12 ms·

How can you know what news is real?

60 points by flywithdolp 7y ago

grumple 7y ago
First, don't trust anything that isn't a direct, verifiable quote (basically, on camera). Ignore headlines and anything that is an interpretation of what someone said. Same goes for any other facts - believe what you can verify, or where there's direct testimony from people who were there and know what happened. Second, make an effort to understand the context of any actions or quotes. This may require some more research and understanding. You can rarely extract this from a news article and requires some careful language parsing to determine what the facts are vs some reporters opinion or agenda.
- sideshowb 7y ago
  You have heard of deepfakes, right?
  - IngvarLynn 7y ago
    The need to properly digitally sign absolutely all content is higher than ever.
    - pixl97 7y ago
      Which again, has a multitude of problems.
vearwhershuh 7y ago
You can't. Despite the social shame associated with it, I no longer even believe main stream history around things like the kennedy assassination. I don't know what happened, but I'm skeptical that what they say happened actually happened. We live in an epistemological radical age, with mass psychological operations being carried out by multiple state and non-state actors. The good news is that the only sane response is to step back and focus on the ones we love around us, which is what we should be doing anyway.
- k_sze 7y ago
  The problem is that, in order to protect the ones you love, especially their future, you need to make some important decisions like voting, joining protests when you need to, and maybe even trying to convince other people to vote for the same candidate or to join you in protest; all of these activities require being informed of the true agenda and abilities of candidates, of important socio-political issues, etc. You can't just say "I'll focus on the ones I love around me" and ignore the rest.
  - vearwhershuh 7y ago
    I disagree. In as much as any of those distract you from raising good children, they hurt more than they help, and voting and political activity in general is pointless (at best) in most countries. The elites are going to get what they want until there is bloodshed, and probably even beyond that as well. Irish Democracy[1] is more effective and more moral than any sort of political activism. [1] "Quiet, anonymous, and often complicitous, lawbreaking and disobedience may well be the historically preferred mode of political action for peasant and subaltern classes, for whom open defiance is too dangerous….One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish Democracy”—the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people—than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs." James Scott - Two Cheers for Anarchism
    - k_sze 7y ago
      What you are talking about is the "action". I don't think that really invalidates my point: good old democracy via voting may not be your preferred mode of political action, but you still need to be informed about issues so that you take action for the right cause, whatever the form of political action you want to take. Put another way, you need to be informed so that you can engage in lawbreaking and disobedience for the right cause. Disclaimer: I'm not advocating for lawbreaking or disobedience. What I said above was just for the sake of argument in favour of staying informed.
rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
You need to fork this: https://github.com/mdiplo/Medias_francais https://github.com/mdiplo/Medias_francais Google Translate: >French media: who owns what? >Property relations between the French media and their main shareholders >The data is organized in two tables: >1. 'medias_francais.tsv' contains all shareholders (natural or legal persons) and media represented on the map >2. 'relations_medias_francais.tsv' details the capital links between these shareholders and the groups or media they own >Last updated November, 2019 >Technical indication: for those who wish to participate in updating the database by making a pull request, make sure that the file is encoded in UTF-8 with unix line breaks so that we can merge it all without conflict. Edit: I wish this was all added to Wikidata so we can chart this for every country but also map the transnational stake-holding.
- busterarm 7y ago
  I use the NewsGuard (I admit they're far from perfect) browser plugin and there's an alarming number of news stories that are broken by entities that have virtually all of the green check marks except that they conceal the ownership and financing of their newspaper.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
barry-cotter 7y ago
Is this really that surprising? Billionaires owning vanity projects isn’t news when they’re football teams, why is it when they’re corporate news organizations? Also, if there was ever a time to be concerned about the owners of media organizations controlling the narrative this is not it. The media, and the ruling class more generally, being pissed off that the peasants are daring to speak back and have their own non approved opinions is behind the never ending stream of invective directed at the big tech companies[1]. Martin Gurri’s book on this loss of control, The Revolt of the Public, is amazing by the way[2]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/19/the-collapse-of-the-information-ecosystem-poses-profound-risks-for-humanity https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/19/the-co... [2] https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/martin-gurri-revolt-of-the-public/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/martin-gurri-revolt-... https://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2019/02/book-review-revolt-of-public-by-martin.html?m=1 https://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2019/02/book-review-revo...
- richthegeek 7y ago
  > Billionaires owning vanity projects isn’t news when they’re football teams, why is it when they’re corporate news organizations? You really can't see the difference between the two? If Mark Cuban has a problem with a player and cuts him from a game, then only the Maverick's suffer. If he (owned a paper and) has a problem with a politician and demands hit pieces, the whole country suffers.
  - baq 7y ago
    don't forget that a politician may demand a piece from Mark Cuban.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Perhaps "surprising" is the wrong word, but this absolutely is the problem; billionaire-owned "news" organisations able to propagandise with very little opposition. Although the question of who the staff class is also important; people have started to notice that the (publicly owned!) BBC's political presenter Andrew Neil works for all sorts of Conservative party-aligned institutions like the Spectator.
dna_polymerase 7y ago
The info-graphic posted in the article links back originates from titlemax.com [0]. Their article at least list the owners of some outlets. I've got to say I am a bit surprised to see such an blogpost from a lending corp. Their wiki article suggest they faced criticism in the past for predatory lending [1], I wonder if this is their version of getting back at those who reported on them, or what their intention for that topic is? [0]: https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/who-owns-your-news-the-top-100-digital-news-outlets-and-their-ownership/ https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/who-owns... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TitleMax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TitleMax
sojmq 7y ago
"only 15 billionaires and 6 corporations owning the majority of U.S media outlets" Wow, such stinking antisemitism in this article. I had hoped we, as a society, could do much better
- divbyzer0 7y ago
  antisemitism. Really, I didn't notice anything. Care to explain?
- adrianN 7y ago
  I only skimmed the article but couldn't find anything antisemitic. What did I miss?
  - paganel 7y ago
    Not the OP, but I'd guess the only connection to potential antisemitism is the critical mention of Sheldon Adelson, "an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist" who is very supportive of some of the politics carried out by the Israeli state. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson
  - boomlinde 7y ago
    I read it as an attempt by someone who doesn't particularly like Jews to conflate the issue actually being discussed in the article with the Jewish question. I wouldn't waste time trying to draw out of him how his concern spiel relates to reality.
- ra120271 7y ago
  I went back and re-read the article with your comment in mind and struggled to recognise any overt anti-semitism. Could you provide some examples?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 7y ago
