8 ms·

Seriously, so much this. You only realize how valuable good journalism is when you don’t have it, as is unfortunately very common in most parts of the world. J

by pm90 7y ago

Seriously, so much this. You only realize how valuable good journalism is when you don’t have it, as is unfortunately very common in most parts of the world. Journalists play an extremely important role in keeping a check on power and as such are critical to the health of a democracy. The current US presidents violent rhetoric against the press should make people a lot angrier than it has so far; without a good, unbiased press there is simply no way to have an honest conversation about the most important problems that a country faces and the different plans by which to address them (as is becoming very clear by the botched response to the Coronavirus pandemic).

umvi 7y ago
> The current US presidents violent rhetoric against the press should make people a lot angrier than it has so far It would make me a lot angrier if the most popular news outlets were indeed "good, unbiased press" and not spin doctors and propaganda distributors for [insert political machine].
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Both/and, not either/or. We should be angry at the president's violent rhetoric toward the press, and we should be angry at the press's bias and spin.
  - nopriorarrests 7y ago
    Well, I think that what basically happens now? Half of the nation angry at president rhetoric, and half of the country angry at press bias. Just different halves, but being angry at many things at once is hard, mentally. But you have your wish granted, more or less. Everyone is angry :)
- orsenthil 7y ago
  The reliable media often back up the claims with resources, motivations and you have the history to verify. If a person makes a blanket statement like "press is biased" or "is a spin-doctor" for X, we need to ignore that move past it. We tend to identify reliable sources over time, and there are plenty of reputed, reliable journalists and newspapers in the world. Just like reliable politicians. Kudos to them.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    Most of the biased reporting doesn’t happen through false claims but through selective reporting. The information that fits the narrative is pushed, the information that doesn’t never gets published. It is possible to lie by remaining factually correct. Ask any lawyer or advertiser. And I see very few if not no major media outlet that doesn’t indulge into that selective reporting all over its pages. Ignore me and move past me!
- jonhohle 7y ago
  Very much this. What most people consider "the press", the main stream media, has converted almost completely to infotainment, opinion, and propaganda for vested interests. John Gruber (of Daring Fireball, Mardkown fame, etc.) coined the term "claim chowder" and started keeping a list of dubious tech reporting. I've been keeping a mental list myself and its almost painful how often a highly circulated story obviously will have a shelf life of weeks or days before being completely invalidated. As long as it makes it through the spin cycle, though, I suppose it doesn't matter to show runners, editors, and others pushing the narrative. When news outlets run significantly fabricated stories (sometimes for months or years) and then run a genuine story how can they be believed? When news outlets never issue retractions, corrections, or apologies for misleading the public, how can they be trusted. When they actively attempt to remove or change content from their public archives in order to put themselves on the right side of history or direct the way history is being made, how can they be treated as protectors of freedom against tyranny. When they destroy the lives of who accidentally entered their crosshairs to sell ad space, how can they be considered good.
  - drongoking 7y ago
    That's an insanely broad brush. The mainstream press includes the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, The Atlantic, and NPR. Please explain how they fabricate narratives, how they destroy the lives of those who accidentally enter their crosshairs, and how they retroactively alter their archives to change history. I'd expect your summary dismissal of the mainstream media from a Trump supporter. I'm surprised to see it on HN. So please elaborate.
