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> If there is one less to be learned from this whole Covid-19 debacle (and I'm sure there are several), it is that our entire news ecosystem, public and private

by sah2ed 7y ago

> If there is one less to be learned from this whole Covid-19 debacle (and I'm sure there are several), it is that our entire news ecosystem, public and private, is fundamentally structured wrong for doing what is supposed to be its purpose, which is to make people better informed. It's not bad at it by mistake, it's bad at it as an inevitable consequence of its design. You speak of a failure in design as the root cause of the failure to achieve the purpose of “to inform”. From a teleological perspective, viewing the media as a tool designed “to inform” would be a mistake, it would amount to nothing more than a supposition. Having “better informed” people was never the stated purpose of mass media so it would be wrong to say it is not fulfilling its design objectives. What would be applicable here to help us better understand the actual purpose of the media is POSIWID: ”the purpose of a system is what it does”[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

rytill 7y ago
> POSIWID Can we either make a reasonable-sounding word or phrase that means the thing or just say the thing? Who is going around really saying “POSIWID”?
perl4ever 7y ago
"From a teleological perspective, viewing the media as a tool designed “to inform” would be a mistake, it would amount to nothing more than a supposition." I and perhaps many other people think the media should inform people; that is a statement of its purpose, and it appears that the collective actions of people in society have redesigned it to eliminate most of the informing. It doesn't have to have ever been designed to inform by specific and aware human intention; if it informed as a side effect of being unoptimized for disinformation, then in that sense it was designed to inform. By analogy, natural foods are not designed, in one sense, to keep you healthy, as evolution can make some things good for you and others bad. ...but the purpose of eating them is healthy nutrition, and if we started systematically only eating the toxic ones, then we would say something about our society is structured wrong for the purpose that we have of getting nutrition.
- sah2ed 7y ago
  > I and perhaps many other people think the media should inform people; that is a statement of its purpose, and it appears that the collective actions of people in society have redesigned it to eliminate most of the informing. Your expectation that the media should inform people is reasonable but unrealistic. The original designers had fairly specific design goals in mind and it did not explicitly include “to inform”, this can only be tacked on. Today we have newspapers, radio, TV and of course the Internet as tools of (mass) media. If you were among the original designers of the newspaper[0], which was the first tool of mass media for centuries, but your preference to inform was out-weighed by competing interests (aka politics), then of course you are well within your rights to be outraged — you are entitled to criticize the design for falling short of your expectations. In other words, unless you were personally part of the design team, you can’t really speak about what the design should be or should have been, since you are in no position to influence the system’s purpose before it was built. You can only deal with the consequences of the designers’ creation, which includes working around the limitations of the system as designed, or building a new system from scratch. A new system that addresses those limitations would not only be expensive to build from scratch, it would also have to compete for attention and funding to be sustainable — the market has to decide if they truly care about being better informed or not. Facebook, which is perhaps the most modern type of media, is as vulnerable as the others when it comes to ability to misinform. [0] ”News was highly selective and often propagandistic. Readers were eager for sensationalism, such as accounts of magic, public executions and disasters; this material did not pose a threat to the state, because it did not pose criticism of the state.” culled from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_newspaper_publishing#First_newspapers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_newspaper_publishin...
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    "Your expectation" I wrote "should"; I am not predicting in my comment that that the media will inform people [more] in the future; therefore calling my "expectation" unrealistic is uncalled for. Referring to "the original designers" is confusing to me. You seem to be implying that "the media" was designed by some person or entity as a monolith, which is a theory that is unfamiliar to me and not mainstream (that I'm aware of). Also, you seem to be positing that "the media" was not only created as a monolith but is controlled as one today, since you say that it can only be worked around or replaced. It really seems like a heterodox and far out theory, that "the media" is not subject to to change. Perhaps you could elaborate, since I thought the discussion was about recent changes to the media?
