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> 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

by 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?
- sah2ed 7y ago
  Let us leave aside my use of designers for a moment and turn to the actual businesses that constitute the media. On the one hand, media businesses are, in most cases, for-profit enterprises similar to other enterprises. On the other hand, “to inform” or to have better informed citizens is in the public interest. “To inform” essentially an altruistic goal. Something done for the greater good is hard to monetize unless you ask for donations. Altruism as a business model will not pay the salaries of journalists. My argument is that the two goals: “for profit” and “to inform” are incompatible goals — either you found a non-profit media entity with the altruistic goal of better informing people, or you found a for-profit without the pretension of altruism. By arguing that “I and perhaps many other people think the media should inform people”, that the media’s collective purpose is to better inform, essentially what you are really saying is that you want for-profit enterprises to behave in the manner expected of non-profit enterprises? As I said, this is a noble but unrealistic ask. This is the crux of our disagreement.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    "what you are really saying is that you want for-profit enterprises to behave in the manner expected of non-profit enterprises" I mean, I do want them to behave differently that they have been previously, I don't know how you could interpret my comments otherwise. I feel like you are arguing by definition - you have some definition of "for profit entities" that excludes morality. A definition can be anything you like, but I don't think that particular one has a referent in the real world - and it's obvious to me that it shouldn't. So, for profit businesses operate under constraints already, and the only debate I can imagine is under what sort of constraints.

by sah2ed 7y ago

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?

sah2ed 7y ago
Let us leave aside my use of designers for a moment and turn to the actual businesses that constitute the media. On the one hand, media businesses are, in most cases, for-profit enterprises similar to other enterprises. On the other hand, “to inform” or to have better informed citizens is in the public interest. “To inform” essentially an altruistic goal. Something done for the greater good is hard to monetize unless you ask for donations. Altruism as a business model will not pay the salaries of journalists. My argument is that the two goals: “for profit” and “to inform” are incompatible goals — either you found a non-profit media entity with the altruistic goal of better informing people, or you found a for-profit without the pretension of altruism. By arguing that “I and perhaps many other people think the media should inform people”, that the media’s collective purpose is to better inform, essentially what you are really saying is that you want for-profit enterprises to behave in the manner expected of non-profit enterprises? As I said, this is a noble but unrealistic ask. This is the crux of our disagreement.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "what you are really saying is that you want for-profit enterprises to behave in the manner expected of non-profit enterprises" I mean, I do want them to behave differently that they have been previously, I don't know how you could interpret my comments otherwise. I feel like you are arguing by definition - you have some definition of "for profit entities" that excludes morality. A definition can be anything you like, but I don't think that particular one has a referent in the real world - and it's obvious to me that it shouldn't. So, for profit businesses operate under constraints already, and the only debate I can imagine is under what sort of constraints.