    - lowdose 7y ago
      When was the last time you read a positive story on Putin in the NYtimes? All those outlets are compromised expect maybe NPR. Eric Weinstein calls it the gated institutional narrative, it is on you you still consider the mainstream anything more than shadow of what they represented in the past.
      - pm90 7y ago
- untog 7y ago
  You’re playing into his game as soon as you start talking about “the media”. There is no one “the media”. The journalism produced by cable news opinion segments is not the same as that produced by national print outlets, which is also not the same as a local newspaper. Equating them all is something Trump and his friends would very much like you to do.
  - lambdaphagy 7y ago
    OP mentioned "the most popular news outlets". I expect that there's pretty good intersubjective agreement about which entities are in or out. It's true in one sense that there's no such thing as "the media". If "the media" is just "the set of people who write things about current events that other people read", then I, too, am a member of the media. Groovy. But this is an isolated demand for rigor. If you look at who's employed by "the most popular news outlets" (which can be relatively objectively determined through subscription numbers), you cannot help but notice that they are a rather distinct class. They come from particular schools, live in particular cities, have particular points of view including suppositions so basic that they often do not even realize that they hold them, understand themselves to be accomplishing particular professional and social objectives through their work, and so on and so on. None of these qualifications are strictly categorical, but as a statistical matter they are so robust as to be tedious. Which is all fine, so far as it goes, but the concept of "the media" is "a thing" inasmuch as it allows you to concisely name patterns and regularities that exist in the world. And there are an awful lot of patterns and regularities to be noticed. Incidentally, Orwell made precisely the same point (about a distributed, decentralized press that coordinates through shared cultural background and sense of what's simply Not Done) in a proposed preface to the first edition of Animal Farm. The free, decentralized, totally-not-a-thing British media declined to print it.
    - toofy 7y ago
      I would need to see some sources on “They come from particular schools, live in particular cities...” Even if this were true, (which I’m highly skeptical of) why would this even a bad thing? I mean, if we’re talking about elite papers such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, etc.. it wouldn’t shock me at all to hear a number of them went to elite universities – a number elite doctors likely come from difficult medical schools. I’m also not convinced “they” all share the same beliefs, not convinced of this at all. I mean, if you want to declare that media sources who prefer the Democratic party exist, sure but for every single one of those there’s at least one Fox “news” equivalent. The simple fact of their existence doesn’t mean certain people have a monopoly on information. This argument would be as ridiculous as when people in 2017 were screeching (US) liberals run the world all while the president, both congressional houses, and the supreme court were conservative... the concern wasn’t based in reality, at all, and it’s the same with their panicky “liberal news” conspiracies, I see no evidence which shows conservatives voices aren’t being heard, none. Anyway, I’m dubious about the idea that almost all news people come from the same class, same schools, and same cities. Unless you’re simply saying elite journalists come from the best journalism schools, at which point it shouldn’t really surprise anyone.
- YarickR2 7y ago
  Thousand times this. I grew up in USSR, and was tuning to Voice of America and Radio Liberty to keep myself informed. I moved to US not so far ago, and current state of mainstream media here is so much reminds me of Pravda, Trud and Izvestia newspapers, along with countrywide and regional TV channels. Damn shame, especially when you consider VoA and Radio Liberty are state-sponsored and state-controlled
cambalache 7y ago
