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It's not as though the mainstream press are blameless. Maybe they wouldn't have lost their position if they weren't blatantly peddling propaganda. In places l

It's not as though the mainstream press are blameless. Maybe they wouldn't have lost their position if they weren't blatantly peddling propaganda. In places like the UK and Canada, the top news agencies are literally government owned. CNN is hilariously biased. Western news outlets have been caught time and time again misleading people. Alternative news sources are far from perfect as well, but in an age where everyone is trying to mislead, it forces people who want to be informed to actually take in events from multiple outlets and try to discern where truth lies for themselves. Maybe it's my Slavic upbringing, but I was taught to be sceptical of everyone and everything. Also, information can't be weaponized cheaply. If one side has access to it, so does the other. They counteract each other. In the end, people still have to discern news for themselves. Finally, it's quite hilarious to hear news outlets trying to convince us that today we're misinformed, and if only we do a few things to 'fix' the system, we can get to a point where they're our only source of news again.

mieseratte 7y ago
As a child, it was always “Fox is just riling up the old people.” I’m not sure whether CNN was once reasonable, but it seems most, of not all, mainstream press has devolved into that Foxian shit-show for one side of the aisle or another trying to capture eye-balls and add dollars. My inner conspiracy-theorist wonders if this is divide-and-conquer, or just the death throes of dying media.
- scruple 7y ago
  I noticed it with CNN back around 2008. I don't remember the specifics these days, but I do remember Glenn Greenwald really making a lot of salient points about the direction that CNN had taken. My inner conspiracy theorist has also spent a lot of time wondering if it's just divide-and-conquer in action.
pjc50 7y ago
The BBC used to be respectable, but they lost their nerve after the Hutton enquiry and have also fallen to the "clickbait" problem of magnifying extreme views. But they're nowhere near as bad as the rightwing press: Times, Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Express. The Telegraph is almost the reverse of state-owned media. Since they pay Boris Johnson more than the office of Prime Minister does, in some ways we're a media-owned state.
- scruple 7y ago
  They don't need to be "as bad." As another user commented, many of us grew up hearing and knowing that Fox News was biased and agitated their watchers with lies and deceit. When I then see the "side" that I associate with, the left-wing press, as it were, using the same tactics, it makes me _much_ angrier than when the right-wing press does it. I expect the right-wing press to pull this bullshit. I expect the left-wing press to be honest. Either I was naive, which is very likely, or they lost the high ground along the way. At any rate, the effect is the same for me. I don't trust them any longer. And, I don't think I'm alone.
deogeo 7y ago
> In places like the UK and Canada, the top news agencies are literally government owned. At least this would provide an alternative news source that is not driven by commercial forces, and can focus on what it believes is important, rather than what gets the most eyeballs. But then the UK tied BBC programme funding to number of viewers (can't find a source, sorry).
lotsofpulp 7y ago
Do you have any solutions? It’s clearly evident that most of the public wants and pays for sensationalism and bias rather than facts, hence as a business, it’s not viable to provide objective truths. It’s easy to blame “the media”. It’s harder to look at ourselves, relatives, friends, neighbors, and community and say we haven’t really done anything to incentivize good sources of information to exist. We pay nothing for quality journalism and expect everything. I’m actually impressed with what we do have at least for now.
- Mikeb85 7y ago
  I'm not sure there is a 'solution' per se. I'm not even 100% convinced any of this is a problem. If we allow a single outlet to become our filter for what's true and false, then they wield too much power over us and history shows at some point in time they will exploit it. If someone wants to be informed, I'd say go out into the world, talk to people and experience things, but even that has its limits (one person can only see so much). You can take in many different sources and try to filter out the noise, but that takes a lot of time. I try to be informed on topics that matter to me but I'll gladly admit that some topics simply don't matter to me so I don't put in the effort. In the end, maybe this is the inevitable result of our system. It's far from perfect but I still think it's better than some alternatives.
  - magicsmoke 7y ago
    It seems like the issue is that it takes a lot of time and effort to be informed enough on any topic to make a good decision on it, and people are limited on how many topics they can be reasonably informed about. However, we have an expectation that people should take a stance on any particular event happening in the world when asked for their opinion. The default answer to such a question shouldn't be yes or know, but I don't know, and there shouldn't be any shame attached to not knowing because no one can know everything. Also, another part of the problem might be how news media implies that by consuming their publications in a few minutes you can be just as informed as the expert who has been studying a topic for years, and how they overinflate people's confidence in what little they know.
blablabla123 7y ago
I agree that mainstream media is biased as well. But virtually everything is biased, usually neither readers nor journalists have the time to realize a perspective as unbiased as possible. The most extreme is probably Donald Trump's Twitter account where he and probably some of his associates sometimes publish tweets every half an hour. There is no way that this information is well reasearched, also with 140 (or 280?) characters even if it was the case, it's practically impossible to compress multiple perspectives in that. Yellow press is not great but better researched and has more perspective. In fact Journalists have to go through difficult tests when they apply for jobs, at least in Germany, often for outlets where people think it's low quality. Of course then they are also news sources like NYT or magazines like New Yorkers with articles that put things in multiple perspectices and are probably often the product of days, weeks or months of work. That said, if someone wants as unbiased as possible information about the world, then one should read peer reviewed research papers and books published by researchers. But that's really not news anymore.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Huh? Thomson Reuters isn't government owned. BBC are a statutory corporation, as are Channel 4, but there is no direct government involvement in either.
- roenxi 7y ago
  > Huh? Thomson Reuters isn't government owned. Might have been talking about the Canadian Broadcasting Commission; but I don't know anything about Canada. > BBC are a statutory corporation, as are Channel 4, but there is no direct government involvement in either. I found it interesting that there seems to have been something like a minor scandal in 1985 when it was revealed that MI5 was vetting who held BBC leadership positions [0]. 1985 was a long time ago; but there is a history there of quiet coordination between government and BBC. I'd still rather have the BBC than CNN or Murdoch though. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#MI5_vetting_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#MI5_vetting_policy
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Aye perhaps, but I thought Reuters were a fair bit bigger than CBC. I think CBC are a similar sort of hands off corporation to C4 and the Beeb, but I don't know Canadian laws too well so there may be differences. Asking for a security vetting of senior staff isn't so different to BAe (at the time) or a local council asking for one. There'd be a far larger scandal if someone revealed a fascist or communist ended up running the place, no? Hardly interference in programmes... Agreed on Murdoch. :)
  - pjc50 7y ago
    The BBC was never entirely free given that until ECHR we had no legal right to free speech of any kind. Examples from the 80s were the ban on Sinn Fein speaking, and the "Zircon affair".
- Mikeb85 7y ago
  Was referring to CBC. Reuters might be Canadian owned as of recently, but it's certainly not one of the top 3 popular news sources within Canada.