ra120271 7y ago
I've always felt news organisations should be legally required to be non-for-profit and wages capped at some sensible multiple of the national average wage (e.g 6x)
- baq 7y ago
  not too low though or you're just fostering bribery.
  - ra120271 7y ago
    I agree. If the belief is that the press (news) should be free and unencumbered to report the truth, and accepting all solutions are imperfect, then I think its a case of removing the worst influences in alignment with that goal. Media conglomerates and billionaires usually have competing interests due to their diverse interests and influence. So my suggestion is not to remove them or exclude them from news but to limit the number of levers they can pull within news. I accept that my thoughts are imperfect and flawed also, so offer them for discussion and nothing else.
- sandoooo 7y ago
  You're casting a pretty wide net there. I've always felt news organizations should be legally required to recruit from my exact microdemographic and only from registered members of the party I most recently voted for, with wages indexed to between 99% to 101% of my current income.
- krapp 7y ago
  The likely result of that would be news organizations being primarily influenced by governments, corporate donors and religious organizations.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- pjc50 7y ago
  News organisations are generally pretty badly paid at the moment. I'd be up for prominent disclosure of ultimate ownership, though.
hos234 7y ago
I get my news from PewDiePie
- busterarm 7y ago
  But he stopped Pew News. :(
sojmq 7y ago
This image in the middle of the article is just disgusting: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZMSk_xidOwA/XXga6ujjZrI/AAAAAAAAFxM/v23Y-PZA9DEc7wAm9dtmB2t8-AyHLSbEACLcBGAsYHQ/s0/MSM.jpeg https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZMSk_xidOwA/XXga6ujjZrI/AAAAAAAAF...
- vertex-four 7y ago
  That’s, uhh, interesting - I don’t see that image (or any others) in the article.
- otalp 7y ago
  Where's that in the article?
  - busterarm 7y ago
    parent got lost looking for 4chan.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    It's not.
jajag 7y ago
I find the idea that there can be an unbiased news source deeply problematic. All reporting of an event has to be from a perspective, and has to make decisions about what to report, what to leave out; what to emphasise, what to play down. An honest news source should be one that is one that is honest about its own biases.
- cm2187 7y ago
  I agree that it is hard to dial down bias in reporting to an absolute zero (which Jean-Luc Godard provocatively referred to “50% time for the jews 50% time for Hitler”). But there is still a scale. And right now, in the heat of a political campaign in the US and the UK, it is dialled up to 11. The reporting could be a lot more balanced, presenting both sides, not using provocating headlines, etc. It would probably be a bit more boring (which is why even previously serious publications like the Financial Times gave up).
  - jdironman 7y ago
    News shouldn't have a political agenda it should have a factual agenda. It's raining in Florida would be a fact. Trump is campaigning in Florida is a fact (I dont know if he is, just an example). Trump is winning over the Floridan people with his exciting rallie displays a political agenda.
    - jajag 7y ago
      That's an unachievable ideal, particularly and especially for complex stories (e.g. just about any political story) where there are too many facts to report, to much backstory to fill in, and an editor has to make a decision about what to leave in and what to omit.
- krapp 7y ago
  I think one problem is that, due to general mistrust and paranoia regarding the "mainstream media," people tend to conflate bias with intentional fabrication and propaganda.
joaodlf 7y ago
I have, sadly, given up. I can't stand watching/reading the news and feeling that I am quite possibly being manipulated, so I have completely given up. Anything I do read, I mistrust. I don't want to be ignorant towards what is happening around me, but I feel like I have no choice, I don't want to become bitter and "pick a side", I prefer to remain ignorant. Even when friends say "Oh, but try this source, they are soooo much better", it doesn't take long to realise there is ALWAYS an agenda behind it, a political leaning... It's exhausting.
- tekmate 7y ago
  identify potential biases in a source and then filter the information of that source through a bias lense, then use another source and do the same thing to triangulate "the truth" giving up on consuming news because everything might be biased is simply lazy
  - jl6 7y ago
    Beware that the truth is not necessarily the midpoint between opposing opinions. Sometimes a source with a general bias gets it exactly right in a specific case.
    - tekmate 7y ago
      true, triangulating doesn't mean the middle necessarily
    - lowmagnet 7y ago
      And there aren't always "two sides" to an issue; there are arguments made in bad faith and those in good faith and it's hard to tell the difference.
  - dexen 7y ago
    >giving up on consuming news because everything might be biased is simply lazy Not at all; it's a valid strategy. The events and the state of the world can be deduced from observing the (near) past just as well as from reading the news, perhaps even better. A person can stay reasonably well informed by skipping on the news, and instead observing actual events, actual outcomes, that is the (near) history. Both in person and through social circles, in particular friends and family. You could call it "the slow way" of getting the news. As noted in OP and elsewhere in discussion, the news are rife with misinformation. It follows news listeners, subject to the misinformation, end up with various misconceptions and strong emotions, thus prone to doing things no well informed person would do. Having a sizable segment of population not subject to the news, and instead informed via others means is a natural counter-balance, a safety mechanism against single mindedness imparted by the centralized news.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
remote_phone 7y ago
Overall this post is crap. The whole point about people choosing what they want to read or get reported on only reinforces bubbles. That’s what Facebook did. However I agree that the media is biased and it is worse now than ever. I think even more than being biased, it’s what they choose to report on or not report on that matters. Look at the coverage of Andrew Yang on MSNBC. There are over a dozen instances of ignoring him on charts and graphs and putting lower-polling candidates on display other than him. A few times is one thing but it’s literally over 15 times, including ignoring him for the first 30 mins of the November debates and giving him the least amount of talking time of all the candidates for the 4th debate in a row. Things like this show that media is biased to a degree that is undermining our democracy.
- mistermann 7y ago
  See also: https://old.reddit.com/r/bernieblindness/ https://old.reddit.com/r/bernieblindness/ I would say this is beyond biased and well into the "literally evil" category.
- pixl97 7y ago
  This happens every political season and has for decades. The media organizations have winners they have ready picked. This really blew up in their face in 2016 with the pied piper candidate.
BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
From the article: "One way to restore trust is to give power back to the people, enabling them to choose what stories matter most to them. By doing this, we can revolutionise the current state of the news media — from an entity that dictates information to an industry that only reports legitimate information that has been requested by the population." That's the only solution that's offered, and a bad one at that. Letting "the people decide", e.g. democratizing the news, is a bad idea. How would we know what to choose? How would we know that there's an important issue out there that needs to be reported on, beforehand? Normal people aren't investigative reporters. I don't have a solution either, but I know what it is we need. We need good journalists to do good journalism and be able to choose freely what they research and report on. The current for-profit corporate structure of the news media is incompatible with that. That's why you get more truth nowadays from independent journalists, researchers and content creators than from the corporate media, which will almost exclusively lie to you to further an agenda. It's very hard to separate the weed from the chaff though, and it requires a lot of critical thinking and observation of the reader.
- mistermann 7y ago