> You only realize how valuable good journalism is when you don’t have it, as is unfortunately very common in most parts of the world. Where do this come from? There is EXCELLENT journalism all over the world. Even in places with high censorship (which are the exception, not the rule) there a great and brave journalism.
- davidw 7y ago
  Local papers are disappearing left and right, in the US. Most of what they do is not Big Stories, but things like covering the city council meetings in a way that TV stations don't. Their disappearane has a real financial effect https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-newspaper-close-city-bond-finances-suffer/561422/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-news...
- VWWHFSfQ 7y ago
  There is no "journalism" in China. Or Russia.
  - cambalache 7y ago
    Indeed there is of every kind, from community people to big media, of course, the official organs are biased, but they don't encompass all journalists, the same way American journalism is not just CNN and Fox News. It is highly insulting and arrogant to assume there is no brave journalism there where people have lost their jobs or their lives by reporting inconvenient truths. You need more street.
  - YarickR2 7y ago
    How knowledgeable are you on this subject ? Do you read Russian ? Chinese ? Watching native TV channels, listening podcasts in Russian and / or Chinese ?
roenxi 7y ago
If you change the article URL from 2020 to 2018 and search for "Trump" you can see the Pulitzer they handed out for "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election". In 2020 that has toned down to a Pulitzer for "skewers the personalities and policies" or "illuminates the personal impact [of his anti-immigrant policies]". The quality of the hard-hitting journalism seems to be winding back, maybe Trump wore them down?
- GavinMcG 7y ago
  Alternatively, you should expect hard-hitting journalism in the "Explanatory Reporting" and "National Reporting" categories, but should expect skewering in the category of "Editorial Cartooning".
arkh 7y ago
> a good, unbiased press I'd argue most of what is sold as "the press" is not that. Click-bait, PR mouthpieces, unverified "news", inflammatory news and padding are the majority of what people see.
- illiilliiililil 7y ago
  "Sources say..." Bye!
illiilliiililil 7y ago
What outlets come to your mind as good, unbiased? I'm assuming already that you think that reality just has a liberal bias.
- wmichelin 7y ago
  A biased question about bias, nice. Something something turtles all the way down.
- augustt 7y ago
  I'll make assumptions about you too: you think reading things you don't like = bias.
beaner 7y ago
> The current US presidents violent rhetoric against the press should make people a lot angrier than it has so far Why? He hasn't said it should be restricted in any way, he's said it's been biased and doing a bad job. That's a completely fair criticism.
- agandy 7y ago
  According to him it's only ever biased if it's critical of his actions or policies. That injects more noise into claims of bias and can lead people to take them less seriously than they realistically should. Bit of a boy who cried wolf situation.
  - beaner 7y ago
    That just means you disagree with his criticisms, it doesn't mean his criticisms pose any type of political threat to the free press.
    - DAlperin 7y ago
      Public opposition to any institution by the President of the United States is a political threat. Or rather anyone person who holds so much influence publicly attacking something is a threat.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - beaner 7y ago
        I wholeheartedly disagree. The president doesn't lose his right to free speech because of his job or how much influence he has. There is a clear distinction between criticizing the practices of an institution versus criticizing its existence categorically. A lot of people are purposefully blurring the lines here and it's really dangerous. The same argument could be used to say that the press has undue influence, and should therefore be regulated in what it is able to say or how it is able to report. The press in America has the same freedom of speech as individuals do: near unlimited. They come together. If you start picking and choosing, free speech is no longer a right.