mieseratte 7y ago

As a child, it was always “Fox is just riling up the old people.” I’m not sure whether CNN was once reasonable, but it seems most, of not all, mainstream press has devolved into that Foxian shit-show for one side of the aisle or another trying to capture eye-balls and add dollars. My inner conspiracy-theorist wonders if this is divide-and-conquer, or just the death throes of dying media.

scruple 7y ago
I noticed it with CNN back around 2008. I don't remember the specifics these days, but I do remember Glenn Greenwald really making a lot of salient points about the direction that CNN had taken. My inner conspiracy theorist has also spent a lot of time wondering if it's just divide-and-conquer in action.

pjc50 7y ago

The BBC used to be respectable, but they lost their nerve after the Hutton enquiry and have also fallen to the "clickbait" problem of magnifying extreme views. But they're nowhere near as bad as the rightwing press: Times, Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Express. The Telegraph is almost the reverse of state-owned media. Since they pay Boris Johnson more than the office of Prime Minister does, in some ways we're a media-owned state.

scruple 7y ago
They don't need to be "as bad." As another user commented, many of us grew up hearing and knowing that Fox News was biased and agitated their watchers with lies and deceit. When I then see the "side" that I associate with, the left-wing press, as it were, using the same tactics, it makes me _much_ angrier than when the right-wing press does it. I expect the right-wing press to pull this bullshit. I expect the left-wing press to be honest. Either I was naive, which is very likely, or they lost the high ground along the way. At any rate, the effect is the same for me. I don't trust them any longer. And, I don't think I'm alone.

