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I was thinking it was more of a false appeal to authority, perpetrated by ourselves on ourselves. We tend to think of major media as very authoritative (even if

I was thinking it was more of a false appeal to authority, perpetrated by ourselves on ourselves. We tend to think of major media as very authoritative (even if we don't admit it to ourselves), and therefore tend to accept what they say. Books and permanent media seem to lend themselves to this. If something has a nice cover and was published and is widely distributed, we tend to think of it as authoritative and believe it more strongly, even when the evidence under a little thought might lead us to be more dubious.

heavenlyblue 8y ago
The reason major media is considered authoritarive is because it has to reach the widest audience possible. The fact that you’re visitig NH probably implies you are already in the top 10% bracket in terms if your earnings; which probably also implies you have access to more information. If major newspapers wrote in the language like of Foreign Policy - people wouldn’t read it. So what is authoritative? Authoritative for the ingelligencia, or authoritative for the masses?
jerf 8y ago
"We tend to think of major media as very authoritative (even if we don't admit it to ourselves)" One thing I've increasingly noticed over the past couple of years (and I think it's personal development, not any particular combination of news of the day) is the way the way we trust the mass media can make stories just disappear by simply not covering them. I'm not even merely talking about political stories disappearing or the media exerting bias; I mean even bigger than that. How many times have you read something interesting and would be interesting in reading about a followup story in a month or two? How often do you see that followup story? For instance, in the domain of science articles, how many times do you read about some preliminary result vs. an article discussing the field's reaction to some preliminary result? People simply and almost blindly take their cues about what's important from what the mass media is talking about, but if you examine even just what the mass media is putting out on its own terms it's hard to conclude that it's the truly most important stuff. Note my point here is about people moreso than the media. The media is forced to be biased by limited bandwidth. If you want to argue that they're biased beyond what that justifies, I will be right there with you, but that's not what my point here is about. My point here is that regardless of exactly how the bias manifests, how casually we tend to accept the mass media's output as the definition of what is important today, what the agenda is, what we all have to talk about, what we're going to screech at about each other on social media, etc.
- hyperman1 8y ago
  I really noticed this in the recent EU Copyright article 11 and 13 debacle: Where were the media? Mostly they didn't even mention in. At the very last few days, there was some coverage, mostly about how great the new law was even if Google was trying to sabotage it by exerting control over the Internet unwashed masses and pirates. Not a word over possible negative effects.
  - drak0n1c 8y ago
    The media has defended the EU lately at the expense of coverage of flaws or critiques. Compare the volume of coverage for the positively received GDPR regulation compared to the coverage of negatively received Article 11 & 13. Both in the lead-up and post-passage there is a pattern of bias by omission.

heavenlyblue 8y ago

The reason major media is considered authoritarive is because it has to reach the widest audience possible. The fact that you’re visitig NH probably implies you are already in the top 10% bracket in terms if your earnings; which probably also implies you have access to more information. If major newspapers wrote in the language like of Foreign Policy - people wouldn’t read it. So what is authoritative? Authoritative for the ingelligencia, or authoritative for the masses?

jerf 8y ago

"We tend to think of major media as very authoritative (even if we don't admit it to ourselves)" One thing I've increasingly noticed over the past couple of years (and I think it's personal development, not any particular combination of news of the day) is the way the way we trust the mass media can make stories just disappear by simply not covering them. I'm not even merely talking about political stories disappearing or the media exerting bias; I mean even bigger than that. How many times have you read something interesting and would be interesting in reading about a followup story in a month or two? How often do you see that followup story? For instance, in the domain of science articles, how many times do you read about some preliminary result vs. an article discussing the field's reaction to some preliminary result? People simply and almost blindly take their cues about what's important from what the mass media is talking about, but if you examine even just what the mass media is putting out on its own terms it's hard to conclude that it's the truly most important stuff. Note my point here is about people moreso than the media. The media is forced to be biased by limited bandwidth. If you want to argue that they're biased beyond what that justifies, I will be right there with you, but that's not what my point here is about. My point here is that regardless of exactly how the bias manifests, how casually we tend to accept the mass media's output as the definition of what is important today, what the agenda is, what we all have to talk about, what we're going to screech at about each other on social media, etc.

hyperman1 8y ago
I really noticed this in the recent EU Copyright article 11 and 13 debacle: Where were the media? Mostly they didn't even mention in. At the very last few days, there was some coverage, mostly about how great the new law was even if Google was trying to sabotage it by exerting control over the Internet unwashed masses and pirates. Not a word over possible negative effects.
- drak0n1c 8y ago
  The media has defended the EU lately at the expense of coverage of flaws or critiques. Compare the volume of coverage for the positively received GDPR regulation compared to the coverage of negatively received Article 11 & 13. Both in the lead-up and post-passage there is a pattern of bias by omission.