6 ms·

The Internet has democratized information. Big media has lost their monopoly on news. So they are lashing out and accusing small media and independents of anyth

The Internet has democratized information. Big media has lost their monopoly on news. So they are lashing out and accusing small media and independents of anything they can accuse them of, including fake news, fake views, plagarism, anything at all. It's not that their particular accusations are necessarily wrong. But the story they have been pushing front and center for the last few years now is the idea that all news sources and websites other than big media are somehow suspect, dangerous, untrustworthy, fake. This is self-serving and disingenuous.

chiefalchemist 7y ago
More importantly, it's questionable journalism. It amazes me how much fluff the mainstream media pumps out. So much so that the real and actual news gets buried (read: most people end up under-informed). The MSM events might be real, but that doesn't make it news. News has importance. News has relevance. But that text book definition a lot of MSM news is in fake not real news.
- mThumbnail 7y ago
  I'm surprised there hasn't been a anti-news backlash against the tabloidization of news media, even formerly respectable outlets like the NYT. Aaron Swartz was truly prescient
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    And look what they turned Reddit into. Schwartz would have been appalled at the ads, AMA manipulation, censorship.
  - Marsymars 7y ago
    There are some other notable figures who've spoken out against the news entertainment industry, e.g. Nassim Taleb - probably also others that I'm not familiar with.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Journalists are currently underpaid. Small newspapers are shutting down left and right. That's contributing to journalism going to hell.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    True. But the biggest contribution is the big time mainstream media's race to the bottom. They're not focused on quality. They're focused on quantity (i.e., ad revenue).
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      That's another facet of the same issue. It's a little like arguing about whether the rampant dry tinder in the drought is the problem or the vast numbers of tourists flicking their still burning cigarette butts into it is the problem while we stare at the ongoing conflagration.
      - chiefalchemist 7y ago
        I see it different. Given the importance of The Fourth Estate, the nature of TFE's business is, in and of itself, important. Yet, they bury that lead behind an endless stream of fluff.
  - cmdshiftf4 7y ago
    >Journalists are currently underpaid Based on what? Their pay is surely a function of the revenue their content generates their publishers, no? >Small newspapers are shutting down left and right. Because the above journalists aren't sufficiently able to engage people to pay for their content. It amounts to people providing something that few are interested in, or especially sufficiently interested to actually pay for it. How would those providers be deemed underpaid? Sounds frivolous.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      I'm a writer (not a journalist) and I'm quite poor. So I pretty often read articles about what is going on with the industry generally. I'm not going to bother to dig up supporting links. These articles show up on HN quite regularly. I'm also increasingly seeing comments on HN about the poor quality of journalism today. I'm only pointing out what looks to me like a blindingly obvious connection. I spent two weeks writing a blog post that hit the front page of HN. It got more than 60k page views and 300 comments and was copied by other people. It made me not one red cent. I find it really hard to attract Patreon supporters. I'm routinely told "get a real job," never mind that with the rise of the Gig Economy there are damn few "real jobs" with good pay and excellent benefits out there. So I know firsthand that it takes substantial time and effort to write a good piece and it takes years of experience to get good at writing, but that writing is often de facto given away for free or sold for peanuts so some writer can eat occasionally. I"m tired of trying to prove this to people who don't want to listen. The TLDR: If you want actual good writing, you should be trying to figure out how to reward writers who write well. If you don't want to in any way, shape or form whatsoever (because most people on HN use ad blockers) let them get paid somehow, don't be all shocked when the writing goes to shit.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  Being down voted only proves my point. News and journalism is Orwellian, and the masses generally have no idea they're being duped.
  - seattle_spring 7y ago
    You're being downvoted for your use of the term "MSM," which ironically is a term used by fake news sites like Infowars to try and legitimize their own deceit.
    - chiefalchemist 7y ago
      Again. The irony is fitting. The confirmation bias runs deep on HN, even if many pretend it doesn't. The votes either way have no value. It's as if fake fear should be enough to coddle the duped.