by pm90 7y ago

umvi 7y ago

> The current US presidents violent rhetoric against the press should make people a lot angrier than it has so far It would make me a lot angrier if the most popular news outlets were indeed "good, unbiased press" and not spin doctors and propaganda distributors for [insert political machine].

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Both/and, not either/or. We should be angry at the president's violent rhetoric toward the press, and we should be angry at the press's bias and spin.
- nopriorarrests 7y ago
  Well, I think that what basically happens now? Half of the nation angry at president rhetoric, and half of the country angry at press bias. Just different halves, but being angry at many things at once is hard, mentally. But you have your wish granted, more or less. Everyone is angry :)
orsenthil 7y ago
The reliable media often back up the claims with resources, motivations and you have the history to verify. If a person makes a blanket statement like "press is biased" or "is a spin-doctor" for X, we need to ignore that move past it. We tend to identify reliable sources over time, and there are plenty of reputed, reliable journalists and newspapers in the world. Just like reliable politicians. Kudos to them.
- cm2187 7y ago
  Most of the biased reporting doesn’t happen through false claims but through selective reporting. The information that fits the narrative is pushed, the information that doesn’t never gets published. It is possible to lie by remaining factually correct. Ask any lawyer or advertiser. And I see very few if not no major media outlet that doesn’t indulge into that selective reporting all over its pages. Ignore me and move past me!
jonhohle 7y ago
Very much this. What most people consider "the press", the main stream media, has converted almost completely to infotainment, opinion, and propaganda for vested interests. John Gruber (of Daring Fireball, Mardkown fame, etc.) coined the term "claim chowder" and started keeping a list of dubious tech reporting. I've been keeping a mental list myself and its almost painful how often a highly circulated story obviously will have a shelf life of weeks or days before being completely invalidated. As long as it makes it through the spin cycle, though, I suppose it doesn't matter to show runners, editors, and others pushing the narrative. When news outlets run significantly fabricated stories (sometimes for months or years) and then run a genuine story how can they be believed? When news outlets never issue retractions, corrections, or apologies for misleading the public, how can they be trusted. When they actively attempt to remove or change content from their public archives in order to put themselves on the right side of history or direct the way history is being made, how can they be treated as protectors of freedom against tyranny. When they destroy the lives of who accidentally entered their crosshairs to sell ad space, how can they be considered good.
- drongoking 7y ago
  That's an insanely broad brush. The mainstream press includes the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, The Atlantic, and NPR. Please explain how they fabricate narratives, how they destroy the lives of those who accidentally enter their crosshairs, and how they retroactively alter their archives to change history. I'd expect your summary dismissal of the mainstream media from a Trump supporter. I'm surprised to see it on HN. So please elaborate.
  - lowdose 7y ago
    When was the last time you read a positive story on Putin in the NYtimes? All those outlets are compromised expect maybe NPR. Eric Weinstein calls it the gated institutional narrative, it is on you you still consider the mainstream anything more than shadow of what they represented in the past.
    - pm90 7y ago
untog 7y ago
You’re playing into his game as soon as you start talking about “the media”. There is no one “the media”. The journalism produced by cable news opinion segments is not the same as that produced by national print outlets, which is also not the same as a local newspaper. Equating them all is something Trump and his friends would very much like you to do.
- lambdaphagy 7y ago
  OP mentioned "the most popular news outlets". I expect that there's pretty good intersubjective agreement about which entities are in or out. It's true in one sense that there's no such thing as "the media". If "the media" is just "the set of people who write things about current events that other people read", then I, too, am a member of the media. Groovy. But this is an isolated demand for rigor. If you look at who's employed by "the most popular news outlets" (which can be relatively objectively determined through subscription numbers), you cannot help but notice that they are a rather distinct class. They come from particular schools, live in particular cities, have particular points of view including suppositions so basic that they often do not even realize that they hold them, understand themselves to be accomplishing particular professional and social objectives through their work, and so on and so on. None of these qualifications are strictly categorical, but as a statistical matter they are so robust as to be tedious. Which is all fine, so far as it goes, but the concept of "the media" is "a thing" inasmuch as it allows you to concisely name patterns and regularities that exist in the world. And there are an awful lot of patterns and regularities to be noticed. Incidentally, Orwell made precisely the same point (about a distributed, decentralized press that coordinates through shared cultural background and sense of what's simply Not Done) in a proposed preface to the first edition of Animal Farm. The free, decentralized, totally-not-a-thing British media declined to print it.
  - toofy 7y ago
    I would need to see some sources on “They come from particular schools, live in particular cities...” Even if this were true, (which I’m highly skeptical of) why would this even a bad thing? I mean, if we’re talking about elite papers such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, etc.. it wouldn’t shock me at all to hear a number of them went to elite universities – a number elite doctors likely come from difficult medical schools. I’m also not convinced “they” all share the same beliefs, not convinced of this at all. I mean, if you want to declare that media sources who prefer the Democratic party exist, sure but for every single one of those there’s at least one Fox “news” equivalent. The simple fact of their existence doesn’t mean certain people have a monopoly on information. This argument would be as ridiculous as when people in 2017 were screeching (US) liberals run the world all while the president, both congressional houses, and the supreme court were conservative... the concern wasn’t based in reality, at all, and it’s the same with their panicky “liberal news” conspiracies, I see no evidence which shows conservatives voices aren’t being heard, none. Anyway, I’m dubious about the idea that almost all news people come from the same class, same schools, and same cities. Unless you’re simply saying elite journalists come from the best journalism schools, at which point it shouldn’t really surprise anyone.
YarickR2 7y ago
Thousand times this. I grew up in USSR, and was tuning to Voice of America and Radio Liberty to keep myself informed. I moved to US not so far ago, and current state of mainstream media here is so much reminds me of Pravda, Trud and Izvestia newspapers, along with countrywide and regional TV channels. Damn shame, especially when you consider VoA and Radio Liberty are state-sponsored and state-controlled