monocasa 7y ago
And particularly, as the concept applies to mass media, quite a few have noted that the purpose seems to be to create the consent of the populace for what the leadership wants to do. Sometime's that's informing from a real benevolent perspective of let's get everyone on the same page for what's best to the best of our knowledge. Other times it's an obfuscation scheme to allow some to profit off of the rest of us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
- mr_toad 7y ago
  > the purpose seems to be to create the consent of the populace for what the leadership wants to do. Having spent a lot of time working for and with governments I can assure you that most of the time, behind closed doors, they truely hate the press, and wish it would go away. And this is true of even the most open and democratic governments. Autocratic governments, again and again have shown what they think of a free press. The idea that mainstream media is a mouthpiece of government just doesn’t add up.
  - monocasa 7y ago
    That's not an issue unless you think of leadership as a homogeneous blob. Of course they don't like the portion of the media pushing the other guy's cognitive structures; and ultimately that's what they mean when they complain about the media. The way you can particularly see this is in the suppression of news that doesn't ultimately help out _any_ of the current leaders with it's dissemination, only the populace.
  - closeparen 7y ago
    I think it's a question of how far outside the Overton window your own viewpoint lives. Newspapers may pester governments with annoying questions about specific institutional failures and corrupt individuals, but they'll tend to be aligned on what the institution was supposed to achieve, what faithfully executing an office would look like. The New York Times will ask the NYPD, "Why did you beat up that guy in a routine traffic stop?" or "How is it possible that you billed more overtime hours than there are in a week?". Not "Why haven't you shot the rich yet?"
kerkeslager 7y ago
If you're smart enough to come up with a point like this, why not use that intelligence to make a less inane point? You're not wrong, you're just correct in a way that responds to a very narrow reading of what your parent comment was saying, and doesn't make any attempt to figure out why they'd be saying it. Clearly the person you're responding to wants a system that makes people better informed, and I think there's a lot of other people (myself included) who want the same thing. So the question is obviously, how do we change the news ecosystem from what it is, to a system that makes people better informed?
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >So the question is obviously, how do we change the news ecosystem from what it is, to a system that makes people better informed? I think that other than marginal gains, this is a pipedream. The reason the news media is the way it is is due to the choices of the people consuming it. A change in the industry itself is unlikely to put a dent into this, because people will just go elsewhere to get the 'news' they want to hear. We would need some kind of a fundamental change in society. Maybe if we completely revamped the style of childhood education, it would be possible to change what people look for in the news. I think that practically such a fundamental change is next to impossible. People talk a lot about how we need changes to the education system, but they're usually either spewing hot air or only want small changes.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    I disagree. The last bit of what you're saying is particularly telling. It seems to me that you think large change is impossible because you think large changes happens all at once, instead of as a series of small changes, and as a result you're undervaluing small changes.
- alasdair_ 7y ago
  > So the question is obviously, how do we change the news ecosystem from what it is, to a system that makes people better informed? People tend to want their worldview confirmed. If you want people to be better informed, one way would be to make them angry when they encounter things designed to manipulate them.
akiselev 7y ago
From the BBC's mission statement: to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate* and entertain.* From the CBC's mandate: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the national public broadcaster, should provide radio and television services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens* and entertains* From PBS's mission statement: PBS is a membership organization that, in partnership with its member stations, serves the American public with programming and services of the highest quality, using media to educate, inspire, entertain and express a diversity of perspectives. PBS empowers individuals to achieve their potential and strengthen the social, democratic, and cultural health of the U.S. You'll find that kind of language repeated for most public broadcasters. The corruption of those ideals by private enterprise in the name of profit should not come as a surprise.

