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Why is ignoring media tacit support of the status quo?
by netfl0 8y ago
Why is ignoring media tacit support of the status quo?
- jdhawk 8y agohow else do you make an informed vote?
- mixmastamyk 8y ago"News" in its most common form has little to do with being an informed citizen. The library would be a better bet.
- AWildC182 8y agoSo we should just never read any news again because someone wrote a click-bait article? I don't know if you've been to a library...but they usually have newspapers.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 8y agoMost articles are little better than click bait. Journalists writing about X usually aren’t trained in X and usually have little time to build expertise in X. They are by training writers, so for the most part they’re reduced to parroting the narratives peddled by this or that group or political party. It’s very rare I read a general news article within my areas of subject matter knowledge and think “oh, this writer really understands and has highlighted the important issues.” I have to assume the same is true for subject matter I’m not familiar with, like tax policy. In reality, for a lot of these subjects, nobody knows the answers, not even the “experts.” For those things, journalists have neither the space, time, or education to even do a good job raising the relevant issues, much less elucidating the answers.
- tptacek 8y agoThis is a reductive and misleading summary of what journalists do. Every blogger on the Internet also writes, with varying degrees of training and success. What reporters do that bloggers don't is reporting --- surveying and cultivating sources, visiting places, making a zillion phone calls, working with fact checkers (itself a tedious job that has little to do with the craft of writing). That's the job of a reporter. Not knowing everything, but being willing to do the legwork to find people with firsthand knowledge of things, and then relating what they have to say. That's why we call journalism "the first draft of history", and not the textbook of history. Like every profession, journalism has limitations and is itself practiced with varying degrees of success. We're fond of Crichton's "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect" on HN, but ignore the Djikstra Amnesia Effect, holding journalists to a standard we rarely achieve in our own profession, where our own errors routinely cause direct harm to people through ignorance and omissions.
- rayiner 8y agoI don’t disagree with your first paragraph. As to your second, I think that’s part of the problem: those people with first hand knowledge are often relaying a sound bite, a piece of packaged narrative. And the journalist doesn’t know enough to really add anything to that narrative. That may be a limitation of journalism, but I question whether given that limitation, journalism is a useful vehicle for educating the public about the highly complex issues that underpin our society. (Someone on HN changed my mind recently by pointing out that, while judges sometimes invoke history, they are generally bad historians. It was a thought provoking assertion, because it’s not uncommon for judges to justify opinions by reference to economics or social science. But they have neither the training nor time and procedural flexibility to do a good job of such analysis. My conclusion was, therefore, that such analysis simply isn’t useful. I think journalism might suffer from the same problem.)
- kasey_junk 8y agoWhat does the alternative look like?
- 8y ago
- XorNot 8y agoNo it means you should analyse your motivations for doing so carefully. If all you do is read it to get angry at something, or dismiss the opinion of whoever is speaking, then why read/watch it at all? I'd go further and say if you're doing it just so you can give a hot take on politics to someone nearby, or have your opinions validated by them then also stop doing that (it's hard) and be mindful that whoever they are may actually disagree with you but isn't interested in having their views criticised as a part of someone's entertainment schedule or to be lectured too.
- dang 8y ago"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." "Don't be snarky." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- slg 8y agoBecause being politically active at any thing but the most basic level requires knowledge of the issues and knowledge of the issues requires following the news. If you are not politically active you are supporting the status quo because you are not putting in any effort to change the status quo.
- malvosenior 8y agoPolitics aren’t the only way to change the status quo. In fact they’re not good at it at all. Uber and AirBnB changed the status quo far more than any politician in my lifetime. Also, most people’s personal issues trump any macro issue by far. You can change your status quo. It’s almost impossible for an individual to change the status quo and definitely not through typical political engagement.
- slg 8y ago>Uber and AirBnB changed the status quo far more than any politician in my lifetime. I am sorry, but that is just depressing if you believe something like that. The ACA is one thing that comes to mind. Improving healthcare for Americans would have a much bigger impact on people's lives than giving people who already own a home a way to make a little extra money.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoThe ideal of improving healthcare has little to do with how the ACA turned out.
- rexpop 8y ago> Politics aren’t the only way to change the status quo. The status quo is a political arrangement. It's just a way of referring to the state of power's distribution across institutions and people. That's political. There is literally, definitionally nothing apolitical that affects the status quo. Changing the status quo is--inescapably, apodictically--political. Uber and AirBnB are highly political institutions.
- AWildC182 8y agoBecause you don't have to worry about your kids being separated from you at the border, being bombed by the Saudis, or losing our homes to climate change related events. Most of the things the news covers disproportionately effect destitute-through-low-income individuals.
- Simon_says 8y agoWatching the news didn't help them ...
- AWildC182 8y agoIf you were in Yemen would the news that the Saudis were bombing civilians change your actions? If you were attempting a border crossing into the US with children, would the news influence your approach?
- HeWhoLurksLate 8y agoIf I were in that situation, I would want all the relevant news possible, in any and all formats available. TV broadcasts of cease-fires are great news for someone who wants to get out, as are radio reports of major hot-spots, etc. Getting the relevant news can be the difference between life and death in these situations.
- rayiner 8y agoAnd yuppies reading the news and then going back to buying $12 avocado toast won’t do a damn thing to help those people.
- AWildC182 8y agoDon't the yuppies generally vote democrat and the democrats usually oppose these things while the very-not-yuppies tend to vote GOP and the GOP usually likes/is ambivalent about these things? Like, I get it, gotta grab a side in The Culture Wars, but we should at least be fair about it shouldn't we?