4 ms·

>I'd wager good 15% of these are probably people clicking "Angry" not actually engaging. Only 15%? I'd guess it's way, way more. Like 90%. News today is prima

by koboll 8y ago

>I'd wager good 15% of these are probably people clicking "Angry" not actually engaging. Only 15%? I'd guess it's way, way more. Like 90%. News today is primarily headline-driven. You don't have to sit down and watch the evening newscast anymore, you can just scroll through Facebook and see headlines and comments, which almost always drop context and nuance in a way that's engineered to make people upset. In a way, it's probably the most irresponsible aspect of journalism today. The media's ethical priorities are incredibly outdated: if a writer makes a mistake twelve paragraphs into a fifteen paragraph article, it's a major problem requiring a correction. But if an editor appends a headline that actively misleads 100x as many people, no one has any problem with it. The news, in this way, probably misinforms as much as it informs. This is why you get the wildly divergent realities on the right and the left. There's simply no professional awareness of the unbelievably damaging power of headlines that--from a consequentialist perspective--are frequently abject lies.

kodz4 8y ago
The correction will come when the News Orgs are limited/disconnected from the engagement feedback loop. News orgs are basically functioning as info amplification nodes on the network. The talking heads have assumed greater importance, than the journos who are painstakingly digging up info. This needs to be revered. The metrics (likes/clicks/views/retweets/upvotes) that drive this behavior of the news orgs have to be rethought. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit etc could get together and propose a standard of what metrics are optimal to cause that reversal and then put them into effect.
soheil 8y ago
> There's simply no professional awareness of the unbelievably damaging power of headlines Some would say this is by design and not just on the part of newsmakers but actual politicians on both sides of the spectrum. For the system to work as efficiently as it does a bimodal distribution is probably the best way to achieve that. Every one may be better off at the end thinking both they have a voice, someone taking care of their issues, and elected representatives don't have to struggle to satisfy a never ending range of diversely opinionated electorates.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  "For the system to work as efficiently as it does" I doubt the efficiency of this system. I suggest that the incentives are mostly politically oriented, in the sense that editorial staff truly feel aligned with something they feel important to them, in addition to the 'money' incentive, which is severe in the world of news; they are always going out of business, and in a constant fight for ratings / viewers. There's a very serious and existential push to 'make money or die'. Both of those elements combine to create a market orientation. If you consider news to be simply a product like any other, then you have 'customers' within specific 'demographics' and the editorialists to be 'product managers' with a 'P&L' ... when then they are incented to hustle the kind of information that fires those customers up and gets them clicking. Taking a completely culturally secular view, one could argue the papers are just carving out their customer segments, just as any competing brands would.
skookumchuck 8y ago
> News today is primarily headline-driven. It always was. Newspapers were sold off the newstands via the headline. That's why headlines were large - so passersby could see them. That's why newsboys would yell out the headlines.

by koboll 8y ago

kodz4 8y ago

The correction will come when the News Orgs are limited/disconnected from the engagement feedback loop. News orgs are basically functioning as info amplification nodes on the network. The talking heads have assumed greater importance, than the journos who are painstakingly digging up info. This needs to be revered. The metrics (likes/clicks/views/retweets/upvotes) that drive this behavior of the news orgs have to be rethought. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit etc could get together and propose a standard of what metrics are optimal to cause that reversal and then put them into effect.

soheil 8y ago

> There's simply no professional awareness of the unbelievably damaging power of headlines Some would say this is by design and not just on the part of newsmakers but actual politicians on both sides of the spectrum. For the system to work as efficiently as it does a bimodal distribution is probably the best way to achieve that. Every one may be better off at the end thinking both they have a voice, someone taking care of their issues, and elected representatives don't have to struggle to satisfy a never ending range of diversely opinionated electorates.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
"For the system to work as efficiently as it does" I doubt the efficiency of this system. I suggest that the incentives are mostly politically oriented, in the sense that editorial staff truly feel aligned with something they feel important to them, in addition to the 'money' incentive, which is severe in the world of news; they are always going out of business, and in a constant fight for ratings / viewers. There's a very serious and existential push to 'make money or die'. Both of those elements combine to create a market orientation. If you consider news to be simply a product like any other, then you have 'customers' within specific 'demographics' and the editorialists to be 'product managers' with a 'P&L' ... when then they are incented to hustle the kind of information that fires those customers up and gets them clicking. Taking a completely culturally secular view, one could argue the papers are just carving out their customer segments, just as any competing brands would.

skookumchuck 8y ago

> News today is primarily headline-driven. It always was. Newspapers were sold off the newstands via the headline. That's why headlines were large - so passersby could see them. That's why newsboys would yell out the headlines.