  > I don't have a solution either, but I know what it is we need. We need good journalists to do good journalism and be able to choose freely what they research and report on. The current for-profit corporate structure of the news media is incompatible with that. Well sure, but how can such a thing really be accomplished, considering all the difficult pre-requisites, one of the main ones being likely no workable business model under the current state of affairs in the world? This fake news thing is a huge problem, but who do we expect to find a solution, under the current constraints nature forces upon us? Politicians? Media? Altruistic billionaires? Democracy ("the people")? In the bizarre matrix of information flow that takes place on Planet Earth circa 2019, HN happens to be a unique and substantial junction, frequented by an unusually high concentration of intelligent and logical people. I propose that if something is ever going to change, if any entity is capable of bringing the mental horsepower to the table to perform a comprehensive, unbiased analysis of the problem, and come up with workable solutions that can overcome the unfortunate constraints, it is going to take the collective intelligence of something like the HN community. I further propose that not only do we have this capability, but also that we have a responsibility. The world is what we make of it, and as it is it seems like we're all using our substantial intellectual abilities to analyze the problem, but then just complain to each other about it and point out how others (the people mentioned above) "should" fix it. News flash: they're not going to fix it, for the very reasons that people are pointing out in this thread. So, what are we going to do about this problem dang? Or the same idea from a different perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKzVmVDCtFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKzVmVDCtFg I've become quite fascinated lately how artists seem able to better communicate complex, multi-dimensional ideas, where plain language and logic fails. But then, this has always been the case if you stop and think about it. I'll throw one idea in the ring: a government-sponsored, unbiased and transparent, crowd-sourced version of Snopes, that doesn't just fact-check cherry picked fake news stories, but rather does a continuous review of the daily news stream. The goal isn't to perform a full, "truthful" telling of each story, but rather to serve as a "spot the lie" service, pointing out bias, assumptions, memes, opinions, mind reading, future predicting, history rewriting, logical fallacies, different perspectives, overlooked complications, and so forth and so on. The goal is not to tell people what's really going on, but rather to make it crystal clear that in actuality, we don't really know WHAT is going on! And that's ok, because at least we'd now know that, which is quite an improvement from our current state. Of course, this is kind of what reddit is in a sense, and it typically degrades into a shitshow of people yelling at each other and voting on their subconscious biases. Identifying that behavior as a problem, and finding a solution, is something I suspect the minds of HN could solve. Well, if we could stop fighting amongst each other that is.
mstrlaw 7y ago
First, start by seriously broadening the range of sources you get your news from. Specifically, choose to put in some "contrary" sources to those you are used to. Second, analyse and average out the stances & reporting angle from the articles that are put out about any subject. Finally, be mindful to always look at things critically and don't take things at face value. These are businesses and therefore have agendas. Besides Google News there's nothing out there that is able to cluster news articles from multiple sources into a single topic, so here's my shameless plug: https://thoro.news https://thoro.news
lm28469 7y ago
The real question is why are people following the news anyway? It's pure entertainment at that point. "Hey Karen have you seen that a girl was raped and murdered 1000 miles away from you ? Have you heard what _unknown politician of a third world country you couldn't even place on a map_ said ! that's outrageous. A cop killed an innocent man today #thoughtsAndPrayers". The world would be a much better place if everybody only checked what's happening around them instead of the other side of the country / world. 99% of the "news" have 0 impact on you and you have 0 power (direct and indirect) on 99% of what's happening, why even bother ?
- frankbreetz 7y ago
  News also includes what laws are passed, what court decisions were made, it's a citizen's responsibility to be an informed citizen.
  - Joe-Z 7y ago
    Yes, but these 'real news' as we could call them, will probably have a legal requirement to be posted on a government-owned source also (and I'm assuming this source would be free of twisted profit incentives). So, still not required to immerse yourself in the constant stream of noise and manipulation that is 'the news'.
  - lm28469 7y ago
    > it's a citizen's responsibility to be an informed citizen. There are new/updated laws every single day, in my country I can read them online, 99.99% of them aren't presented in mainstream news. Don't read mainstream newspapers or watch CNN/Fox news to be an informed citizen, that's not how it works.
  - GarrisonPrime 7y ago
    “it’s a slave’s responsibility to pay attention to his master’s proclamations” Fixed it for you.
- zouhair 7y ago
  Well that's short sighted. It's because of this flawed logic that a lot of Americans think they have the best education/healthcare in the World. Just now that they started to look at what is happening elsewhere that they are starting to understand what they are lacking. Here is the thing, and it works for everything in life: Knowing a thing is almost always better than not knowing it, even if it is not clear what use to make of it. This said knowing what is happening near you is also very important.
schalab 7y ago
I dont think ownership is the main problem. The larger problem seems to be global. The ability to be expressive comes with it certain biological traits and dispositions. These traits may determine your viewpoints on matters. So, if I hire journalists purely based on their writing ability, I may find most of them have very similar political views. If I create an industry of the best actors/musicians, again I may find them to have similar traits and views. So, you can have a situation where some view has 50% support in the larger population, but almost no support in the press, academia, entertainment industry etc. In a society based on free speech and no violence, the views supported by expressive people have an overwhelming advantage. The problem is just because you are very good at communication, doesnt mean your viewpoint is always correct. That is the reason some brilliant professors dont make it in the private sector, while someone who cant string a sentence together becomes a billionaire. But when people see, supposedly neutral organizations have an overwhelming slant to one side of a viewpoint, the organization loses credibility. They are in a bubble. When you no longer have institutions of fairness everyone can agree upon, you create the problem of fake news.
- entropy_ 7y ago
  "The ability to be expressive comes with it certain biological traits and dispositions. These traits may determine your viewpoints on matters." This is an extremely hand-wavy assumption that you're basing your arguments on. Any evidence to back that up? It would seem to me that the ability to express one's views would be orthogonal to one's viewpoints on various matters.
  - pixl97 7y ago
    > It would seem to me that the ability to express one's views would be orthogonal to one's viewpoints on various matters. Since when? I know quite a number of brilliant engineers in different fields. Most of them should never be put in front of a camera or a general audience for public speaking. Having strong and even well understood viewpoints does not mean you have the ability to translate them outside of your domain well. That is a rather rare trait.
vinniejames 7y ago
By reading different news sources and forming your own opinion. The truth is out there
mc32 7y ago
One attempt could be forming professional associations where members get disbarred for violating principles for reporting. It wouldn’t be perfect but could be better than what we have where there is no responsibility or accountability for misrepresenting news events.
- k_sze 7y ago
