4 ms·

I'd add to this a somewhat controversial stance: I'm not sure that the world needs or can sustain journalism as a job anymore. Let me explain a bit. By "can su

I'd add to this a somewhat controversial stance: I'm not sure that the world needs or can sustain journalism as a job anymore. Let me explain a bit. By "can sustain", I mean that the whole point of being a journalist is objective reporting, with cultivating trust as a goal. Without trust, a journalist is no better than a blogger with a writing degree. Except I don't think that trust meaningfully exists anymore. Most news in the largest nations is in the hands of a handful of gargantuan monied interests, and with there being no legal obligation to divorce fact from opinion from advertising, they probably will not, so long as not doing so remains as profitable as it has been. What's the substantial difference between a journalist you can't trust to distill pertinent facts from events, and a random blogger you have no reason to trust in the first place? One makes more money. Maybe. Are you sure you didn't just read a native ad? By "needs", I mean that faced with this loss of trust, individual people are going to have to do what they should have been doing in the first place, namely choosing their news sources carefully and paying more attention to subtle and not-so-subtle bias. It's a huge mistake to rely on media credentials as a proxy for likelihood of telling the truth, yet that is the entire concept of journalism as a career path.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cornholio 8y ago
> people are going to have to do what they should have been doing in the first place, namely choosing their news sources carefully and paying more attention to subtle and not-so-subtle bias. It's a huge mistake to rely on media credentials as a proxy for likelihood of telling the truth, yet that is the entire concept of journalism as a career path. Media credentials are a way to aggregate that trust on the long run and invest decades into building a reputation of integrity. With the expectation that it will be profitable in the future, people will come to rely on you because they know how costly any damage to that reputation is to you. In the model where every internet page is a source that has to vetted individually, the journalists are indeed obsolete but not because they weren't useful; now every citizen must do their own full journalistic investigations before trusting anything written. Most people lack the skills and education to do that work and society is, on the whole, worse off. People will not be doing what "they should be doing in the first place", we will get the misinformation soup that served us with Trump, Brexit, antivaxx and the score of post-truth social ills.
- someguydave 8y ago
  >People will not be doing what "they should be doing in the first place", we will get the misinformation soup that served us with Trump, Brexit, antivaxx and the score of post-truth social ills. This is why Trump won.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Yes, people like to believe the lies of Trump, Brexit, and antivaxxers, and that led to Trump winning. So how do we convince them not to choose comforting lies?
- anon1385 8y ago
  The MMR scare, which is the origin of a lot of the modern antivax movement, was something that was largely created by (UK) newspapers[1]. This was back in the 90s before the subsequent decline in revenue from advertising and competition from online news; it wasn't something that happened due to lack of resources to do fact checking- papers took an active decision to 'campaign' in support of Wakefield and dedicated huge amounts of resources and column inches to the topic. It wan't just a tabloid thing either, most of the media gorged themselves on a festival of misinformation and emotive scare stories for years after the original article had been retracted by most of the authors. You really couldn't have picked a worse example. Brexit is a more complicated topic, but it's worth pointing out that it occurs after a decades long smear campaign by much of the UK media against the EU. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy#Media_role https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy#Media_...
  - someguydave 8y ago