by sah2ed 7y ago

rytill 7y ago

> POSIWID Can we either make a reasonable-sounding word or phrase that means the thing or just say the thing? Who is going around really saying “POSIWID”?

perl4ever 7y ago

"From a teleological perspective, viewing the media as a tool designed “to inform” would be a mistake, it would amount to nothing more than a supposition." I and perhaps many other people think the media should inform people; that is a statement of its purpose, and it appears that the collective actions of people in society have redesigned it to eliminate most of the informing. It doesn't have to have ever been designed to inform by specific and aware human intention; if it informed as a side effect of being unoptimized for disinformation, then in that sense it was designed to inform. By analogy, natural foods are not designed, in one sense, to keep you healthy, as evolution can make some things good for you and others bad. ...but the purpose of eating them is healthy nutrition, and if we started systematically only eating the toxic ones, then we would say something about our society is structured wrong for the purpose that we have of getting nutrition.

sah2ed 7y ago
> I and perhaps many other people think the media should inform people; that is a statement of its purpose, and it appears that the collective actions of people in society have redesigned it to eliminate most of the informing. Your expectation that the media should inform people is reasonable but unrealistic. The original designers had fairly specific design goals in mind and it did not explicitly include “to inform”, this can only be tacked on. Today we have newspapers, radio, TV and of course the Internet as tools of (mass) media. If you were among the original designers of the newspaper[0], which was the first tool of mass media for centuries, but your preference to inform was out-weighed by competing interests (aka politics), then of course you are well within your rights to be outraged — you are entitled to criticize the design for falling short of your expectations. In other words, unless you were personally part of the design team, you can’t really speak about what the design should be or should have been, since you are in no position to influence the system’s purpose before it was built. You can only deal with the consequences of the designers’ creation, which includes working around the limitations of the system as designed, or building a new system from scratch. A new system that addresses those limitations would not only be expensive to build from scratch, it would also have to compete for attention and funding to be sustainable — the market has to decide if they truly care about being better informed or not. Facebook, which is perhaps the most modern type of media, is as vulnerable as the others when it comes to ability to misinform. [0] ”News was highly selective and often propagandistic. Readers were eager for sensationalism, such as accounts of magic, public executions and disasters; this material did not pose a threat to the state, because it did not pose criticism of the state.” culled from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_newspaper_publishing#First_newspapers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_newspaper_publishin...
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "Your expectation" I wrote "should"; I am not predicting in my comment that that the media will inform people [more] in the future; therefore calling my "expectation" unrealistic is uncalled for. Referring to "the original designers" is confusing to me. You seem to be implying that "the media" was designed by some person or entity as a monolith, which is a theory that is unfamiliar to me and not mainstream (that I'm aware of). Also, you seem to be positing that "the media" was not only created as a monolith but is controlled as one today, since you say that it can only be worked around or replaced. It really seems like a heterodox and far out theory, that "the media" is not subject to to change. Perhaps you could elaborate, since I thought the discussion was about recent changes to the media?

monocasa 7y ago

And particularly, as the concept applies to mass media, quite a few have noted that the purpose seems to be to create the consent of the populace for what the leadership wants to do. Sometime's that's informing from a real benevolent perspective of let's get everyone on the same page for what's best to the best of our knowledge. Other times it's an obfuscation scheme to allow some to profit off of the rest of us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

mr_toad 7y ago
> the purpose seems to be to create the consent of the populace for what the leadership wants to do. Having spent a lot of time working for and with governments I can assure you that most of the time, behind closed doors, they truely hate the press, and wish it would go away. And this is true of even the most open and democratic governments. Autocratic governments, again and again have shown what they think of a free press. The idea that mainstream media is a mouthpiece of government just doesn’t add up.
- monocasa 7y ago
  That's not an issue unless you think of leadership as a homogeneous blob. Of course they don't like the portion of the media pushing the other guy's cognitive structures; and ultimately that's what they mean when they complain about the media. The way you can particularly see this is in the suppression of news that doesn't ultimately help out _any_ of the current leaders with it's dissemination, only the populace.
- closeparen 7y ago
  I think it's a question of how far outside the Overton window your own viewpoint lives. Newspapers may pester governments with annoying questions about specific institutional failures and corrupt individuals, but they'll tend to be aligned on what the institution was supposed to achieve, what faithfully executing an office would look like. The New York Times will ask the NYPD, "Why did you beat up that guy in a routine traffic stop?" or "How is it possible that you billed more overtime hours than there are in a week?". Not "Why haven't you shot the rich yet?"

kerkeslager 7y ago

If you're smart enough to come up with a point like this, why not use that intelligence to make a less inane point? You're not wrong, you're just correct in a way that responds to a very narrow reading of what your parent comment was saying, and doesn't make any attempt to figure out why they'd be saying it. Clearly the person you're responding to wants a system that makes people better informed, and I think there's a lot of other people (myself included) who want the same thing. So the question is obviously, how do we change the news ecosystem from what it is, to a system that makes people better informed?

Mirioron 7y ago
>So the question is obviously, how do we change the news ecosystem from what it is, to a system that makes people better informed? I think that other than marginal gains, this is a pipedream. The reason the news media is the way it is is due to the choices of the people consuming it. A change in the industry itself is unlikely to put a dent into this, because people will just go elsewhere to get the 'news' they want to hear. We would need some kind of a fundamental change in society. Maybe if we completely revamped the style of childhood education, it would be possible to change what people look for in the news. I think that practically such a fundamental change is next to impossible. People talk a lot about how we need changes to the education system, but they're usually either spewing hot air or only want small changes.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  I disagree. The last bit of what you're saying is particularly telling. It seems to me that you think large change is impossible because you think large changes happens all at once, instead of as a series of small changes, and as a result you're undervaluing small changes.
alasdair_ 7y ago
> So the question is obviously, how do we change the news ecosystem from what it is, to a system that makes people better informed? People tend to want their worldview confirmed. If you want people to be better informed, one way would be to make them angry when they encounter things designed to manipulate them.

akiselev 7y ago

From the BBC's mission statement: to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate* and entertain.* From the CBC's mandate: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the national public broadcaster, should provide radio and television services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens* and entertains* From PBS's mission statement: PBS is a membership organization that, in partnership with its member stations, serves the American public with programming and services of the highest quality, using media to educate, inspire, entertain and express a diversity of perspectives. PBS empowers individuals to achieve their potential and strengthen the social, democratic, and cultural health of the U.S. You'll find that kind of language repeated for most public broadcasters. The corruption of those ideals by private enterprise in the name of profit should not come as a surprise.