  I'm afraid that in the bigger picture of modern media landscape, that's not going to have much of an effect. Let's say you disbar some John Doe so he cannot be hired by a news media organisation any more. There is still nothing stopping him from blogging, tweeting, instagramming, and tiktoking. I suspect that the people who really know how to spin stories and get a following don't really need to work for a newspaper at all. What I'm saying is that the news corporations may not be as influencial as some people believe. Let me take, for example, the Hong Kong protests/riots (whatever you would like to call them). There were plenty of fake news and rumors circling around Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc; and those had real influence on how people viewed the protests/riots; none of those fake news or rumors had to come from a "proper" news tv station or newspaper.
  - mc32 7y ago
    You make a good point about that and this doesn’t solve that issue. The issue it tries to address is the one where people are looking to find journalistic news based on confirmed evidence rather than hearsay, speculation, playing loose with statistics, posing opinionmakers as experts and driving narrative, etc.
insickness 7y ago
There was a post going around showing a screenshot of CNN versus Fox after Sonderland's testimony at the impeachment hearings. Each had a wildly different take on what was said, at least in the headline. It was posted as a complaint that one of these sites was fake news and the other reflected reality more accurately. I don't see a problem with two wildly different takes on the same incident, particularly when it is political. In fact, I would say this is a sign of a healthy democracy. Compare it to the alternative: a single, typically state-sponsored viewpoint in a totalitarian state. This isn't to say there aren't problems with fake news, the corporatisation of media, sensationalism, etc. But competing narratives imposes at least some checks and balances.
DanielBMarkham 7y ago
If you think about it, this is the same problem faced by any student of history. Some facts are "solid", some are squishy, interpretations are vague and/or self-serving, much is made up to support various narratives the participants are peddling. I wonder if we'll start seeing 1) better tools for historians, and 2) tools historians currently used accelerated/improved to do more real-time news.
golemotron 7y ago
> How can you know what news is real It's actually easier to tell today whether something is fake because there are more outlets to determine an intersection within. Here's how you do it: Read both CNN and Fox. If something is reported on both, it's real. For stories that exist on both, notice the slant of each story. Pay attention to emotive conjugation [1] and ask yourself these three questions: 1. Why did the editors pick this story? 2. What is their opinion of it and the actors in it? 3. What stories are not being reported because the editors are not interested in them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation
darren0 7y ago
It's somewhat ironic that you can't even trust this article. There's an obvious bias towards a "power struggle" view of the world's problems. The issue with the current state of affairs is essentially assumed to be because of billionaires and corporate consolidation. The solution presented is then to give more power to the people. Neither point is substantiated by fact. One could just as easily argue that the state of the media is due to a failure to adapt to the internet in which blogs, Twitter, and social media become peoples primary source of information. So the "power of the people" could have in fact caused this issue. This also being a conjecture. The only point in this article that is well substantiated is that trust in media is low and I feel this article is perfectly on trend.
- pixl97 7y ago
  Its generally thought that trust in media was dropping before the advent of the blog. Massive consolidation in the media industry along with the event of 24 hour news where something had to fill the channel at all times is considered a precursor to the situation we are in.
markus_zhang 7y ago
You can't. And to be frank, consuming multiple news sources doesn't move you closer to the truth, especially for political stuffs.
marcus_holmes 7y ago
Having run a newspaper, I know the problem is the business model. Funding by advertising is a terrible business model for journalism. "real" journalism doesn't make any money because it's expensive to make and doesn't generate any more ad revenue than bad journalism. Most newspapers lose money, and that's getting worse not better. So billionaires own (and subsidise) newspapers, and get to influence content. So either we start paying for our news, or we continue with the current situation. Though it's going to get worse because we're de-training an entire generation of journalists, and the advertising revenue is shrinking.
- baq 7y ago
  i'd say that tax money should go to newspapers but how do you disentangle tax money from politicians is... a bit of a problem.
  - GarrisonPrime 7y ago
    Why in the world would you want tax money to fund journalism?
    - baq 7y ago
      obviously because private money has sick incentives and there's only tax money besides private capital to work with. like i said the problem is tax money also has sick incentives.
- RickJWagner 7y ago
  I don't think public funding is good, either. The BBC gets its revenues from public funding, but it's got a strong political bias.
  - marcus_holmes 7y ago
    Same for the ABC in Australia. They had some scandal recently with politicians intervening in stories.
faissaloo 7y ago
You can't. Start asking how the information the news gives you is actually benefiting you.
mikece 7y ago
Something which continues to stun me is how much spin and opinion are added to the news and that "just the facts" isn't a thing anymore. I listen to the No Agenda Show podcast (In The Morning!) which can most succinctly be described as news deconstruction and they go to the source material, transcripts, and audio clips with context as often as possible -- and then contrast those against what CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and the rest are saying. In too many cases the news outlets, both (American) conservative and (American) liberal are claiming significance and meaning that is either absent from the source material or COMPLETELY OPPOSITE of what the source material suggests. Strangely, this is reassuring to my sanity because looking at the opposite points of view of the media leads the logical person to conclude they can't be talking about the same thing, that they both cannot be true. With news deconstruction like they do on No Agenda it becomes obvious that "mainstream news" in the United States is pretty much a world of make-believe these days.
- NWviking 7y ago
  In the morning!
k_sze 7y ago
Completely off-topic. Came here to say that I hate that stupid ticker at the top. Utterly unnecessary, gratuitous, overboard animation, even when the price of an item didn't actually change! Immediately switched to Reader View in Firefox because the ticker was too annoying.
known 7y ago
Very difficult due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
qazqwert 7y ago
You can't the only thing you can do is to read as much as you can from mixed sources with different biases and.. and fact check your self if you can... never trust the mainstream media... they lie as hell... on both sides of the political spectrum...
k_sze 7y ago
I'm an avid reader of Chomsky. He often gets his sources from financial and foreign policy publications. I think I remember him writing something to the effect of: the best source of truthful journalism is in the finance and foreign policy publications, the reason being that those publications help powerful people form their opinions and make decisions, and none of the powerful people would be subscribing to publications that do a shitty job and that compromise the powerful people's decisions. So those publications are necessarily honest, the articles they publish would often be devoid of emotion or moral judgement (e.g. a "member of the communist party" would be just that, not a "commie"), they would even openly admit about, for instance, how some policy protects the interests of certain circles of powerful people. I can't remember where exactly I've read that and what the exact wordings were though.
- iagovar 7y ago
  Foreign Policy has biased publications. I know this because I've been involved in events they talked about and it was indeed biased and lacked information, and some of the context. The job was still better than main stream media, that's true.
- neonate 7y ago
  You're right. He has been saying that for many years and I've heard many variations. The WSJ is famously his favourite newspaper, though that may have shifted post-Murdoch.
RickJWagner 7y ago
I think the biggest problem isn't reporting false statements. It's reporting marginal or true statements, but presenting only one side of the story. Or controlling the narrative-- by selecting which questions to ask/answer, the purveyor totally controls the conversation. I think the only defense is to get news from a variety of diverse sources.

