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Let’s not kid ourselves. The press are political actors and nothing more. "The press" is made up of tens of thousands of people making individual choices (with
by dvtrn 6y ago
Let’s not kid ourselves. The press are political actors and nothing more.
"The press" is made up of tens of thousands of people making individual choices (within their individual editorial requirements) about what to cover, how and with what inflection towards a given topic or trend, are they all political actors? I suppose if one takes "the person is political" calculus far enough, they might be.
It's been my experience people tend to like the news sources they've self-selected as trustworthy and reliable, and complaints about "the media" are usually borne out of a specific gripe, not anything that can actually be provably shown as an accurate generalization of every single outlet that generates news content.
This is not to attack or refute your position, this is just idle conjecture and pondering the topic.
- zepto 6y agopeople tend to like the news sources they've self-selected as trustworthy and reliable, and complaints about "the media" are usually borne out of a specific gripe, not anything that can actually be provably shown as an accurate generalization of every single outlet that generates news content I’d say this is just a reflection of people choosing outlets that reflect their views which is politics. No news organization is immune from this. That is my point. Pretending that news organizations are apolitical is the problem. Also, the press simply isn’t made up of tens of thousands of people making individual choices. It’s made up of people working for hierarchical corporations with owners whose direction they must follow in order to remain employed. You can certainly argue that the individuals are just doing their jobs and are not political actors per se, but they are definitely working towards the goals of politically driven organizations.
- dvtrn 6y agoYou can certainly argue that the individuals are just doing their jobs and are not political actors per se, but they are definitely working towards the goals of politically driven organizations. I get this point, and I can't say I necessarily disagree with it, it just feels like the usual kvetching against "the media" which is such a broad and generalized gripe (even when it is sometimes specifically valid if we could point to specific instances of just terrible coverage of current event n) it feels kind of meaningless? Like I said, I don't even really disagree it's just: what does one do with such a large and wide-reaching indictment of "the press"? I like solution oriented thinking, but I suppose that's more of a rhetorical question than anything else.
- zepto 6y agoI think we fundamentally agree. Kvetching about the press is largely meaningless. My position is that it’s meaningless because of the illusion that the press could be something that it is not, and that we would be better off if we just treated be it as what it is.
- dvtrn 6y agoHm. Yeah, I think we're very much aligned on this, if maybe for different but not necessarily competing reasons. Cheers