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I would heartily agree and go a bit further. Over the last three decades, news organizations have traded in their neutrality and integrity for political and "n

I would heartily agree and go a bit further. Over the last three decades, news organizations have traded in their neutrality and integrity for political and "narrative" influence. It is exceedingly difficult to find information presented without some attempt to mislead. The short version: There are no more Walter Cronkites or Edward R. Murrows the nation trusts to present the news without filter or spin. That coupled with the algorithmically enhanced echo-chambers of social media you mention, multiplied by two decades of teaching outrage and protest instead of critical thinking and history, gets you this.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Over the last three decades, news organizations have traded in their neutrality and integrity for political and "narrative" influence. No, they haven't. News organizations have always had strong political and narrative-driven tendencies, what has changed is that the media is more diverse in bias and thus the illusion of neutrality that came from the period where the major national media spoke with nearly uniform bias and agenda is lost.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- slowmovintarget 6y ago
  When major news outlets take orders from the DNC on what to cover and what not to, that isn't the same as having ordinary bias. When other outlets shill for the RNC, that isn't the same as having "political tendencies." In the past, these maneuvers would have been considered conflicts of interest and a violation journalistic ethics. Today, we don't have many practicing journalists. We have "here's a lefty and here's a righty, let's watch 'em argue on screen" passed off as news.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    Until the early 20th century, most newspapers were openly owned by political parties. And it was ad driven tabloids that ended that system, not strong examples of journalistic ethics. The strong connection between the two never vanished though, the media companies just got more powerful.
- throwaway9870 6y ago
  Strong disagree. During the tenure of GW Bush, I saw the mainstream media attack him daily in a way I had never witnessed before. It seemed to transform from debate to contempt and hate.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    Perhaps because it was deserved? If the leader of the world insists on taking abhorrent actions, what's the neutral position?
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    You haven't addressed why you think it was largely unjust criticism.
    - throwaway9870 6y ago
      I don't think "News" should include criticism. There is a very important place for it along with news, but I think it is important to keep them as separate concepts. Honestly, right now what is presented as mainstream "news" is probably best described as entertainment.
      - georgebcrawford 6y ago
        What should "News" consist of?
        throwaway9870 6y ago
        What has happened. Is this really that hard of concept?
        cultus 6y ago
        The facts of the war in Iraq were objectively bad. Should the media have hidden this to avoid accusations of bias?
        6y ago
elmomle 6y ago
Don't forget the repealing of the fairness doctrine in 1987 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine)! People act like it's some big coincidence that polarized news really emerged in the US in the 90s....
shadowprofile77 6y ago
> Over the last three decades, news organizations have traded in their neutrality and integrity for political and "narrative" influence. Have you ever actually read examples of newspapers and news reporting from the earlier parts of the 20th century? The dishonest, mendacious bias in favor of any media source's ideological preference was extreme to a degree that even today isn't readily visible. Certain media empires were absolutely ruled by their owners and even major papers like the New York Times were often loaded in slant towards certain ideological narratives. Just to name one example: Read about Walter Duranty. Things were even more vicious in the 19th century.... I have no idea where this notion of once fair, objective news sources comes from but it's certainly not rooted in the practical reality (referring in all of this to U.S media and politics, regarding other countries things get more ambiguous and complciated probably).
- iguy 6y ago
  I think you and GP are talking about different time periods. Walter Cronkite is 50s to 70s, the postwar figurehead when there were like 3 TV channels. That's where the notion of a shared reality comes from. And I guess this was still pretty strong into the 90s, everyone watched gulf war I on CNN right? Whereas Walter Duranty was a big deal in the 20s & 30s, in much more fragmented & volatile times. Although how much their fragmentation resembles ours I don't know. They had many far-out newspapers but still only a few radio shows, and perhaps a larger role for shared institutions like churches & public schools?
  - georgebcrawford 6y ago
    > That's where the notion of a shared reality comes from. Sure, but that reality was a top-down creation. How much airtime did dissidents get? Socialists? Women? Marginalised people? And I don't mean reporting on them, but stories by them.
    - iguy 6y ago
      I'm not sure this is your position, but one extreme is to describe this "shared reality" as being imposed by force on everyone by one privileged group. But I'd like to highlight other forces. One was technological, 3 TV channels or whatever was all they could do, and this implied that there was going to be a pretty high degree of conformity. You couldn't broadcast weird Italian movies because only a few percent were interested. The 4 big car companies who bought the ads which paid the bills really didn't want to be associated with anything partisan, they all needed to sell to everyone. Another was historical / emotional. The nation had just emerged from this gigantic world war, and it was a spectacular victory, which gave enormous prestige to the huge centralized machines built to fight it. They built a lot of similar machines back home, big corporations with a commander-in-chief who wasn't a self-made robber barron, he was promoted up the ranks. Big unions, and big regulation. This experience also squashed a lot of earlier differences. You say "Women? Marginalised people?" but this seems like a modern take, I think they would have said "Irish? Polish? Jewish?". These earlier identities and divisions were eroding in favor of this shared one, I mean, a Catholic could be elected president, that was a big deal. But all of these are gone now. So perhaps 100 years ago is a better guide than 50 years ago.