60 points by flywithdolp 7y ago

First, don't trust anything that isn't a direct, verifiable quote (basically, on camera). Ignore headlines and anything that is an interpretation of what someone said. Same goes for any other facts - believe what you can verify, or where there's direct testimony from people who were there and know what happened. Second, make an effort to understand the context of any actions or quotes. This may require some more research and understanding. You can rarely extract this from a news article and requires some careful language parsing to determine what the facts are vs some reporters opinion or agenda.

sideshowb 7y ago
You have heard of deepfakes, right?
- IngvarLynn 7y ago
  The need to properly digitally sign absolutely all content is higher than ever.
  - pixl97 7y ago
    Which again, has a multitude of problems.

vearwhershuh 7y ago

You can't. Despite the social shame associated with it, I no longer even believe main stream history around things like the kennedy assassination. I don't know what happened, but I'm skeptical that what they say happened actually happened. We live in an epistemological radical age, with mass psychological operations being carried out by multiple state and non-state actors. The good news is that the only sane response is to step back and focus on the ones we love around us, which is what we should be doing anyway.

k_sze 7y ago
The problem is that, in order to protect the ones you love, especially their future, you need to make some important decisions like voting, joining protests when you need to, and maybe even trying to convince other people to vote for the same candidate or to join you in protest; all of these activities require being informed of the true agenda and abilities of candidates, of important socio-political issues, etc. You can't just say "I'll focus on the ones I love around me" and ignore the rest.
- vearwhershuh 7y ago
  I disagree. In as much as any of those distract you from raising good children, they hurt more than they help, and voting and political activity in general is pointless (at best) in most countries. The elites are going to get what they want until there is bloodshed, and probably even beyond that as well. Irish Democracy[1] is more effective and more moral than any sort of political activism. [1] "Quiet, anonymous, and often complicitous, lawbreaking and disobedience may well be the historically preferred mode of political action for peasant and subaltern classes, for whom open defiance is too dangerous….One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish Democracy”—the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people—than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs." James Scott - Two Cheers for Anarchism
  - k_sze 7y ago
    What you are talking about is the "action". I don't think that really invalidates my point: good old democracy via voting may not be your preferred mode of political action, but you still need to be informed about issues so that you take action for the right cause, whatever the form of political action you want to take. Put another way, you need to be informed so that you can engage in lawbreaking and disobedience for the right cause. Disclaimer: I'm not advocating for lawbreaking or disobedience. What I said above was just for the sake of argument in favour of staying informed.

rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago

You need to fork this: https://github.com/mdiplo/Medias_francais https://github.com/mdiplo/Medias_francais Google Translate: >French media: who owns what? >Property relations between the French media and their main shareholders >The data is organized in two tables: >1. 'medias_francais.tsv' contains all shareholders (natural or legal persons) and media represented on the map >2. 'relations_medias_francais.tsv' details the capital links between these shareholders and the groups or media they own >Last updated November, 2019 >Technical indication: for those who wish to participate in updating the database by making a pull request, make sure that the file is encoded in UTF-8 with unix line breaks so that we can merge it all without conflict. Edit: I wish this was all added to Wikidata so we can chart this for every country but also map the transnational stake-holding.

busterarm 7y ago
I use the NewsGuard (I admit they're far from perfect) browser plugin and there's an alarming number of news stories that are broken by entities that have virtually all of the green check marks except that they conceal the ownership and financing of their newspaper.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

barry-cotter 7y ago

Is this really that surprising? Billionaires owning vanity projects isn’t news when they’re football teams, why is it when they’re corporate news organizations? Also, if there was ever a time to be concerned about the owners of media organizations controlling the narrative this is not it. The media, and the ruling class more generally, being pissed off that the peasants are daring to speak back and have their own non approved opinions is behind the never ending stream of invective directed at the big tech companies[1]. Martin Gurri’s book on this loss of control, The Revolt of the Public, is amazing by the way[2]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/19/the-collapse-of-the-information-ecosystem-poses-profound-risks-for-humanity https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/19/the-co... [2] https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/martin-gurri-revolt-of-the-public/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/martin-gurri-revolt-... https://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2019/02/book-review-revolt-of-public-by-martin.html?m=1 https://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2019/02/book-review-revo...

richthegeek 7y ago
> Billionaires owning vanity projects isn’t news when they’re football teams, why is it when they’re corporate news organizations? You really can't see the difference between the two? If Mark Cuban has a problem with a player and cuts him from a game, then only the Maverick's suffer. If he (owned a paper and) has a problem with a politician and demands hit pieces, the whole country suffers.
- baq 7y ago
  don't forget that a politician may demand a piece from Mark Cuban.
pjc50 7y ago
Perhaps "surprising" is the wrong word, but this absolutely is the problem; billionaire-owned "news" organisations able to propagandise with very little opposition. Although the question of who the staff class is also important; people have started to notice that the (publicly owned!) BBC's political presenter Andrew Neil works for all sorts of Conservative party-aligned institutions like the Spectator.

dna_polymerase 7y ago

The info-graphic posted in the article links back originates from titlemax.com [0]. Their article at least list the owners of some outlets. I've got to say I am a bit surprised to see such an blogpost from a lending corp. Their wiki article suggest they faced criticism in the past for predatory lending [1], I wonder if this is their version of getting back at those who reported on them, or what their intention for that topic is? [0]: https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/who-owns-your-news-the-top-100-digital-news-outlets-and-their-ownership/ https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/who-owns... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TitleMax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TitleMax

sojmq 7y ago

"only 15 billionaires and 6 corporations owning the majority of U.S media outlets" Wow, such stinking antisemitism in this article. I had hoped we, as a society, could do much better

divbyzer0 7y ago
antisemitism. Really, I didn't notice anything. Care to explain?
adrianN 7y ago
I only skimmed the article but couldn't find anything antisemitic. What did I miss?
- paganel 7y ago
  Not the OP, but I'd guess the only connection to potential antisemitism is the critical mention of Sheldon Adelson, "an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist" who is very supportive of some of the politics carried out by the Israeli state. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson
- boomlinde 7y ago
  I read it as an attempt by someone who doesn't particularly like Jews to conflate the issue actually being discussed in the article with the Jewish question. I wouldn't waste time trying to draw out of him how his concern spiel relates to reality.
ra120271 7y ago
I went back and re-read the article with your comment in mind and struggled to recognise any overt anti-semitism. Could you provide some examples?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 7y ago

ra120271 7y ago

I've always felt news organisations should be legally required to be non-for-profit and wages capped at some sensible multiple of the national average wage (e.g 6x)

baq 7y ago
not too low though or you're just fostering bribery.
- ra120271 7y ago
  I agree. If the belief is that the press (news) should be free and unencumbered to report the truth, and accepting all solutions are imperfect, then I think its a case of removing the worst influences in alignment with that goal. Media conglomerates and billionaires usually have competing interests due to their diverse interests and influence. So my suggestion is not to remove them or exclude them from news but to limit the number of levers they can pull within news. I accept that my thoughts are imperfect and flawed also, so offer them for discussion and nothing else.
sandoooo 7y ago
You're casting a pretty wide net there. I've always felt news organizations should be legally required to recruit from my exact microdemographic and only from registered members of the party I most recently voted for, with wages indexed to between 99% to 101% of my current income.
krapp 7y ago
The likely result of that would be news organizations being primarily influenced by governments, corporate donors and religious organizations.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
pjc50 7y ago
News organisations are generally pretty badly paid at the moment. I'd be up for prominent disclosure of ultimate ownership, though.