    Also, people actually had reasons for voting for Trump that were not related to the content of fake Facebook posts.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    This sort of thing is why newspapers are going to die and good riddance. Yes the MMR scare was bad reporting of bad science. But this: Brexit is a more complicated topic, but it's worth pointing out that it occurs after a decades long smear campaign by much of the UK media against the EU. ... is just laughable. What you mean is that the UK media, rather unusually for Europe, actually digs up dirt and reports negative stories about the EU. You know, holding government to account, one of the primary functions of journalism. I've noticed lots of people in the rest of Europe like to describe the UK media this way. I find it rather pathetic. Even the head of the EU Parliament after the Brexit vote explained it by saying the people had been "brainwashed" by the media. The only reason it feels to them like the UK press runs a smear campaign against the EU, is that supine and useless European newspapers are all ideologically in bed with it and refuse to publish negative stories at all. I read the German press sometimes and any article that at first may appear to be criticising the EU invariably is actually criticising national governments, often with an explicit or implied appeal to the EU to bring the elected governments into line. EU supporters have got used to dog-like loyalty from the press and act shocked when they read genuine, hard hitting criticism in British newspapers.
golergka 8y ago
> Most news in the largest nations is in the hands of a handful of gargantuan monied interests But they are also at odds with each other, and can gain advantage by exposing one another. Just like with politicians — a true democratic system is designed with crooks and liars in mind, and balances them one against the other.
forapurpose 8y ago
> Most news in the largest nations is in the hands of a handful of gargantuan monied interests That was true for a long time, but the Internet in fact greatly increases the news options: The Internet lowers barrier to entry compared with the old newspaper (presses and distribution costs) and TV (broadcast facilities, spectrum licenses, etc.). My locality has several publications that wouldn't exist without the Internet. Also on larger scales there is the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, ProPublica, etc. etc. etc. Think of the world of IT news; how many of those would make it as print publications? The Internet also makes news from other localities far more available. I can easily read news from all over the world; in fact HN links to it. The Internet and web technologies also lower the cost to free for much news (with all the complications that involves), and allows aggregation and other facilitation. And of all the news sources I've referred to (local, national, international, etc.), think of how incredibly long the list of owners is and how diverse it is.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  Serious question - how many of those many news sources have you taken the time to trace their ownership or influencers? As an example, you mentioned BuzzFeed - did you know that Comcast nee NBCUniversal invested roughly $400M into them[1] in the last couple years? Or that they were caught deleting posts[2] critical of their advertisers in 2015? Did you know that Huffington Post, Engadget, and TechCrunch are all owned by Verizon[3]? I'm not sure the proliferation of sources amounts to much, as many of those sources are hardly independent at the end of the day. What's your favorite flavor of tech news.. Verizon or Comcast? I'm not being fatalistic here, I'm saying that most people don't bother to do this work, and so they aren't aware of how few owners actually exist in the journalism market. This is not a healthy state of affairs. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Funding [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Advertiser_influence_on_editorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Advertiser_influence_... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_Inc
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    That is very informative and helpful; thank you. I wasn't aware or didn't remember all that. I still think there's more diversity now than before the Internet. There are several more publications in my locale, for example, and some are more focused on local public affairs than the leading local newspapers were (which I assume have to appeal to a wider audience). And there are the other sources I mentioned. Do you know if it's objectively worse than before the Internet?
watwut 8y ago
Wasn't most actual past real world journalism opinionated one? There was never period when it was objective in a sense of "fully factual, does not cherry pick, does not ignore point and arguments that don't fit journal worldview". It is likely not even possible.
cf498 8y ago
Trust isnt the only point though. The threat of a decline is full time journalists means also some things will fall through the cracks because no one invests the time to look at it. A good example might be the Snowden documents. They were quite numerous and multiple news agencies put a lot of manpower into actually looking through them.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