cambalache 7y ago

> You only realize how valuable good journalism is when you don’t have it, as is unfortunately very common in most parts of the world. Where do this come from? There is EXCELLENT journalism all over the world. Even in places with high censorship (which are the exception, not the rule) there a great and brave journalism.

davidw 7y ago
Local papers are disappearing left and right, in the US. Most of what they do is not Big Stories, but things like covering the city council meetings in a way that TV stations don't. Their disappearane has a real financial effect https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-newspaper-close-city-bond-finances-suffer/561422/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-news...
VWWHFSfQ 7y ago
There is no "journalism" in China. Or Russia.
- cambalache 7y ago
  Indeed there is of every kind, from community people to big media, of course, the official organs are biased, but they don't encompass all journalists, the same way American journalism is not just CNN and Fox News. It is highly insulting and arrogant to assume there is no brave journalism there where people have lost their jobs or their lives by reporting inconvenient truths. You need more street.
- YarickR2 7y ago
  How knowledgeable are you on this subject ? Do you read Russian ? Chinese ? Watching native TV channels, listening podcasts in Russian and / or Chinese ?

roenxi 7y ago

If you change the article URL from 2020 to 2018 and search for "Trump" you can see the Pulitzer they handed out for "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election". In 2020 that has toned down to a Pulitzer for "skewers the personalities and policies" or "illuminates the personal impact [of his anti-immigrant policies]". The quality of the hard-hitting journalism seems to be winding back, maybe Trump wore them down?

GavinMcG 7y ago
Alternatively, you should expect hard-hitting journalism in the "Explanatory Reporting" and "National Reporting" categories, but should expect skewering in the category of "Editorial Cartooning".

arkh 7y ago

> a good, unbiased press I'd argue most of what is sold as "the press" is not that. Click-bait, PR mouthpieces, unverified "news", inflammatory news and padding are the majority of what people see.

illiilliiililil 7y ago
"Sources say..." Bye!

illiilliiililil 7y ago

What outlets come to your mind as good, unbiased? I'm assuming already that you think that reality just has a liberal bias.

wmichelin 7y ago
A biased question about bias, nice. Something something turtles all the way down.
augustt 7y ago
I'll make assumptions about you too: you think reading things you don't like = bias.

beaner 7y ago

> The current US presidents violent rhetoric against the press should make people a lot angrier than it has so far Why? He hasn't said it should be restricted in any way, he's said it's been biased and doing a bad job. That's a completely fair criticism.

agandy 7y ago
According to him it's only ever biased if it's critical of his actions or policies. That injects more noise into claims of bias and can lead people to take them less seriously than they realistically should. Bit of a boy who cried wolf situation.
- beaner 7y ago
  That just means you disagree with his criticisms, it doesn't mean his criticisms pose any type of political threat to the free press.
  - DAlperin 7y ago
    Public opposition to any institution by the President of the United States is a political threat. Or rather anyone person who holds so much influence publicly attacking something is a threat.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - beaner 7y ago
      I wholeheartedly disagree. The president doesn't lose his right to free speech because of his job or how much influence he has. There is a clear distinction between criticizing the practices of an institution versus criticizing its existence categorically. A lot of people are purposefully blurring the lines here and it's really dangerous. The same argument could be used to say that the press has undue influence, and should therefore be regulated in what it is able to say or how it is able to report. The press in America has the same freedom of speech as individuals do: near unlimited. They come together. If you start picking and choosing, free speech is no longer a right.