hos234 7y ago

I get my news from PewDiePie

busterarm 7y ago
But he stopped Pew News. :(

sojmq 7y ago

This image in the middle of the article is just disgusting: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZMSk_xidOwA/XXga6ujjZrI/AAAAAAAAFxM/v23Y-PZA9DEc7wAm9dtmB2t8-AyHLSbEACLcBGAsYHQ/s0/MSM.jpeg https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZMSk_xidOwA/XXga6ujjZrI/AAAAAAAAF...

vertex-four 7y ago
That’s, uhh, interesting - I don’t see that image (or any others) in the article.
otalp 7y ago
Where's that in the article?
- busterarm 7y ago
  parent got lost looking for 4chan.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  It's not.

jajag 7y ago

I find the idea that there can be an unbiased news source deeply problematic. All reporting of an event has to be from a perspective, and has to make decisions about what to report, what to leave out; what to emphasise, what to play down. An honest news source should be one that is one that is honest about its own biases.

cm2187 7y ago
I agree that it is hard to dial down bias in reporting to an absolute zero (which Jean-Luc Godard provocatively referred to “50% time for the jews 50% time for Hitler”). But there is still a scale. And right now, in the heat of a political campaign in the US and the UK, it is dialled up to 11. The reporting could be a lot more balanced, presenting both sides, not using provocating headlines, etc. It would probably be a bit more boring (which is why even previously serious publications like the Financial Times gave up).
- jdironman 7y ago
  News shouldn't have a political agenda it should have a factual agenda. It's raining in Florida would be a fact. Trump is campaigning in Florida is a fact (I dont know if he is, just an example). Trump is winning over the Floridan people with his exciting rallie displays a political agenda.
  - jajag 7y ago
    That's an unachievable ideal, particularly and especially for complex stories (e.g. just about any political story) where there are too many facts to report, to much backstory to fill in, and an editor has to make a decision about what to leave in and what to omit.
krapp 7y ago
I think one problem is that, due to general mistrust and paranoia regarding the "mainstream media," people tend to conflate bias with intentional fabrication and propaganda.

joaodlf 7y ago

I have, sadly, given up. I can't stand watching/reading the news and feeling that I am quite possibly being manipulated, so I have completely given up. Anything I do read, I mistrust. I don't want to be ignorant towards what is happening around me, but I feel like I have no choice, I don't want to become bitter and "pick a side", I prefer to remain ignorant. Even when friends say "Oh, but try this source, they are soooo much better", it doesn't take long to realise there is ALWAYS an agenda behind it, a political leaning... It's exhausting.

tekmate 7y ago
identify potential biases in a source and then filter the information of that source through a bias lense, then use another source and do the same thing to triangulate "the truth" giving up on consuming news because everything might be biased is simply lazy
- jl6 7y ago
  Beware that the truth is not necessarily the midpoint between opposing opinions. Sometimes a source with a general bias gets it exactly right in a specific case.
  - tekmate 7y ago
    true, triangulating doesn't mean the middle necessarily
  - lowmagnet 7y ago
    And there aren't always "two sides" to an issue; there are arguments made in bad faith and those in good faith and it's hard to tell the difference.
- dexen 7y ago
  >giving up on consuming news because everything might be biased is simply lazy Not at all; it's a valid strategy. The events and the state of the world can be deduced from observing the (near) past just as well as from reading the news, perhaps even better. A person can stay reasonably well informed by skipping on the news, and instead observing actual events, actual outcomes, that is the (near) history. Both in person and through social circles, in particular friends and family. You could call it "the slow way" of getting the news. As noted in OP and elsewhere in discussion, the news are rife with misinformation. It follows news listeners, subject to the misinformation, end up with various misconceptions and strong emotions, thus prone to doing things no well informed person would do. Having a sizable segment of population not subject to the news, and instead informed via others means is a natural counter-balance, a safety mechanism against single mindedness imparted by the centralized news.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

remote_phone 7y ago

Overall this post is crap. The whole point about people choosing what they want to read or get reported on only reinforces bubbles. That’s what Facebook did. However I agree that the media is biased and it is worse now than ever. I think even more than being biased, it’s what they choose to report on or not report on that matters. Look at the coverage of Andrew Yang on MSNBC. There are over a dozen instances of ignoring him on charts and graphs and putting lower-polling candidates on display other than him. A few times is one thing but it’s literally over 15 times, including ignoring him for the first 30 mins of the November debates and giving him the least amount of talking time of all the candidates for the 4th debate in a row. Things like this show that media is biased to a degree that is undermining our democracy.

mistermann 7y ago
See also: https://old.reddit.com/r/bernieblindness/ https://old.reddit.com/r/bernieblindness/ I would say this is beyond biased and well into the "literally evil" category.
pixl97 7y ago
This happens every political season and has for decades. The media organizations have winners they have ready picked. This really blew up in their face in 2016 with the pied piper candidate.