      - seattle_spring 7y ago
        Are you claiming that Infowars is a legitimate news source?
        jakeogh 7y ago
        You are the only one talking about it. MSM means mainstream (aka mockingbird) news. It's not like IW invented the acronym.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        seattle_spring 7y ago
        They may have not invented it, but their fans parrot the term so much that it's pretty much become a calling card.
gus_massa 7y ago
I went to the site they use as an example and clicked the first link: https://forbesbusinessinsider.com/these-tech-execs-faced-metoo-allegations-they-all-have-new-jobs https://forbesbusinessinsider.com/these-tech-execs-faced-met... The article is just blogspam of https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/tech-men-accused-sexual-misconduct-new-jobs-metoo https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/tech-men-accuse... .
- mikedilger 7y ago
  > It's not that their particular accusations are necessarily wrong.
krapp 7y ago
>But the story they have been pushing front and center for the last few years now is the idea that all news sources and websites other than big media are somehow suspect, dangerous, untrustworthy, fake. No, they haven't. If you pay attention to any mainstream media source you'll see that they all eagerly (sometimes to their detriment) incorporate web and social media content into their coverage, and maintain active presence on multiple social media platforms. It's a myth that "big media" is terrified of the web - far from it. They see the web as a cheap and easy way to farm content and cut costs. There hasn't been a meaningful distinction between "old" and "new" media for years now. The only story similar to the one you describe that's being pushed is that the all mainstream news sources are dangerous, untrustworthy and fake, entirely co-opted by corporate interests and a political agenda, and that only the web can be trusted... when the web is even more deeply co-opted by those elements than the mainstream media.
- mikedilger 7y ago
  You cannot judge the web as a group. To say "the web is even more deeply co-opted" you put forth a notion that has no useful meaning. The web is made up of everybody. So you should expect every kind of information, mostly unprofessional, mostly off the cuff and less researched. Some manipulative propaganda. Some conspiracy theories. And you should also expect some brilliant stuff out there as well. OTOH, you might expect the corporate media to also come from broadly different perspectives. Yet the corporate media output is strangely uniform in their bias, narrative and messaging ("The walls are closing in!... this marks the beginning of the end!") The appearance of Fox news made this blatently obvious, and was an utter shock to the left to see how deep the chasm was between typical right wing thinking and their own thinking. The fact that corporate media is so uniform in their viewpoint (other than fox) raises the hackles of skeptical folk like myself, and has for me been impossible to ignore since the mid 1980s. I'm not calling it a conspiracy, I'm calling it uniform enough that you shouldn't consider a story more likely true just because you heard it from multiple corporate media sources. For one: they cheat off of each other. You don't have to look far to see how the news media is co-opted by political agenda. NYT Dean Baquet was caught on tape instructing his journalism team that for the next period, stories were all to be about racism and how Trump is responsible for racism. Slate broke that story. The next day I can't remember the exact headline but I think it was on budget cuts or something and they managed to blame it on Racism and the racism they blamed on Trump. It was laugh out loud funny -- how could budget cuts be due to racism? It was very sad. On any given day, in any newspaper, I can point out the manipulative nation-damaging bias clear as day. ObExample: Today, New York Times: "How a Divided Left is Losing the Battle on Abortion." This story fails to mention the most important context, context that they have repeatedly failed to mention for so long that most people are unaware of it: Abortion is not a federal issue. The 10th amendment explicitly lays out what the Federal government is allowed to do. The 1973 Roe vs Wade decision was atrocious in that it utterly overstepped the federal government's constitutional bounds. That decision is a null and void opinion of an institution that has no jurisdiction over the matter. Regardless of what you feel about abortion law (personally I think us men should leave it up to the women, but if pressed I'd be happy with a 20 week cutoff), the collapse of the fundemental underpinnings of the United States is a much bigger story, rarely if ever mentioned by corporate media. Instead they evoke images of coat hangers to get you all emotional, frame it as a human "reproductive" right to make you indignant, and use other framing tactics which speak to and draw people into the left's vision. CLARIFICATION: I randomly picked a story. I can do that with any story, because they are all like that.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