cornholio 8y ago

> people are going to have to do what they should have been doing in the first place, namely choosing their news sources carefully and paying more attention to subtle and not-so-subtle bias. It's a huge mistake to rely on media credentials as a proxy for likelihood of telling the truth, yet that is the entire concept of journalism as a career path. Media credentials are a way to aggregate that trust on the long run and invest decades into building a reputation of integrity. With the expectation that it will be profitable in the future, people will come to rely on you because they know how costly any damage to that reputation is to you. In the model where every internet page is a source that has to vetted individually, the journalists are indeed obsolete but not because they weren't useful; now every citizen must do their own full journalistic investigations before trusting anything written. Most people lack the skills and education to do that work and society is, on the whole, worse off. People will not be doing what "they should be doing in the first place", we will get the misinformation soup that served us with Trump, Brexit, antivaxx and the score of post-truth social ills.

someguydave 8y ago
>People will not be doing what "they should be doing in the first place", we will get the misinformation soup that served us with Trump, Brexit, antivaxx and the score of post-truth social ills. This is why Trump won.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Yes, people like to believe the lies of Trump, Brexit, and antivaxxers, and that led to Trump winning. So how do we convince them not to choose comforting lies?
anon1385 8y ago
The MMR scare, which is the origin of a lot of the modern antivax movement, was something that was largely created by (UK) newspapers[1]. This was back in the 90s before the subsequent decline in revenue from advertising and competition from online news; it wasn't something that happened due to lack of resources to do fact checking- papers took an active decision to 'campaign' in support of Wakefield and dedicated huge amounts of resources and column inches to the topic. It wan't just a tabloid thing either, most of the media gorged themselves on a festival of misinformation and emotive scare stories for years after the original article had been retracted by most of the authors. You really couldn't have picked a worse example. Brexit is a more complicated topic, but it's worth pointing out that it occurs after a decades long smear campaign by much of the UK media against the EU. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy#Media_role https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy#Media_...
- someguydave 8y ago
  Also, people actually had reasons for voting for Trump that were not related to the content of fake Facebook posts.
- repolfx 8y ago
  This sort of thing is why newspapers are going to die and good riddance. Yes the MMR scare was bad reporting of bad science. But this: Brexit is a more complicated topic, but it's worth pointing out that it occurs after a decades long smear campaign by much of the UK media against the EU. ... is just laughable. What you mean is that the UK media, rather unusually for Europe, actually digs up dirt and reports negative stories about the EU. You know, holding government to account, one of the primary functions of journalism. I've noticed lots of people in the rest of Europe like to describe the UK media this way. I find it rather pathetic. Even the head of the EU Parliament after the Brexit vote explained it by saying the people had been "brainwashed" by the media. The only reason it feels to them like the UK press runs a smear campaign against the EU, is that supine and useless European newspapers are all ideologically in bed with it and refuse to publish negative stories at all. I read the German press sometimes and any article that at first may appear to be criticising the EU invariably is actually criticising national governments, often with an explicit or implied appeal to the EU to bring the elected governments into line. EU supporters have got used to dog-like loyalty from the press and act shocked when they read genuine, hard hitting criticism in British newspapers.

golergka 8y ago

> Most news in the largest nations is in the hands of a handful of gargantuan monied interests But they are also at odds with each other, and can gain advantage by exposing one another. Just like with politicians — a true democratic system is designed with crooks and liars in mind, and balances them one against the other.

forapurpose 8y ago

> Most news in the largest nations is in the hands of a handful of gargantuan monied interests That was true for a long time, but the Internet in fact greatly increases the news options: The Internet lowers barrier to entry compared with the old newspaper (presses and distribution costs) and TV (broadcast facilities, spectrum licenses, etc.). My locality has several publications that wouldn't exist without the Internet. Also on larger scales there is the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, ProPublica, etc. etc. etc. Think of the world of IT news; how many of those would make it as print publications? The Internet also makes news from other localities far more available. I can easily read news from all over the world; in fact HN links to it. The Internet and web technologies also lower the cost to free for much news (with all the complications that involves), and allows aggregation and other facilitation. And of all the news sources I've referred to (local, national, international, etc.), think of how incredibly long the list of owners is and how diverse it is.

Karunamon 8y ago
Serious question - how many of those many news sources have you taken the time to trace their ownership or influencers? As an example, you mentioned BuzzFeed - did you know that Comcast nee NBCUniversal invested roughly $400M into them[1] in the last couple years? Or that they were caught deleting posts[2] critical of their advertisers in 2015? Did you know that Huffington Post, Engadget, and TechCrunch are all owned by Verizon[3]? I'm not sure the proliferation of sources amounts to much, as many of those sources are hardly independent at the end of the day. What's your favorite flavor of tech news.. Verizon or Comcast? I'm not being fatalistic here, I'm saying that most people don't bother to do this work, and so they aren't aware of how few owners actually exist in the journalism market. This is not a healthy state of affairs. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Funding [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Advertiser_influence_on_editorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Advertiser_influence_... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_Inc
- forapurpose 8y ago
  That is very informative and helpful; thank you. I wasn't aware or didn't remember all that. I still think there's more diversity now than before the Internet. There are several more publications in my locale, for example, and some are more focused on local public affairs than the leading local newspapers were (which I assume have to appeal to a wider audience). And there are the other sources I mentioned. Do you know if it's objectively worse than before the Internet?

watwut 8y ago

Wasn't most actual past real world journalism opinionated one? There was never period when it was objective in a sense of "fully factual, does not cherry pick, does not ignore point and arguments that don't fit journal worldview". It is likely not even possible.

cf498 8y ago

Trust isnt the only point though. The threat of a decline is full time journalists means also some things will fall through the cracks because no one invests the time to look at it. A good example might be the Snowden documents. They were quite numerous and multiple news agencies put a lot of manpower into actually looking through them.