throwaway894345 6y ago
I completely agree. To be a bit more explicit, the extent to which institutions abandon objectivity is the extent to which we lose an agreed upon set of facts. It's really tragic that the hard-earned credibility of these institutions are being hollowed out for relatively little short-term political capital to the great detriment of our whole country and indeed the world.
xnx 6y ago
A root cause behind this is a shift from news as a public service (something closer to the modern-day BBC) to an info-tainment business that must turn a quarterly profit.
heroprotagonist 6y ago
Fox News was specifically designed and built to be the media arm of the Republican party. This was by design, created from the ground up as a long term play. In its case, it was not a natural shift of narrative influence or a trade-in for the viewer numbers. Rupert Murdock called on Republican political strategist Roger Ailes in 1996 when creating Fox News. Ailes launched and then ran Fox News as its CEO for decades. This is the same guy who worked as a media adviser to basically every successful Republican presidential campaign.. Nixon, Reagan, Bush.. and even Trump (before Ailes died, and after a sexual misconduct scandal finally got him canned at Fox). Ailes was so influential as a strategist that he was even credited for one of Bush senior's wins back in the day. And he built and reigned at Fox News for 20+ years. So we had a major republican political operator put in charge of a news network by a global political operator (Murdoch) who only got US citizenship as it was a requirement for US television station ownership. And who had a history of using his media empire to shape political narrative for influence. The frustrating thing is that Murdoch's influence shaping has always been more about accumulating power than towards spreading specific ideology. In Australia in the 60s and 70s, he backed the faction pushing for universal free health care, free college education for all Australians, and public ownership of Australia's oil, gas and mineral resources. Sounds very un-Fox-like, doesn't it? It was the in-road to political power, the faction that would get him the most influence by supporting. There was a write-up some years ago in the UK that delves a bit more into his history (as he has also been peddling influence in the UK for decades as well): https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a-man-of-selfish-loyalties-rupert-murdochs-apparent-overture-to-tony-blair-strikes-a-chilling-chord-1376362.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a-man-of-selfish-lo... But tying this back to Fox News.. he came to the US, built a TV network and used that foundation to build a news station. This was a push to become a major political controller by building and embedding Fox News as the media arm of the Republican party. They used this to condition their base. The lead-up to today is decades of people turning on FOX to watch Geraldo, sticking around for the news, then wandering off with talking points stuffed into their heads by influencers with an agenda who were presenting the news. And the strategy was so successful that it generates mimics to the model. The most evil I see is Sinclair Media buying up local news stations and putting the same talking points into the mouths of local pundits across the nation. There's a creepy video compilation that highlights the tactics of this influence machinery by showing clips from each of these local news outlets with different talking heads each repeating the same points.
ethbr0 6y ago
> There are no more Walter Cronkites or Edward R. Murrows I don't think there can be economically, without regulating (supply limiting) news media. They were debatably on par with politicians. But increase the number of news outlets, and the importance of any anchor decreases. Consequently, their ability to ask hard questions without losing access to their sources decreases.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Over the last three decades, news organizations have traded in their neutrality and integrity for political and "narrative" influence. No, they haven't. News organizations have always had strong political and narrative-driven tendencies, what has changed is that the media is more diverse in bias and thus the illusion of neutrality that came from the period where the major national media spoke with nearly uniform bias and agenda is lost.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
slowmovintarget 6y ago
When major news outlets take orders from the DNC on what to cover and what not to, that isn't the same as having ordinary bias. When other outlets shill for the RNC, that isn't the same as having "political tendencies." In the past, these maneuvers would have been considered conflicts of interest and a violation journalistic ethics. Today, we don't have many practicing journalists. We have "here's a lefty and here's a righty, let's watch 'em argue on screen" passed off as news.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  Until the early 20th century, most newspapers were openly owned by political parties. And it was ad driven tabloids that ended that system, not strong examples of journalistic ethics. The strong connection between the two never vanished though, the media companies just got more powerful.
throwaway9870 6y ago
Strong disagree. During the tenure of GW Bush, I saw the mainstream media attack him daily in a way I had never witnessed before. It seemed to transform from debate to contempt and hate.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Perhaps because it was deserved? If the leader of the world insists on taking abhorrent actions, what's the neutral position?
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  You haven't addressed why you think it was largely unjust criticism.
  - throwaway9870 6y ago
    I don't think "News" should include criticism. There is a very important place for it along with news, but I think it is important to keep them as separate concepts. Honestly, right now what is presented as mainstream "news" is probably best described as entertainment.
    - georgebcrawford 6y ago
      What should "News" consist of?
      - throwaway9870 6y ago
        What has happened. Is this really that hard of concept?
        cultus 6y ago
        The facts of the war in Iraq were objectively bad. Should the media have hidden this to avoid accusations of bias?
        6y ago