More importantly, it's questionable journalism. It amazes me how much fluff the mainstream media pumps out. So much so that the real and actual news gets buried (read: most people end up under-informed). The MSM events might be real, but that doesn't make it news. News has importance. News has relevance. But that text book definition a lot of MSM news is in fake not real news.

mThumbnail 7y ago
I'm surprised there hasn't been a anti-news backlash against the tabloidization of news media, even formerly respectable outlets like the NYT. Aaron Swartz was truly prescient
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  And look what they turned Reddit into. Schwartz would have been appalled at the ads, AMA manipulation, censorship.
- Marsymars 7y ago
  There are some other notable figures who've spoken out against the news entertainment industry, e.g. Nassim Taleb - probably also others that I'm not familiar with.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
Journalists are currently underpaid. Small newspapers are shutting down left and right. That's contributing to journalism going to hell.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  True. But the biggest contribution is the big time mainstream media's race to the bottom. They're not focused on quality. They're focused on quantity (i.e., ad revenue).
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    That's another facet of the same issue. It's a little like arguing about whether the rampant dry tinder in the drought is the problem or the vast numbers of tourists flicking their still burning cigarette butts into it is the problem while we stare at the ongoing conflagration.
    - chiefalchemist 7y ago
      I see it different. Given the importance of The Fourth Estate, the nature of TFE's business is, in and of itself, important. Yet, they bury that lead behind an endless stream of fluff.
- cmdshiftf4 7y ago
  >Journalists are currently underpaid Based on what? Their pay is surely a function of the revenue their content generates their publishers, no? >Small newspapers are shutting down left and right. Because the above journalists aren't sufficiently able to engage people to pay for their content. It amounts to people providing something that few are interested in, or especially sufficiently interested to actually pay for it. How would those providers be deemed underpaid? Sounds frivolous.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    I'm a writer (not a journalist) and I'm quite poor. So I pretty often read articles about what is going on with the industry generally. I'm not going to bother to dig up supporting links. These articles show up on HN quite regularly. I'm also increasingly seeing comments on HN about the poor quality of journalism today. I'm only pointing out what looks to me like a blindingly obvious connection. I spent two weeks writing a blog post that hit the front page of HN. It got more than 60k page views and 300 comments and was copied by other people. It made me not one red cent. I find it really hard to attract Patreon supporters. I'm routinely told "get a real job," never mind that with the rise of the Gig Economy there are damn few "real jobs" with good pay and excellent benefits out there. So I know firsthand that it takes substantial time and effort to write a good piece and it takes years of experience to get good at writing, but that writing is often de facto given away for free or sold for peanuts so some writer can eat occasionally. I"m tired of trying to prove this to people who don't want to listen. The TLDR: If you want actual good writing, you should be trying to figure out how to reward writers who write well. If you don't want to in any way, shape or form whatsoever (because most people on HN use ad blockers) let them get paid somehow, don't be all shocked when the writing goes to shit.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Being down voted only proves my point. News and journalism is Orwellian, and the masses generally have no idea they're being duped.
- seattle_spring 7y ago
  You're being downvoted for your use of the term "MSM," which ironically is a term used by fake news sites like Infowars to try and legitimize their own deceit.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    Again. The irony is fitting. The confirmation bias runs deep on HN, even if many pretend it doesn't. The votes either way have no value. It's as if fake fear should be enough to coddle the duped.
    - seattle_spring 7y ago
      Are you claiming that Infowars is a legitimate news source?
      - jakeogh 7y ago
        You are the only one talking about it. MSM means mainstream (aka mockingbird) news. It's not like IW invented the acronym.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        seattle_spring 7y ago
        They may have not invented it, but their fans parrot the term so much that it's pretty much become a calling card.