BurnGpuBurn 7y ago

From the article: "One way to restore trust is to give power back to the people, enabling them to choose what stories matter most to them. By doing this, we can revolutionise the current state of the news media — from an entity that dictates information to an industry that only reports legitimate information that has been requested by the population." That's the only solution that's offered, and a bad one at that. Letting "the people decide", e.g. democratizing the news, is a bad idea. How would we know what to choose? How would we know that there's an important issue out there that needs to be reported on, beforehand? Normal people aren't investigative reporters. I don't have a solution either, but I know what it is we need. We need good journalists to do good journalism and be able to choose freely what they research and report on. The current for-profit corporate structure of the news media is incompatible with that. That's why you get more truth nowadays from independent journalists, researchers and content creators than from the corporate media, which will almost exclusively lie to you to further an agenda. It's very hard to separate the weed from the chaff though, and it requires a lot of critical thinking and observation of the reader.

mistermann 7y ago
> I don't have a solution either, but I know what it is we need. We need good journalists to do good journalism and be able to choose freely what they research and report on. The current for-profit corporate structure of the news media is incompatible with that. Well sure, but how can such a thing really be accomplished, considering all the difficult pre-requisites, one of the main ones being likely no workable business model under the current state of affairs in the world? This fake news thing is a huge problem, but who do we expect to find a solution, under the current constraints nature forces upon us? Politicians? Media? Altruistic billionaires? Democracy ("the people")? In the bizarre matrix of information flow that takes place on Planet Earth circa 2019, HN happens to be a unique and substantial junction, frequented by an unusually high concentration of intelligent and logical people. I propose that if something is ever going to change, if any entity is capable of bringing the mental horsepower to the table to perform a comprehensive, unbiased analysis of the problem, and come up with workable solutions that can overcome the unfortunate constraints, it is going to take the collective intelligence of something like the HN community. I further propose that not only do we have this capability, but also that we have a responsibility. The world is what we make of it, and as it is it seems like we're all using our substantial intellectual abilities to analyze the problem, but then just complain to each other about it and point out how others (the people mentioned above) "should" fix it. News flash: they're not going to fix it, for the very reasons that people are pointing out in this thread. So, what are we going to do about this problem dang? Or the same idea from a different perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKzVmVDCtFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKzVmVDCtFg I've become quite fascinated lately how artists seem able to better communicate complex, multi-dimensional ideas, where plain language and logic fails. But then, this has always been the case if you stop and think about it. I'll throw one idea in the ring: a government-sponsored, unbiased and transparent, crowd-sourced version of Snopes, that doesn't just fact-check cherry picked fake news stories, but rather does a continuous review of the daily news stream. The goal isn't to perform a full, "truthful" telling of each story, but rather to serve as a "spot the lie" service, pointing out bias, assumptions, memes, opinions, mind reading, future predicting, history rewriting, logical fallacies, different perspectives, overlooked complications, and so forth and so on. The goal is not to tell people what's really going on, but rather to make it crystal clear that in actuality, we don't really know WHAT is going on! And that's ok, because at least we'd now know that, which is quite an improvement from our current state. Of course, this is kind of what reddit is in a sense, and it typically degrades into a shitshow of people yelling at each other and voting on their subconscious biases. Identifying that behavior as a problem, and finding a solution, is something I suspect the minds of HN could solve. Well, if we could stop fighting amongst each other that is.

mstrlaw 7y ago

First, start by seriously broadening the range of sources you get your news from. Specifically, choose to put in some "contrary" sources to those you are used to. Second, analyse and average out the stances & reporting angle from the articles that are put out about any subject. Finally, be mindful to always look at things critically and don't take things at face value. These are businesses and therefore have agendas. Besides Google News there's nothing out there that is able to cluster news articles from multiple sources into a single topic, so here's my shameless plug: https://thoro.news https://thoro.news

lm28469 7y ago

The real question is why are people following the news anyway? It's pure entertainment at that point. "Hey Karen have you seen that a girl was raped and murdered 1000 miles away from you ? Have you heard what _unknown politician of a third world country you couldn't even place on a map_ said ! that's outrageous. A cop killed an innocent man today #thoughtsAndPrayers". The world would be a much better place if everybody only checked what's happening around them instead of the other side of the country / world. 99% of the "news" have 0 impact on you and you have 0 power (direct and indirect) on 99% of what's happening, why even bother ?

frankbreetz 7y ago
News also includes what laws are passed, what court decisions were made, it's a citizen's responsibility to be an informed citizen.
- Joe-Z 7y ago
  Yes, but these 'real news' as we could call them, will probably have a legal requirement to be posted on a government-owned source also (and I'm assuming this source would be free of twisted profit incentives). So, still not required to immerse yourself in the constant stream of noise and manipulation that is 'the news'.
- lm28469 7y ago
  > it's a citizen's responsibility to be an informed citizen. There are new/updated laws every single day, in my country I can read them online, 99.99% of them aren't presented in mainstream news. Don't read mainstream newspapers or watch CNN/Fox news to be an informed citizen, that's not how it works.
- GarrisonPrime 7y ago
  “it’s a slave’s responsibility to pay attention to his master’s proclamations” Fixed it for you.
zouhair 7y ago
Well that's short sighted. It's because of this flawed logic that a lot of Americans think they have the best education/healthcare in the World. Just now that they started to look at what is happening elsewhere that they are starting to understand what they are lacking. Here is the thing, and it works for everything in life: Knowing a thing is almost always better than not knowing it, even if it is not clear what use to make of it. This said knowing what is happening near you is also very important.

schalab 7y ago

I dont think ownership is the main problem. The larger problem seems to be global. The ability to be expressive comes with it certain biological traits and dispositions. These traits may determine your viewpoints on matters. So, if I hire journalists purely based on their writing ability, I may find most of them have very similar political views. If I create an industry of the best actors/musicians, again I may find them to have similar traits and views. So, you can have a situation where some view has 50% support in the larger population, but almost no support in the press, academia, entertainment industry etc. In a society based on free speech and no violence, the views supported by expressive people have an overwhelming advantage. The problem is just because you are very good at communication, doesnt mean your viewpoint is always correct. That is the reason some brilliant professors dont make it in the private sector, while someone who cant string a sentence together becomes a billionaire. But when people see, supposedly neutral organizations have an overwhelming slant to one side of a viewpoint, the organization loses credibility. They are in a bubble. When you no longer have institutions of fairness everyone can agree upon, you create the problem of fake news.

entropy_ 7y ago
"The ability to be expressive comes with it certain biological traits and dispositions. These traits may determine your viewpoints on matters." This is an extremely hand-wavy assumption that you're basing your arguments on. Any evidence to back that up? It would seem to me that the ability to express one's views would be orthogonal to one's viewpoints on various matters.
- pixl97 7y ago
  > It would seem to me that the ability to express one's views would be orthogonal to one's viewpoints on various matters. Since when? I know quite a number of brilliant engineers in different fields. Most of them should never be put in front of a camera or a general audience for public speaking. Having strong and even well understood viewpoints does not mean you have the ability to translate them outside of your domain well. That is a rather rare trait.

vinniejames 7y ago

By reading different news sources and forming your own opinion. The truth is out there

mc32 7y ago

One attempt could be forming professional associations where members get disbarred for violating principles for reporting. It wouldn’t be perfect but could be better than what we have where there is no responsibility or accountability for misrepresenting news events.