deogeo 7y ago

> In places like the UK and Canada, the top news agencies are literally government owned. At least this would provide an alternative news source that is not driven by commercial forces, and can focus on what it believes is important, rather than what gets the most eyeballs. But then the UK tied BBC programme funding to number of viewers (can't find a source, sorry).

lotsofpulp 7y ago

Do you have any solutions? It’s clearly evident that most of the public wants and pays for sensationalism and bias rather than facts, hence as a business, it’s not viable to provide objective truths. It’s easy to blame “the media”. It’s harder to look at ourselves, relatives, friends, neighbors, and community and say we haven’t really done anything to incentivize good sources of information to exist. We pay nothing for quality journalism and expect everything. I’m actually impressed with what we do have at least for now.

Mikeb85 7y ago
I'm not sure there is a 'solution' per se. I'm not even 100% convinced any of this is a problem. If we allow a single outlet to become our filter for what's true and false, then they wield too much power over us and history shows at some point in time they will exploit it. If someone wants to be informed, I'd say go out into the world, talk to people and experience things, but even that has its limits (one person can only see so much). You can take in many different sources and try to filter out the noise, but that takes a lot of time. I try to be informed on topics that matter to me but I'll gladly admit that some topics simply don't matter to me so I don't put in the effort. In the end, maybe this is the inevitable result of our system. It's far from perfect but I still think it's better than some alternatives.
- magicsmoke 7y ago
  It seems like the issue is that it takes a lot of time and effort to be informed enough on any topic to make a good decision on it, and people are limited on how many topics they can be reasonably informed about. However, we have an expectation that people should take a stance on any particular event happening in the world when asked for their opinion. The default answer to such a question shouldn't be yes or know, but I don't know, and there shouldn't be any shame attached to not knowing because no one can know everything. Also, another part of the problem might be how news media implies that by consuming their publications in a few minutes you can be just as informed as the expert who has been studying a topic for years, and how they overinflate people's confidence in what little they know.

blablabla123 7y ago

I agree that mainstream media is biased as well. But virtually everything is biased, usually neither readers nor journalists have the time to realize a perspective as unbiased as possible. The most extreme is probably Donald Trump's Twitter account where he and probably some of his associates sometimes publish tweets every half an hour. There is no way that this information is well reasearched, also with 140 (or 280?) characters even if it was the case, it's practically impossible to compress multiple perspectives in that. Yellow press is not great but better researched and has more perspective. In fact Journalists have to go through difficult tests when they apply for jobs, at least in Germany, often for outlets where people think it's low quality. Of course then they are also news sources like NYT or magazines like New Yorkers with articles that put things in multiple perspectices and are probably often the product of days, weeks or months of work. That said, if someone wants as unbiased as possible information about the world, then one should read peer reviewed research papers and books published by researchers. But that's really not news anymore.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Huh? Thomson Reuters isn't government owned. BBC are a statutory corporation, as are Channel 4, but there is no direct government involvement in either.

roenxi 7y ago
> Huh? Thomson Reuters isn't government owned. Might have been talking about the Canadian Broadcasting Commission; but I don't know anything about Canada. > BBC are a statutory corporation, as are Channel 4, but there is no direct government involvement in either. I found it interesting that there seems to have been something like a minor scandal in 1985 when it was revealed that MI5 was vetting who held BBC leadership positions [0]. 1985 was a long time ago; but there is a history there of quiet coordination between government and BBC. I'd still rather have the BBC than CNN or Murdoch though. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#MI5_vetting_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#MI5_vetting_policy
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Aye perhaps, but I thought Reuters were a fair bit bigger than CBC. I think CBC are a similar sort of hands off corporation to C4 and the Beeb, but I don't know Canadian laws too well so there may be differences. Asking for a security vetting of senior staff isn't so different to BAe (at the time) or a local council asking for one. There'd be a far larger scandal if someone revealed a fascist or communist ended up running the place, no? Hardly interference in programmes... Agreed on Murdoch. :)
- pjc50 7y ago
  The BBC was never entirely free given that until ECHR we had no legal right to free speech of any kind. Examples from the 80s were the ban on Sinn Fein speaking, and the "Zircon affair".
Mikeb85 7y ago
Was referring to CBC. Reuters might be Canadian owned as of recently, but it's certainly not one of the top 3 popular news sources within Canada.