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> but for journalists this is a problem because they're supposed to be providing information, I do not expect journalists to use their twitter timeline as the

> but for journalists this is a problem because they're supposed to be providing information, I do not expect journalists to use their twitter timeline as the foundation of all their reporting.

xkde 6y ago
You would hope not, but given the number of stories these days that are just, “hey look at this Tweet!”, I don’t think we can expect that much. https://youtu.be/mpHiDsnqOSA https://youtu.be/mpHiDsnqOSA
throwaway894345 6y ago
Seems plausible that the information journalists relay is a function of their network, and I don’t have a hard time believing that they are similarly selective about their non-Twitter networks. The degree of bias is certainly an interesting question, but it seems unlikely that it is “low”, especially given what we’ve observed from various antics at the NYT to the same farcical coverage of the Covington Catholic affair across our national media to the farcical coverage of the Damore memo by tech and other media to the Washington Post’s heartfelt eulogy of an ISIS leader and on and on. All signs point to high insularity and intolerance of other ideologies (by which I don’t mean extreme right wing ideologies but rather more moderate progressive or liberal ideologies, for example the attempts by other journalists to “cancel” progressive journalist Lee Fang who erred by interviewing a black man whose opinion wasn’t sufficiently aligned with the orthodoxy). There are many such events that come to my mind, and my perception is that they are increasing in both quantity and gravity; I’m certainly persuaded that more research is merited with respect to the dynamics of both traditional and social media. Maybe that research will correct me and in fact journalists are doing a great job; in that “worst case” scenario, I (and others skeptical of the state of the media) walk away with more trust in the media and our national divide closes a bit. EDIT: wow, that’s a lot of downvotes for what I thought was a metered, well-supported post. I wonder what objections people have to my appeal for more research on the subject? Do downvoters disagree with my perception about bias in the media? And if so how do we resolve this difference of perception if not with more research? What is so fearful about additional inquiry?
bleepblorp 6y ago
Repeating stuff from Twitter does seem to be how an awful lot of journalists are doing their jobs these days, particularly for local news. Many local news stories I see in my area are just little more than a three-paragraph wrapper around a series of Twitter screenshots. I expect the reduction of local media to a retweeting engine is probably a function of cratering local news budgets. It's far cheaper to outsource news-gathering to the wisdom of crowds than to pay journalists to do the work directly. Above the local market, if you follow the right circles on Twitter you stand a very good chance of getting advance notice of what the media will be reporting several hours (or even several days) before the stories are broadcast/published.

> but for journalists this is a problem because they're supposed to be providing information, I do not expect journalists to use their twitter timeline as the foundation of all their reporting.

xkde 6y ago

You would hope not, but given the number of stories these days that are just, “hey look at this Tweet!”, I don’t think we can expect that much. https://youtu.be/mpHiDsnqOSA https://youtu.be/mpHiDsnqOSA

throwaway894345 6y ago

Seems plausible that the information journalists relay is a function of their network, and I don’t have a hard time believing that they are similarly selective about their non-Twitter networks. The degree of bias is certainly an interesting question, but it seems unlikely that it is “low”, especially given what we’ve observed from various antics at the NYT to the same farcical coverage of the Covington Catholic affair across our national media to the farcical coverage of the Damore memo by tech and other media to the Washington Post’s heartfelt eulogy of an ISIS leader and on and on. All signs point to high insularity and intolerance of other ideologies (by which I don’t mean extreme right wing ideologies but rather more moderate progressive or liberal ideologies, for example the attempts by other journalists to “cancel” progressive journalist Lee Fang who erred by interviewing a black man whose opinion wasn’t sufficiently aligned with the orthodoxy). There are many such events that come to my mind, and my perception is that they are increasing in both quantity and gravity; I’m certainly persuaded that more research is merited with respect to the dynamics of both traditional and social media. Maybe that research will correct me and in fact journalists are doing a great job; in that “worst case” scenario, I (and others skeptical of the state of the media) walk away with more trust in the media and our national divide closes a bit. EDIT: wow, that’s a lot of downvotes for what I thought was a metered, well-supported post. I wonder what objections people have to my appeal for more research on the subject? Do downvoters disagree with my perception about bias in the media? And if so how do we resolve this difference of perception if not with more research? What is so fearful about additional inquiry?

bleepblorp 6y ago

Repeating stuff from Twitter does seem to be how an awful lot of journalists are doing their jobs these days, particularly for local news. Many local news stories I see in my area are just little more than a three-paragraph wrapper around a series of Twitter screenshots. I expect the reduction of local media to a retweeting engine is probably a function of cratering local news budgets. It's far cheaper to outsource news-gathering to the wisdom of crowds than to pay journalists to do the work directly. Above the local market, if you follow the right circles on Twitter you stand a very good chance of getting advance notice of what the media will be reporting several hours (or even several days) before the stories are broadcast/published.