elmomle 6y ago

Don't forget the repealing of the fairness doctrine in 1987 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine)! People act like it's some big coincidence that polarized news really emerged in the US in the 90s....

shadowprofile77 6y ago

> Over the last three decades, news organizations have traded in their neutrality and integrity for political and "narrative" influence. Have you ever actually read examples of newspapers and news reporting from the earlier parts of the 20th century? The dishonest, mendacious bias in favor of any media source's ideological preference was extreme to a degree that even today isn't readily visible. Certain media empires were absolutely ruled by their owners and even major papers like the New York Times were often loaded in slant towards certain ideological narratives. Just to name one example: Read about Walter Duranty. Things were even more vicious in the 19th century.... I have no idea where this notion of once fair, objective news sources comes from but it's certainly not rooted in the practical reality (referring in all of this to U.S media and politics, regarding other countries things get more ambiguous and complciated probably).

iguy 6y ago
I think you and GP are talking about different time periods. Walter Cronkite is 50s to 70s, the postwar figurehead when there were like 3 TV channels. That's where the notion of a shared reality comes from. And I guess this was still pretty strong into the 90s, everyone watched gulf war I on CNN right? Whereas Walter Duranty was a big deal in the 20s & 30s, in much more fragmented & volatile times. Although how much their fragmentation resembles ours I don't know. They had many far-out newspapers but still only a few radio shows, and perhaps a larger role for shared institutions like churches & public schools?
- georgebcrawford 6y ago
  > That's where the notion of a shared reality comes from. Sure, but that reality was a top-down creation. How much airtime did dissidents get? Socialists? Women? Marginalised people? And I don't mean reporting on them, but stories by them.
  - iguy 6y ago
    I'm not sure this is your position, but one extreme is to describe this "shared reality" as being imposed by force on everyone by one privileged group. But I'd like to highlight other forces. One was technological, 3 TV channels or whatever was all they could do, and this implied that there was going to be a pretty high degree of conformity. You couldn't broadcast weird Italian movies because only a few percent were interested. The 4 big car companies who bought the ads which paid the bills really didn't want to be associated with anything partisan, they all needed to sell to everyone. Another was historical / emotional. The nation had just emerged from this gigantic world war, and it was a spectacular victory, which gave enormous prestige to the huge centralized machines built to fight it. They built a lot of similar machines back home, big corporations with a commander-in-chief who wasn't a self-made robber barron, he was promoted up the ranks. Big unions, and big regulation. This experience also squashed a lot of earlier differences. You say "Women? Marginalised people?" but this seems like a modern take, I think they would have said "Irish? Polish? Jewish?". These earlier identities and divisions were eroding in favor of this shared one, I mean, a Catholic could be elected president, that was a big deal. But all of these are gone now. So perhaps 100 years ago is a better guide than 50 years ago.

