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suFzznCHjko

nunyabuizness 9y ago
Awesome interview, thanks for the link. The end of the interview where Chomsky describes the Internet as a double-edged sword and (correctly) suggests that it could turn into "a home-marketing service, and a way of marginalizing people even further" is particularly interesting. https://youtu.be/suFzznCHjko?t=27m7s https://youtu.be/suFzznCHjko?t=27m7s

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nylonstrung 9y ago

I think we will need to increasingly rely on cryptographic certifications of authenticity. Instead of disproving what is fake it will be about proving what is real

robotrout 9y ago
What does that mean? That my camera will embed a cryptographic certification into the video? I suspect people would be able to disassemble a camera and cause it to certify video that originated in a fake news studio.
- fellellor 9y ago
  Yes, the requirement isn't that a piece of media came from some digitally signed hardware, but the process of recording involved (idk) sampling from a real world source. I don't know how you would do that in the absence of the real world source, since the recording event would no longer exist.

amoorthy 9y ago

You are correct that all sources have bias. It's difficult for readers to check every article for this and gauge their credibility. So my startup, CivikOwl, built a Chrome extension that makes it easy to check the quality of citations in an article and scores it based on this and other signals. If you're interested check it out: http://www.civikowl.com http://www.civikowl.com. Feedback welcome (If you want to check out beta mobile app hit me up: arjunm at civikowl dot com) (There's also a whole business model behind this that helps news orgs move away from reliance on ads but that's a longer discussion).

darepublic 9y ago

I don't trust any mainstream media source because their biases are so obvious by what they choose and choose not to report.