k_sze 7y ago
I'm afraid that in the bigger picture of modern media landscape, that's not going to have much of an effect. Let's say you disbar some John Doe so he cannot be hired by a news media organisation any more. There is still nothing stopping him from blogging, tweeting, instagramming, and tiktoking. I suspect that the people who really know how to spin stories and get a following don't really need to work for a newspaper at all. What I'm saying is that the news corporations may not be as influencial as some people believe. Let me take, for example, the Hong Kong protests/riots (whatever you would like to call them). There were plenty of fake news and rumors circling around Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc; and those had real influence on how people viewed the protests/riots; none of those fake news or rumors had to come from a "proper" news tv station or newspaper.
- mc32 7y ago
  You make a good point about that and this doesn’t solve that issue. The issue it tries to address is the one where people are looking to find journalistic news based on confirmed evidence rather than hearsay, speculation, playing loose with statistics, posing opinionmakers as experts and driving narrative, etc.

insickness 7y ago

There was a post going around showing a screenshot of CNN versus Fox after Sonderland's testimony at the impeachment hearings. Each had a wildly different take on what was said, at least in the headline. It was posted as a complaint that one of these sites was fake news and the other reflected reality more accurately. I don't see a problem with two wildly different takes on the same incident, particularly when it is political. In fact, I would say this is a sign of a healthy democracy. Compare it to the alternative: a single, typically state-sponsored viewpoint in a totalitarian state. This isn't to say there aren't problems with fake news, the corporatisation of media, sensationalism, etc. But competing narratives imposes at least some checks and balances.

DanielBMarkham 7y ago

If you think about it, this is the same problem faced by any student of history. Some facts are "solid", some are squishy, interpretations are vague and/or self-serving, much is made up to support various narratives the participants are peddling. I wonder if we'll start seeing 1) better tools for historians, and 2) tools historians currently used accelerated/improved to do more real-time news.

golemotron 7y ago

> How can you know what news is real It's actually easier to tell today whether something is fake because there are more outlets to determine an intersection within. Here's how you do it: Read both CNN and Fox. If something is reported on both, it's real. For stories that exist on both, notice the slant of each story. Pay attention to emotive conjugation [1] and ask yourself these three questions: 1. Why did the editors pick this story? 2. What is their opinion of it and the actors in it? 3. What stories are not being reported because the editors are not interested in them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation

darren0 7y ago

It's somewhat ironic that you can't even trust this article. There's an obvious bias towards a "power struggle" view of the world's problems. The issue with the current state of affairs is essentially assumed to be because of billionaires and corporate consolidation. The solution presented is then to give more power to the people. Neither point is substantiated by fact. One could just as easily argue that the state of the media is due to a failure to adapt to the internet in which blogs, Twitter, and social media become peoples primary source of information. So the "power of the people" could have in fact caused this issue. This also being a conjecture. The only point in this article that is well substantiated is that trust in media is low and I feel this article is perfectly on trend.

pixl97 7y ago
Its generally thought that trust in media was dropping before the advent of the blog. Massive consolidation in the media industry along with the event of 24 hour news where something had to fill the channel at all times is considered a precursor to the situation we are in.

markus_zhang 7y ago

You can't. And to be frank, consuming multiple news sources doesn't move you closer to the truth, especially for political stuffs.

marcus_holmes 7y ago

Having run a newspaper, I know the problem is the business model. Funding by advertising is a terrible business model for journalism. "real" journalism doesn't make any money because it's expensive to make and doesn't generate any more ad revenue than bad journalism. Most newspapers lose money, and that's getting worse not better. So billionaires own (and subsidise) newspapers, and get to influence content. So either we start paying for our news, or we continue with the current situation. Though it's going to get worse because we're de-training an entire generation of journalists, and the advertising revenue is shrinking.

baq 7y ago
i'd say that tax money should go to newspapers but how do you disentangle tax money from politicians is... a bit of a problem.
- GarrisonPrime 7y ago
  Why in the world would you want tax money to fund journalism?
  - baq 7y ago
    obviously because private money has sick incentives and there's only tax money besides private capital to work with. like i said the problem is tax money also has sick incentives.
RickJWagner 7y ago
I don't think public funding is good, either. The BBC gets its revenues from public funding, but it's got a strong political bias.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  Same for the ABC in Australia. They had some scandal recently with politicians intervening in stories.

faissaloo 7y ago

You can't. Start asking how the information the news gives you is actually benefiting you.

mikece 7y ago

Something which continues to stun me is how much spin and opinion are added to the news and that "just the facts" isn't a thing anymore. I listen to the No Agenda Show podcast (In The Morning!) which can most succinctly be described as news deconstruction and they go to the source material, transcripts, and audio clips with context as often as possible -- and then contrast those against what CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and the rest are saying. In too many cases the news outlets, both (American) conservative and (American) liberal are claiming significance and meaning that is either absent from the source material or COMPLETELY OPPOSITE of what the source material suggests. Strangely, this is reassuring to my sanity because looking at the opposite points of view of the media leads the logical person to conclude they can't be talking about the same thing, that they both cannot be true. With news deconstruction like they do on No Agenda it becomes obvious that "mainstream news" in the United States is pretty much a world of make-believe these days.

NWviking 7y ago
In the morning!

k_sze 7y ago

Completely off-topic. Came here to say that I hate that stupid ticker at the top. Utterly unnecessary, gratuitous, overboard animation, even when the price of an item didn't actually change! Immediately switched to Reader View in Firefox because the ticker was too annoying.

known 7y ago

Very difficult due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

qazqwert 7y ago

You can't the only thing you can do is to read as much as you can from mixed sources with different biases and.. and fact check your self if you can... never trust the mainstream media... they lie as hell... on both sides of the political spectrum...

k_sze 7y ago

I'm an avid reader of Chomsky. He often gets his sources from financial and foreign policy publications. I think I remember him writing something to the effect of: the best source of truthful journalism is in the finance and foreign policy publications, the reason being that those publications help powerful people form their opinions and make decisions, and none of the powerful people would be subscribing to publications that do a shitty job and that compromise the powerful people's decisions. So those publications are necessarily honest, the articles they publish would often be devoid of emotion or moral judgement (e.g. a "member of the communist party" would be just that, not a "commie"), they would even openly admit about, for instance, how some policy protects the interests of certain circles of powerful people. I can't remember where exactly I've read that and what the exact wordings were though.

iagovar 7y ago
Foreign Policy has biased publications. I know this because I've been involved in events they talked about and it was indeed biased and lacked information, and some of the context. The job was still better than main stream media, that's true.
neonate 7y ago
You're right. He has been saying that for many years and I've heard many variations. The WSJ is famously his favourite newspaper, though that may have shifted post-Murdoch.

RickJWagner 7y ago

I think the biggest problem isn't reporting false statements. It's reporting marginal or true statements, but presenting only one side of the story. Or controlling the narrative-- by selecting which questions to ask/answer, the purveyor totally controls the conversation. I think the only defense is to get news from a variety of diverse sources.