throwaway894345 6y ago

I completely agree. To be a bit more explicit, the extent to which institutions abandon objectivity is the extent to which we lose an agreed upon set of facts. It's really tragic that the hard-earned credibility of these institutions are being hollowed out for relatively little short-term political capital to the great detriment of our whole country and indeed the world.

xnx 6y ago

A root cause behind this is a shift from news as a public service (something closer to the modern-day BBC) to an info-tainment business that must turn a quarterly profit.

heroprotagonist 6y ago

Fox News was specifically designed and built to be the media arm of the Republican party. This was by design, created from the ground up as a long term play. In its case, it was not a natural shift of narrative influence or a trade-in for the viewer numbers. Rupert Murdock called on Republican political strategist Roger Ailes in 1996 when creating Fox News. Ailes launched and then ran Fox News as its CEO for decades. This is the same guy who worked as a media adviser to basically every successful Republican presidential campaign.. Nixon, Reagan, Bush.. and even Trump (before Ailes died, and after a sexual misconduct scandal finally got him canned at Fox). Ailes was so influential as a strategist that he was even credited for one of Bush senior's wins back in the day. And he built and reigned at Fox News for 20+ years. So we had a major republican political operator put in charge of a news network by a global political operator (Murdoch) who only got US citizenship as it was a requirement for US television station ownership. And who had a history of using his media empire to shape political narrative for influence. The frustrating thing is that Murdoch's influence shaping has always been more about accumulating power than towards spreading specific ideology. In Australia in the 60s and 70s, he backed the faction pushing for universal free health care, free college education for all Australians, and public ownership of Australia's oil, gas and mineral resources. Sounds very un-Fox-like, doesn't it? It was the in-road to political power, the faction that would get him the most influence by supporting. There was a write-up some years ago in the UK that delves a bit more into his history (as he has also been peddling influence in the UK for decades as well): https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a-man-of-selfish-loyalties-rupert-murdochs-apparent-overture-to-tony-blair-strikes-a-chilling-chord-1376362.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a-man-of-selfish-lo... But tying this back to Fox News.. he came to the US, built a TV network and used that foundation to build a news station. This was a push to become a major political controller by building and embedding Fox News as the media arm of the Republican party. They used this to condition their base. The lead-up to today is decades of people turning on FOX to watch Geraldo, sticking around for the news, then wandering off with talking points stuffed into their heads by influencers with an agenda who were presenting the news. And the strategy was so successful that it generates mimics to the model. The most evil I see is Sinclair Media buying up local news stations and putting the same talking points into the mouths of local pundits across the nation. There's a creepy video compilation that highlights the tactics of this influence machinery by showing clips from each of these local news outlets with different talking heads each repeating the same points.

ethbr0 6y ago

> There are no more Walter Cronkites or Edward R. Murrows I don't think there can be economically, without regulating (supply limiting) news media. They were debatably on par with politicians. But increase the number of news outlets, and the importance of any anchor decreases. Consequently, their ability to ask hard questions without losing access to their sources decreases.