gus_massa 7y ago

I went to the site they use as an example and clicked the first link: https://forbesbusinessinsider.com/these-tech-execs-faced-metoo-allegations-they-all-have-new-jobs https://forbesbusinessinsider.com/these-tech-execs-faced-met... The article is just blogspam of https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/tech-men-accused-sexual-misconduct-new-jobs-metoo https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/tech-men-accuse... .

mikedilger 7y ago
> It's not that their particular accusations are necessarily wrong.

krapp 7y ago

>But the story they have been pushing front and center for the last few years now is the idea that all news sources and websites other than big media are somehow suspect, dangerous, untrustworthy, fake. No, they haven't. If you pay attention to any mainstream media source you'll see that they all eagerly (sometimes to their detriment) incorporate web and social media content into their coverage, and maintain active presence on multiple social media platforms. It's a myth that "big media" is terrified of the web - far from it. They see the web as a cheap and easy way to farm content and cut costs. There hasn't been a meaningful distinction between "old" and "new" media for years now. The only story similar to the one you describe that's being pushed is that the all mainstream news sources are dangerous, untrustworthy and fake, entirely co-opted by corporate interests and a political agenda, and that only the web can be trusted... when the web is even more deeply co-opted by those elements than the mainstream media.

mikedilger 7y ago
You cannot judge the web as a group. To say "the web is even more deeply co-opted" you put forth a notion that has no useful meaning. The web is made up of everybody. So you should expect every kind of information, mostly unprofessional, mostly off the cuff and less researched. Some manipulative propaganda. Some conspiracy theories. And you should also expect some brilliant stuff out there as well. OTOH, you might expect the corporate media to also come from broadly different perspectives. Yet the corporate media output is strangely uniform in their bias, narrative and messaging ("The walls are closing in!... this marks the beginning of the end!") The appearance of Fox news made this blatently obvious, and was an utter shock to the left to see how deep the chasm was between typical right wing thinking and their own thinking. The fact that corporate media is so uniform in their viewpoint (other than fox) raises the hackles of skeptical folk like myself, and has for me been impossible to ignore since the mid 1980s. I'm not calling it a conspiracy, I'm calling it uniform enough that you shouldn't consider a story more likely true just because you heard it from multiple corporate media sources. For one: they cheat off of each other. You don't have to look far to see how the news media is co-opted by political agenda. NYT Dean Baquet was caught on tape instructing his journalism team that for the next period, stories were all to be about racism and how Trump is responsible for racism. Slate broke that story. The next day I can't remember the exact headline but I think it was on budget cuts or something and they managed to blame it on Racism and the racism they blamed on Trump. It was laugh out loud funny -- how could budget cuts be due to racism? It was very sad. On any given day, in any newspaper, I can point out the manipulative nation-damaging bias clear as day. ObExample: Today, New York Times: "How a Divided Left is Losing the Battle on Abortion." This story fails to mention the most important context, context that they have repeatedly failed to mention for so long that most people are unaware of it: Abortion is not a federal issue. The 10th amendment explicitly lays out what the Federal government is allowed to do. The 1973 Roe vs Wade decision was atrocious in that it utterly overstepped the federal government's constitutional bounds. That decision is a null and void opinion of an institution that has no jurisdiction over the matter. Regardless of what you feel about abortion law (personally I think us men should leave it up to the women, but if pressed I'd be happy with a 20 week cutoff), the collapse of the fundemental underpinnings of the United States is a much bigger story, rarely if ever mentioned by corporate media. Instead they evoke images of coat hangers to get you all emotional, frame it as a human "reproductive" right to make you indignant, and use other framing tactics which speak to and draw people into the left's vision. CLARIFICATION: I randomly picked a story. I can do that with any story, because they are all like that.